Wouldn’t that rather depend on who you ask? It’s hardly surprising that some Catholics, brought up to think that contraception is very naughty, would feel that they had been/were being naughty.
Meanwhile, people who hadn’t had that background and had not been converted to being enthusiastic Catholics would be likely to think very differently.
Not me. Most all protestants were at one time of the same upbringing on the matter. I would say that they those not relating to this idea were brought up with a different understanding of what marriage and the marital act. I’ve come to believe that most Protestants understanding about their relationship with God is quite distorted because of its absence from Church teaching. They tend to adopt all different types of understandings it seems. I say this having practiced several different faiths. I was Protestant growing up. But even we did not always attend church. In fact, most of the time we did not attend church at all. I felt something was wrong about that practice. But no one in the family seemed to disagree with mom, or dad, not attending their prospective church. Of course I was a child.
But most of my family was like this on mom’s side, Protestant. Dad’s side, Catholic, just didn’t seem to say anything either. I’m not even sure if mom really believed in God, because of the things she wold say. I’ve heard her call the Blessed Mother 2 very offensive names typically thought of about mean women and prostitutes in order to hurt my feelings about claiming to be Catholic. Dad said very offensive things about Protestants as well. Divorce was eminent by the time I was 5 or 6. In fact, I was the only brother not to attend kindergarten because of the “war” between my parents during that time.
Upon hearing about our first son being conceived, mom asked if we were gong to have the baby. That was gravely offensive to us. She manipulated my brother’s girlfriend into aborting her child, but never tried to stop him from all of his sexual encounters, some of which are far more x-rated than I care to even admit. One of them started towards me one morning after I woke up seeing them in the next bed. I jumped up and went into the next room totally disgusted by his sinful behavior, threesome. My Catholic dad, was just as bad and frankly was a hypocrite from my perspective. His sexual gratification was more important that his children. He was a deadbeat father on every since of the term. My mom was also a deadbeat mother in every sense of that term as well. So we all grew up in deep spiritual poverty.
This left me to seeking wisdom at an early age. All of us were borderline suicidal at best. My older brother succeeded at taking his life after his trophy girlfriend dumped him and all of his immoral activity in his life caught up with him. My younger brother has pushed for at least the one abortion and has had so many sexual encounters with other women that it is absolutely disgusting. Women have nearly thrown themselves at me, but my conscience began to develop at a very young age all because I started studying the scriptures on my own at a very young age. So bible only was always my Christian belief until I was in my late early 40’s where I found myself grappling with very difficult questions that seem to contradict solo scriptura [bible only] beliefs.
The other main subject that haunted me over the past 10 years was also rooted in things like “is masturbation a sin if it is natural?” Why is abortion actually wrong when it is not spelled out in scripture? Why is homosexuality wrong and how can anyone justify it is when the scripture clearly portray it as a gravely sinful life? And with the statements made in the bible how could anyone not see that some sins are more grave than others? I also began to ask questions particularly about in vetro fertilization. And in an attempt to remove what I saw as a disparity in my own beliefs I found myself trying to figure out if some of the books were contained in the bible that should have been left out.
From there I began to ask more complicated questions that I could not actually answer either, like: “who made the decision of which books belong in the bible?” “and what gave them the authority to do it”. If the Catholic Church defined the canon then why would be even trust any of it? I then realized that the 7 books of scripture were taken out in the 16th century and then I said, if the Catholic Church had no right to add or take away from the canon then how could anyone accept the 16th century version of it. It was so far removed from early Christianity as a whole and “faith alone” for salvation is an obvious heresy then what is true in the bible and finally "how can I trust anything contained in scripture as inspired?’ Get where this is going yet?
