Clarification on Churh's position on safer Sex

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BlazingBolt

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I heard that the Church teaches that if a person chooses to sin by having pre-marital Sex that she teaches that this person should not commit another sin by also using ABC or “protection”. Is this actually true and if it is can some one explain why?

It seems to me that once you have commited Mortal sin your giving God the finger anyway so why would you do it without “protection”? Does a person get punished more for commiting 2 Mortal sins or something?

If this is this case it seems awfully close to encouraging un-protected Sex. Don’t have sex, but if you do, make sure you don’t protect yourself.

It seems to me that if your screwing up your spiritual life you shouldn’t screw up your temporal one as well. I am a bit confused about this, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
BlazingBolt said:
Don’t have [pre/extramarital] sex, but if you do, make sure you don’t protect yourself.
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I think if you **remove **the underlined part, that’s a pretty good summary of the Church’s position on this matter. I’ve never heard of the “but if you’re going to do it anyway…” clause being added to any Church teachings. :rolleyes: (And maybe some of the more insightful members can address your questions as far as the compounding of mortal sins goes.)
 
The Church’s position is:
  1. extra-marital sex = one sin
  2. artificial birth control = one sin
  3. extra-marital sex + birth control = two sins
The thing is, if a person is freely choosing to disobey God, he has already chosen to head in the worst possible direction. He can’t mitigate that by trying to sin “responsibly”, because sin is by definition unloving, irresponsible, and unwise. Having AIDS or getting pregnant out of wedlock doesn’t make the situation any worse, spiritually speaking. The only thing worse than unrepented mortal sin is a pile of unrepented mortal sins.

Satan can make use of abstinence violation effect to attack our hope in ourselves, our God, and our salvation. All sins are forgiven equally as easily in the sacrament of confession, but that does not mean that one hundred sins are no worse than one. A single broken law is dangerous enough to the soul. One should not compound the situation by adding another infraction.
 
I don’t understand the point of this question. If steeling is wrong, does it matter to what degree (a pack of bubble gum verses a 2 karat diamond) we perform it in? Or are we suggesting that the first act we’ve come to terms with (premarital sex) and have justified our position on it but we’re just not clear on the second item?
 
spyderman said:
I don’t understand the point of this question. If steeling is wrong, does it matter to what degree (a pack of bubble gum verses a 2 karat diamond) we perform it in? Or are we suggesting that the first act we’ve come to terms with (premarital sex) and have justified our position on it but we’re just not clear on the second item?
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Yes it does, A mortal sin requires 3 things grave matter, sufficient reflection and full consent of the will. You do those three things,mortal sin. Stealing a pack of gum would not qualify as a mortal sin in 99.99% of the circumstances.

Many people it appears are desperately scrambling to try to either mitigate or justify sinful activity, ie: pre marital sexual relations or extra marital relations. The Church is clear. Don’t do them, period.
 
how would the civil law regard a similar situation? breaking and entering=1 crime, stealing merchandise = 1 crime
breaking and entering with intent+stealing=a long time in prison, harsher sentence for repeat offenders.

the second crime does not mitigate the first.

for the Church to change the teaching would be adding a grave malicious lie to the other sins involved, namely, an endorsement of the very false idea that condoms are effective in preventing the spread of disease–they are not, there is no evidence that they are more than marginally effective in stopping a narrow range of diseases. they are notoriously failure prone, and do not even claim to protect against HPV, the most widespread of these disease. ABC pills offer no protection at all nor do other chemical products. If contraception was effective in preventing pregnancy, the abortion mavens would not be releasing statistics that say half of all abortions are on pregnancies that result from failed contraceptives.
 
The Church can only teach the truth.

The truth is: each of these things is grave matter and objectively disordered (and subjectively sinful if done with full knowledge and free will). That means there are no circumstances under which they are moral to engage in.

The Church cannot teach that there are circumstances when you should engage in contraception because that is not true.

She can only teach the truth.
 
BlazingBolt said:
I heard that the Church teaches that if a person chooses to sin by having pre-marital Sex that she teaches that this person should not commit another sin by also using ABC or “protection”. Is this actually true and if it is can some one explain why?

Yes, it is true. Committing one mortal sin is very bad. Compounding the matter by committing another one is worse.

It seems to me that once you have commited Mortal sin your giving God the finger anyway so why would you do it without “protection”? Does a person get punished more for commiting 2 Mortal sins or something?

If a person dies with unrepented mortal sin on their soul they go to hell. Yes, there will be greater suffering in hell for those who descended deeper into evil.

