Church Documents on Contraception

[MichaelP3]

But in that scenario it already assumes a need to lose weight. The person can also be anorexic and in that case neither of the means would be considered ordered anyway.

So the ends to not have a child does not assume anything yet. Yes the couple could have no children and be very well of. But they can also be very poor and struggling to feed the 10 children they already have.

 

[pensmama87]

Right. But their need doesn’t suddenly make an immoral method moral.

 

[Vonsalza]

I am not sure you have fully grasped my small point (excuse the double entendre). Let me be a little more explicit using your own terms then: coitus must be free of thwarting artifice. Obviously there is nothing wrong with artifice itself if it assists nature (as in surgery, Viagra etc).

I like double entendres

If official teaching on the Church was a bit more clear that the issue is exactly that. then I think there’d be less debate on the issue.

Throw out the vague language about being “oriented toward life” and “natural function” because that language doesn’t actually represent the Church’s position because NFPers are trying to not have kids just like BCers -and- you can’t take a pill to help keep you from having kids, but you can take one to assist in the opposite aim.

Of course, the means the sacrifice of the implicit appeals to nature that makes the doctrine more intellectually digestible to many in favor of bald and seemingly capricious appeals to authority “in the name of God” by those who claim to wield that authority. But if the shoe fits…

Maybe that’s what it breaks down to anyway.

The basic principle behind all Catholic moral argument is that the specific physical acts we choose also reveal personal intent and its quality.

Then I’m not following.

We spent several keystrokes revealing that a couple can be as closed to life as humanly possible as long as they don’t use artificial means to frustrate procreation - placing the value of the act over the value of intent.

But in-line with what you’ve said here, and NFPing couple runs directly afoul of the Church because the frustration of procreation is exactly their aim…

So the Church is observing that NFP can be chosen, even harbouring conscious intent “I am not open to life at the moment” as you rightly observe. And because the coitus itself is allowed to retain its biological teleology (the physics is “open to life”), even if chosen when biological blanks are in play, then the human act as a whole is still considered “open to life”.

Here might be another point of disagreement for us. The notion that a couple using NFP with very high effectiveness are still teleologically “open to life” is double-speak.

In fairness, maybe there’s a separate Catholic definition of “telos” that I’m not getting; like there’s one for “contraception”.

Is NFP medical contracepting? I am easy on the point as its irrelevant to a virtue based approach to the meaning of use of such an artifice. Though it makes rational ethical discussion extremely difficult I accept.

I agree. And I think it’s very honest of you to at least admit that NFP is necessarily associated with artifice as that’s what allowed its existence as a thing distinct from the Rhythm Method.

 

[Vonsalza]

Because you oppose of it, you don’t want to see any consistancy in the current catholic doctrine, but she is pretty clear.

No ma’am.

In the business of crafting arguments, no one starts off as “right” be default. This is what people try to do when they state that something “has always been”. It’s just a super-obvious attempt to avoid a burden of proof.

So looking at the Catholic argument against birth control, there are simply lots and lots and lots of non-Catholic folks who are not convinced.

Now you might want to say that this fact exists because they “have it out” for the Ancient Church! But this typically isn’t true. There are simply thousands of PhD’ed scholars who contest the evidence that a lot of Catholics try to use to support the notion that the Catholic view on birth control has always been the same; particularly since the 1930s.

• this definition don’t clash with medical one

If you don’t think Natural Family Planning is contraception, then I regret to inform you that your definition does clash (with very, very little ambiguity) with the etymological definition used by non-Catholics as well as probably most Catholics.

-the pill does not contain real female hormone, but imitation of them.

The body can’t distinguish between them.

And even if, what would that will be different from a barrier?

It allows the exchange of bf and some might find that important.

 

[Anicette]

Why the fact that many non catholic are not convinced is an argument?
They cannot fully know our doctrine.
They can live a life that is too distant from what the Church teach

They can be just secular in a secular word.

When you don’t want to understand, there is many ways.

NFP=the way to prevent pregnancy is abstinence. It in no way contraceptive. I don’t even know why you don’t want to admit that fact.

It allows the exchange of bf and some might find that important.

