Rob’s Wife said:
To which I repeat and quote myself:
I’m sorry if I seemed to be “flaming” you, that was not my intention - my point was to illustrate the wording of your post (which is all us reading can go by) that seemed to have sparked others.
You are welcome to flame me all you like. I have broad shoulders.
However, I do not want anyone to put words into my post that were not there. I in no way condoned any immoral act. Abuse I can take, however I want it to be abuse based on what I said.
That some people might disagree with me for being sympathetic to this man’s plight is also acceptable to me. What is not acceptable to me is that someone posts a questions asking for advice and gets only quotes from the Catechism. Certainly, this is the simple course. Certainly, that is the right advice. However, it fails to put a human face on the situation and reach out in a real and Christian way to a fellow human being in distress. In response to those quotes, the original poster – in desperation, I imagine—lashed out with an accusation of all of us following blindly and not thinking.
I simply tried to reach out to a fellow Christian. I wanted to make it clear to him that I was listening and I appreciate his plight. I did not condone anything wrong. I advised him that abstinence was the only 100% effective means of preventing contraception. Clearly, he was – based on the content of his original post – considering a vasectomy. Equally clearly, he has moral qualms with that. It would be irresponsible of me to be unsympathetic to the person in need and merely quote rules.
That in no way is meant to imply that the rules of Holy Mother Church are wrong and I didn’t say that they were, nor do I say so now.
I have been accused of all sorts of cruel things because I tried to help a person in need of support. It is being implied that I am advising this person to have a vasectomy. I’m not doing that. I also did not present a list of choices and leave it at that. I presented a list of choices and then refused to make a choice for someone else.
“Why,” you might ask, “would I refuse to make a choice for someone else?”
That is a reasonable question. If there is a significant risk of an unborn baby dying or the mother dying as a result of the pregnancy, then I do not think I can responsibly suggest natural family planning to the person. By significant risk, I mean a risk elevated above what is considered normal as death is always a possibility. Natural family planning is fine for healthy people with normal risk factors.
However, I know that I – as a husband – would consider it morally unacceptable to put my wife and an unborn child at risk of death. Therefore, abstinence is the only course of action I can responsibly recommend.
So far, no one has been able to tell me what part of “Abstinence is the only 100% effective means of preventing contraception” statement is wrong. I would love to hear what is wrong with that statement.
The person who posted the original question is not a child experimenting with premarital sex. He is a grown man with a family and I am not his mother, nor am I his priest, nor am I speaking for the church. Clearly, there are other people to fill those roles. The purpose of my original post was to support a fellow man in a moment of need; I did that by offering him the best advice I can based on reality – that abstinence is the best, safest, most morally sound choice.
Anyone who wants to judge me based on something else read into that is welcome to do so.
What’s the difference? And, by the way, it’s not possible to make a choice for someone else in this situation - certainly not just by posting on the internet. No one here is making any choice for this man, but some are offering more help to make the better choice than others.