If this is this case it seems awfully close to encouraging un-protected Sex. Don’t have sex, but if you do, make sure you don’t protect yourself.

No, you are wrong. What it is saying is “do not have sex with someone to whom you are not married.” Full stop.

It seems to me that if your screwing up your spiritual life you shouldn’t screw up your temporal one as well. I am a bit confused about this, any help would be appreciated.

This is foolish thinking! Most people who mess up their spiritual life end up messing up their temporal one as well because we are creatures with both material and spiritual make-up. We cannot seperate the two, no matter how we try.

Thanks
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Trust the Church. If the Church tells us not to do something, it’s only for our own good - our final good - getting to Heaven.
 
Hehe. Sad, but funny topic.

Hey, suicide is a sin. Taking God’s name in vain is a sin.

So if a guy jumps off a bridge and swears on the way down, how many sins did he commit?

Answer: God doesn’t work that way. He isn’t a human judge and isn’t limited by our imperfect knowledge. In both examples, the sins are wrapped together in a package not easily separated into parts. And there is no need to separate them. Once you make a conscious decision to sin in a grave manner, it doesn’t matter how many more you do!
 
puzzleannie, can you provide some references to the data about the ineffectiveness of condoms please.

I understand and agree that ABC is one sin, and extra marital sex is another sin. I also do not think that the Church should teach that either one is acceptable under any circumstances.

I also believe that handing out contraception like candy only encourages promiscuity.

However I don’t understand affirminatively teaching that it is better, or less evil, to commit sexual sins with out a condom. Is this what the Church teaches or is this a distortion?

I think that the Church teaching each act in itself is individually sinful is enough.

I think that teaching it is less sinful can have the wrong effect on Catholics where their minds can be twisted by the tempter and in their weakness think they are being less evil.

I think that simply teaching both are sinful may help Catholics realize the seriousness of commiting sexual sins. It kind of draws a harder line which I think may make it harder for the enemy to trick them in to crossing. He always wants us to test the limits of sin and teaching that something is less evil I worry gives him a seductive avenue of attack.

If your going to Hell should their really be any concern to what degree of suffering you will endure there? Your damned either way.
 
BlazingBolt said:
However I don’t understand affirminatively teaching that it is better, or less evil, to commit sexual sins with out a condom. Is this what the Church teaches or is this a distortion?
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This is a distortion of church teaching.

The church teaches that each of these are of equally grave matter. Neither action is acceptable, together or individually.

When proposed with the question “Which is better, to have extramarital sex with or without a condom” the church’s only reply can be “neither”.

The Church cannot state that either is “better” because both are equally sinful-- neither one is a moral choice.

You may be trying to say that one is better because it attempts to avoid physical, temporal consequences. The solution is that it would be “better” to not engage in the behavior at all-- and that would be the Church’s counsel.
 
That makes good sense. That is what I thought. I can accept that easily.

I just saw someone arguing somewhere basically that if a 15 year old was having sex that the Chuch said she should be doing it with out protection? And then a Catholic responded that this was true, that it was better for the 15 year old to do it with out ABC and that a Good Catholic should know this. I was confused when I saw that and thought I would come here to try and figure it out.

Thanks, for the help.
 
1ke said:
When proposed with the question “Which is better, to have extramarital sex with or without a condom” the church’s only reply can be “neither”.

The Church cannot state that either is “better” because both are equally sinful-- neither one is a moral choice.
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I agree that the Church does not endorse either option. And to set them up as “which is better” is a false premise.

But… I don’t think that the Church considers them to be equally sinful. I mean, clearly murdering two people would be worse than murdering one. I heard something about this recently on the radio. It may have been on Catholic Answers Live, but I’m not sure. The caller wanted to know which sin was worse, an abortion or masturbation. The apologist answered that both sins concern grave matter (and are probably mortal), but that the abortion would be a more serious sin because it involved the taking of a human life.

I think he would answer similarly to the question at hand in this thread. Both options are morally wrong, but one is even more morally wrong than the other.

It could be compared to committing a crime that warrants a prison sentence of 140 years or committing a crime that gets you 280 years… obviously the judge finds the latter crime to be worse, but it’s fairly inconsequential because either option leaves you rotting in prison for the rest of your life.

So even though it might seem like a kind of moot point to discuss the difference when both sins are mortal, I truly believe it’s necessary to highlight the fact that the Church recognizes the difference between various mortal sins. She acknowledges the fact that missing mass is not as horrible of an atrocity as committing mass genocide–even if both those sins might send one to hell.
 
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