How this argument is consitent?
You want to bring to discussion of the morality of changing partners vs not?

 

[Anicette]

Our current doctrine is the result of deployment of the thinkings, centuries after centuries. But never said the exact contrary of what had been preached.

the pill does not contain real female hormone, but imitation of them.

The body can’t distinguish between them.

But the body act differently with pill vs not!

If you don’t think Natural Family Planning is contraception, then I regret to inform you that your definition does clash (with very, very little ambiguity) with the etymological definition used by non-Catholics as well as probably most Catholics.

Doctors don’t refer NFP as contraception. In France they use the term “natural methods” or at BEST in the way that please you as “natural contraception”. Never as “contraception”.

 

[BlackFriar]

Here might be another point of disagreement for us. The notion that a couple using NFP with very high effectiveness are still teleologically “open to life” is double-speak.

We spent several keystrokes revealing that a couple can be as closed to life as humanly possible as long as they don’t use artificial means to frustrate procreation - placing the value of the act over the value of intent.

I was keeping it simple and using language you are familiar with (open to life) - remember I said that sort of language isnt helpful because its too simplistic for supporting the theology.

In Aristotelian/Thomistic virtue based ethics and Philosophy of Man there is a two way interplay between personal intent and the choosing of an action with a defined teleology. Like the relationship of body and soul. If one truly respects the teleology of the action chosen then one’s intent at root cannot be anti-life however much it looks like that or one even feels like that.
As above, perhaps the truest test of deepest intent is what a couple does when their chosen method fails.

I agree. And I think it’s very honest of you to at least admit that NFP is necessarily associated with artifice as that’s what allowed its existence as a thing distinct from the Rhythm Method.

I haven’t really studied up much about the latter. Is it significantly different from NFP?

 

[Vonsalza]

Why the fact that many non catholic are not convinced is an argument?
They cannot fully know our doctrine.

It’s at this point the rational discussion should be over.

When you don’t want to understand, there is many ways.

Identically, when you don’t want to see the faults in a dearly-held thing, there are many ways.

NFP=the way to prevent pregnancy is abstinence. It in no way contraceptive. I don’t even know why you don’t want to admit that fact.

The contraceptive mechanism is avoiding sex during fertile times BECAUSE they’re fertile times. The aim is to avoid conception - contra-ception.

It’s the word itself.

Our current doctrine is the result of deployment of the thinkings, centuries after centuries. But never said the exact contrary of what had been preached.

Hormonal birth control is a completely new thing in human history.

To say that there is an ancient Church opinion on it is like saying there is an ancient Church opinion on nuclear energy or the internet.

But the body act differently with pill vs not!

Sure. Just like when you take a pill for any other reason.

Doctors don’t refer NFP as contraception.

Doctors around here don’t refer to NFP at all. It’s not taken very seriously.

But the aim is to frustrate conception. That is what “contraception” means!

If you aren’t willing to accept that, I fully sympathize.

 

[BlackFriar]

Throw out the vague language about being “oriented toward life

A response is coming.
I must have been a bad boy as it auto-went to the moderator for action for some reason…

 

[Vonsalza]

I haven’t really studied up much about the latter. Is it significantly different from NFP?

It is the attempt to time (and thus avoid) ovulation based on a woman’s menses and then you estimate that ovulation will occur in X number of days. Ergo you avoid intimacy at that time.

It often ends up being a great way to get pregnant.

 

[Vonsalza]

Vonsalza:

Throw out the vague language about being “oriented toward life

A response is coming.
I must have been a bad boy as it auto-went to the moderator for action for some reason…

Take your time. I’m going to retire for the evening.

Another day!

 

[MichaelP3]

Not my point.

More that the “moral” method then makes the ends (also immoral unless for very specific circumstances depending who you talk to and so on … open to life, open to procreation, ordered to life and the list can go on as time went on) all of a sudden moral and that’s not even part of the argument anymore.

So still. It is a case of the “means now justify the ends”. Hope that is clear!

 

[pensmama87]

I think that might be the source of the confusion. It’s not immoral to not want to have a baby.

