CatholicMatthew:
As to why they dissent now…it is more pleasureable. If you want to live for pleasure…fine but remember what the bible calls that.
Dear Matthew,
One of the primary motivations for using ABC may be for pleasure living, but it is not the primary reason I personally dissent from the Church teaching.
Ever since I was in grade school and got punished for defending myself against nuns who said I was wrong on math problems when I really wasn’t, I have been very sensitive to those who are in authoritative positions who hold their positions as evidence of automatically being more right than those in lower positions. I became an advocate of anybody else who were right and were being told they were wrong by authority, or who might have been wrong and honestly wanting to know why and were given nonsensical reasons and silenced from asking further either overtly or because they just gave up.
I have also been a teacher myself, teaching basic electronics to people with no technical background at all, and teaching algebra to high school, college and military students. What is painfully obvious to me and sometimes the rest of the class can elude one person, and I don’t want them to give up asking if they really want to understand. Once in a long while they have actually caught me in a misstatement I didn’t even recall saying, that the rest of the class just let go by, or bought into, or something. The motives of the dissenter don’t really matter; the result is better teaching – unless it gets into petty name calling.
In the specific subject at hand, neither I nor my personal friends have a horse in this race, so my objections are purely academic and out of concern for a deeply split body of Christ. It is no secret that the majority of Catholics do not believe this teaching, as surveys time and time again reveal. Does that mean the majority is right? No, but here’s the rub. If the Church’s explanation simply doesn’t make sense to most people, it comes down to, “OK, then, forget the logic if you don’t see it my way, believe it because you’re supposed to.”
The problem is, the Church has serious credibility problems in other sex-related areas, so Catholics are understandably wary when the Church tries to impose sex-related rules on them without “good enough” reason. It is all well and good to say that the Church’s practices may be evil but her teachings are perfect, and point to Jesus telling his followers to follow what the hypocrites teach rather than what they do. Another thing to look at is “you shall know them by their fruits” (no pun originally intended) and “can a good tree bear bad fruit?” How can anyone condemn any person, Catholic or not, for questioning the authority and infallibility of the magesterium? Perhaps those who dissent originally did out of selfishness and are using the Church’s flaws as an excuse, and maybe they will never see it even with indisputable evidence.
In my own case, I am honestly trying to figure out the Church’s reasoning. If the Church simply taught “this is how it is and you may not dissent” then it would be a simple matter of accepting it or not. She doesn’t do that, however. She tries to explain it, in which case the explanation either needs to make sense to me or she may as well have saved her breath and not tried to explain it at all.
This is why I tried to articulate the Church’s side as best I could, so that any further debate can be based on where we disagree instead of my potential misunderstanding of the Church’s side of this. I will reread bear06’s article. I have also read Humanae Vitae but it’s been a while so I might reread it too before I rehash any objections other than those which come up here.
BTW, I might argue with DVIN CKS, but that doesn’t mean I disagree, just that I am trying to see if I can understand the Church side and/or see if (s)he can explain my own objections better than I can.
Alan
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