Contraception...Your beliefs?

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SteveVH said:
Except that they never fully given themselves to one another.

Like what? A bolt of lightning? 🤷

The celibate priest who has had hundreds of conversations and confessions with married couples and can actually have an objective viewpoint, not to mention his training in the moral aspects of sexuality.

And where you ever got the idea that priests want us to be scared of what might happen I have no idea. What are you taliking about?

This is one of the greatest myths out there. It is based upon the assumption that because a priest is celibate then he has no business in speaking on the morality of the sacrament of Matrimony and the relationship between a man and a woman as intended by God.

I would say that there is no institution on earth that is in touch with human sexuality to the degree of the Catholic Church. A priest is not there to give his own advice. He is there to pass on what we have received, so his personal expeirence in engaging in sex has nothing whatsoever to do with sound moral teaching on the issue of human sexuality.

What do you do with the married Protestant pastor who is a complete failure in his relations with his wife? Do you want his advice, with all his great experience?
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An expert on treating snake bites is not a guy who earns his expertise by getting bitten by one.

Peace,
Ed
 
Monergistic said:
This information is generally most applicable to people who intend to use some form of contraception while avoiding certain drugs that are less safe. You know- like with any drug or medication that’s somewhat elective. It’s normal for certain drugs in any broad family to have some lawsuits tied to them. Take ED drugs, for example- mostly used for recreational purposes, btw. They get the full support of the CC, and they come with a substantial amount of risk as well. So let’s take a think at this and see if rare but sometimes serious side effects really has anything to do with anything here.

But I know you’re not supplying this information in order to help people do a better job of choosing contraception. I surmise that your concern for rare but serious risks is oddly targeted to just one type of drug, while that same concern is entirely absent when other drugs have potentially less rare and more serious side effects. And you already told me you don’t believe contraceptive drugs should be banned or controlled.

So I’m still trying to figure out why you want to keep coming into the medical science lane. To me, it seems like the argument from morality is the only lane for you. This appears to be a bit of a non sequitur.
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ED is a disease that prevents a normal bodily function. Pregnancy is not a disease and there is a natural alternative to artificial birth control. Science has proven it just as effective if used correctly.

Why medical science? LOL! Oh, idk…maybe because people have died from taking BC or if they are predisposed to blood clotting they could end up in the hospital. Every box of OC’s should have cancer warnings on them. The WHO lists it as such. It is called information distribution. Most docs don’t tell people that. Look at the 1Flesh site. It is not religious and they present a great deal of science.
 
Monergistic said:
My parents raised me with a bit of a different understanding. First, let me tell you who my parents are.

Collectively, they are conservative (politically and for the most part theologically), traditional, and a bit old-fashioned. Let me put it this way- they’re not Mennonites, but they easily could be. All they would have to do is join a Mennonite church, and if we lived in a different kind of town, I believe they might have. I have a few Mennonite friends, and I was just a bit more sheltered than most of them were as I was growing up.

My mom has a background in nursing, which she put on hold in order to be a mom. With the kids grown, though, she’s gone back to school and is finishing up her internship in order to get her Masters is psychology. Some of her psych education was done at a Christian school, and some was done at a state school. As conservative as she is, she’s finding her way in that type of environment.

My dad is a doctor at a Catholic hospital. His immediate bosses are a couple of CEOs who also happen to be nuns. He has spent some years as a medical missionary, and is therefore ordained. He is just as committed to Biblical study as he is to medical study- and my mom is right there with him, of course.

With younger people, and with the work they do in general, contraception is something that comes up quite a bit. More than anyone else I’ve met personally (including clergy), they are looked to as trusted sources of information and wisdom due to the depth of experience and the combination of expertise in medicine, psychology, and theology.

A chat with them about contraception is not something they take lightly, because they understand the gravity of their responsibility. Young people regularly weigh decisions regarding their sexuality against what they have to say, and as professionals in relevant fields, they take it very seriously. If I were to make a comparison, I would say they take it more seriously than an average person who posts their opinions and thoughts on a message board.

So that’s what I was brought up in. And my upbringing has led me to believe that some of the scary stories posted here so far are largely untrue- particularly the ones that play up medical and psychological concerns. There is a discussion to be had, but I’ve seen what that looks like in the hands of professionals. It doesn’t look like this.

I do come from a place where contraception is not held to be grave sin, or even an automatic sin whatsoever. But even if you do come from that standpoint, you need to be a bit more responsible with the medical and psychological facts. I see fearmongering here, and I see people who are more interested in marshalling arguments with minimal care for accuracy than they are in careful consideration of all that really goes into this.

What is it that goes into this? All the things that make contraception ubiquitous both here and around the world, among Catholics and all other Christians. It wasn’t always so, but it is now and there are reasons for that. Good reasons, too- not the stuff that’s being posted here. And it doesn’t automatically lead to debauchery and whoremongering, either. My parents have three children, raised with the understanding that certain forms of contraception are in bounds, and all of them have waited or are waiting until marriage.
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Thank you for this. I had a similar type of upbringing. Parents who are pretty conservative in all areas except the matter of contraception. Now the cancer/heart risks of the pill are something to consider (plus the fact that you can get pregnant while taking it and then harm the fertilized egg), but I just don’t see a moral issue in using a condom, diaphragm, etc.
 