 

[MichaelP3]

Not to be open to life? That’s even an impediment to a valid marriage according to Catholic understanding…

 

[pensmama87]

I don’t believe the phrasing “open to life” is actually found in official Church writings on this matter - it’s used as a kind of shorthand, but it’s incomplete. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can address it.

But no, you don’t have to have a baby, or want a baby. You have to be able to complete the act and not frustrate how the act works. But nobody says, “You have to have sex when the wife is fertile.” You don’t even have to be fertile to be validly married.

ETA: You can even be validly married and never, ever have sex. (Note here that I’m not saying it’s advisable.)

 

[Vonsalza]

I don’t believe the phrasing “open to life” is actually found in official Church writings on this matter - it’s used as a kind of shorthand, but it’s incomplete. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can address it.

A decent entry from the CCC;

2366 Fecundity is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment. So the Church, which is "on the side of life,"151 teaches that "it is necessary that each and every marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life."152 "This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act."153

But no, you don’t have to have a baby, or want a baby. You have to be able to complete the act and not frustrate how the act works.

And for the umpteenth time, using modern methods to determine when your wife ovulates so you can avoid her like a sexual leper during those times seems create a consistency issue there.

I know the Catholic Church officially says “no” here, but their mighty purview isn’t over the rules of rhetoric; for good or bad.

ETA: You can even be validly married and never, ever have sex. (Note here that I’m not saying it’s advisable.)

I think that’s actually vigorously debatable.

These “marriages” can be readily dissolved. Ergo their “substance” relative to a consummated marriage are sometimes considered suspect; St. Joseph and The Virgin aside…

 

[MichaelP3]

@pensmama87

I believe this answers the predicament

 

[BlackFriar]

If official teaching on the Church was a bit more clear that the issue is exactly that. then I think there’d be less debate on the issue.

THIS IS THE POST DELAYED BY THE MODERATOR - I have no idea why.

Well that is just my personal translation into post enlightenment English of what the Magisterium is saying in its arcane Aristotelian use of English - after six years Thomistic theological training under Dominican professors, two engineering degrees and a further 30 years reflection trying to make sense of both schizophrenic vocabs. Maybe I ma mistaken but it seems to respect both worlds and still makes sense to me .

… you can’t take a pill to help keep you from having kids, but you can take one to assist in the opposite aim.

Yes its an interesting contradiction but I think only apparent. In a non fallen world abstention would be the correct answer, just as there would be no private property.

But I think its fairly objectively clear in a virtue based ethics system why a pill can be taken to assist with sex but not the reverse. Sex has a normative biological trajectory and when we freely choose to frustrate it a line is crossed re the sort of people we are making ourselves into and intent (which consciously or unconsciously, shapes who we become).

That is not to damn BCers of course. But its now walking a moral tightrope without a safety net.
Nor is it to grace all NFPers - one can still have a malicious anti-life intent while doing what the Church says.

I suppose the true test is what a couple decides when their chosen method fails. I accept many BCers would not think of aborting. Grace is mysterious and personal and concrete and particular and cannot be presumed simply on the basis of engaging in (allegedly) always and everywhere gravely disordered acts. We all operate from chasms of both unfreedom and freedom where God’s wind whistles.

Of course, the means the sacrifice of the implicit appeals to nature that makes the doctrine more intellectually digestible to many in favor of bald and seemingly capricious appeals to authority “in the name of God” by those who claim to wield that authority. But if the shoe fits…

The Church has many tools for assisting the faithful at different levels of moral maturity. I personally tend to think HV was more disciplinary than it was doctrinal - though it was doctrinal.
I don’t believe the issue is as doctrinally “always and everywhere” as JPII’s VS makes out. Like Communion practise much of it I suspect is disciplinary. The Church was ripping itself apart on the question and the Pope basically said, “this is how it is for the moment, no more theological debate, just do what you are told and this is how high I want you to jump going forward.”

In fact the Church has been very lenient in the confessional, with even the Magisterial Vademecum advising priests to “turn a blind eye” to some extent for the faithful who were judged “invincibly ignorant” and allow them Communion even if they kept on using BC.
In fact many priests had reached that conclusion independently even without the Vademecum I suggest.