Artificial birth control is not health care. That’s a lie. Two healthy human beings should never look at babies as that terrible alternative. That awful choice. The “I love you honey but let’s get married and worry about having kids later or not at all. They aren’t fun. And we’re young and we need lots of sex and we need other stuff.”

I was born before The Pill, IUDs, spermicidal foam, the patch, and every other birth control method developed after 1960. And you know what? The average number of kids in my neighborhood was Two. TWO. And the same was true for neighborhoods miles away.

So what’s wrong with this picture? People were gradually brainwashed to look at babies NOT as a “bundle of joy” or “a gift from God” but as a burden. Or, we might have one - maybe.

When we as a people deny the truth, we always - always - choose a substitute, whether that’s SEX is more important and kids aren’t or sex is all that matters. A man and a woman are the only way we are going to get the next generation of human beings.

Peace,
Ed
 
edwest2 said:
Out of touch with what? The current mythology being spread that lots and lots of sex is healthy?

Peace,
Ed
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No, I’m saying they’re out of touch with the practical realities of supporting a family on a limited budget in a post-industrial world. What I said before about the change in Protestant teaching, how it had to do with married ministers using contraception- I am saying that was a human thing, not a Protestant thing, and Catholic priests are not so different. If all or nearly all Catholic priests started raising families in the developed world, they would gradually do the same thing. They would talk a good NFP game initially, but as they get more in touch with what it is, the same kind of thing would happen. The similar trajectories of Catholic and Protestant laity support my hypothesis.
 
silentfactor80 said:
ED is a disease that prevents a normal bodily function. Pregnancy is not a disease and there is a natural alternative to artificial birth control. Science has proven it just as effective if used correctly.
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ED pills also come with some small risk of serious side effects. Earlier, you linked risky drugs with sin. I’m pointing out how that linkage is highly targeted to certain drugs that you already identify as sinful for reasons that have nothing to do with risk or side effects. So I’m saying the linkage between sin and some risk of side effects is basically pointless.
 
Most Catholics do find a great lack of natural family planning and Humanae Vitae taught in their parishes.

My parish now has flyers in back showing that the pill is carcenogenic.

Frankly, you are taking drugs to affect the part of yourself that gives life. Why mess with it??? My daughter left the Church and became an evangelical. She finally admitted she had been on the pill for 3 years. She finally got pregnant this late fall and lost her baby on Christmas Eve. She told me now that she realizes how sacred human life is, and will never take the pill again. They are trying not to be anxious and continue to be open to life. Her husband told me on Easter getting ready to go home how much he wished he could earn more…and then began to sob loosing their first child, even in its earliest stages of life.

God will bless them someday and it is our constant prayer. There is always room for one more mouth at the table. We just have to live more simply and slow down, focus more on our interpersonal relationships.
 
Monergistic said:
No, I’m saying they’re out of touch with the practical realities of supporting a family on a limited budget in a post-industrial world. What I said before about the change in Protestant teaching, how it had to do with married ministers using contraception- I am saying that was a human thing, not a Protestant thing, and Catholic priests are not so different. If all or nearly all Catholic priests started raising families in the developed world, they would gradually do the same thing. They would talk a good NFP game initially, but as they get more in touch with what it is, the same kind of thing would happen. The similar trajectories of Catholic and Protestant laity support my hypothesis.
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This isn’t a post-anything world. The laity? That doesn’t change Church teaching by zero percent. Again, we’re not Protestants.

Ed
 
It all depends. A deliberately childless marriage by persons in fertile age, is in my mind dysfuctional, but before passing a judgement, one ought to know the exact conditions of the couple.

I was my mother’s third child. My eldest sister had been borne by a cesarean section due to a medical emergency. That had in those days ( 1940’ ies) predisposed my mother to have also any other babies she intended to have by a cesarean. When I was borne, my mother had a kidney failure as a side effect of the pregnancy. On the top of that there was the third cesarean. My father had for weeks to take care of my elder sisters, me, and nurse my mother at home. In these circumstances I think that the decision to have my mother sterilized in connection of my birth was a right and moral one.
 
edwest2 said:
I think people don’t understand Natural Family Planning.

ncbcenter.org/page.aspx?pid=1124
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Actually, I meant “suitable” rather than “effective.”
edwest2 said:
There is no Church teaching that justifies artificial contraception in terms of having or delaying having children.
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Of course not. However, I disagree.
edwest2 said:
What kind of high-risk pregnancy?
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I’m sure you are aware that some women have an increased risk for complications during pregnancy and delivery, and that some of these complications (e.g., haemorrhage, diabetes, high blood pressure) can even be life-threatening.
 
Honestly?

I have never considered contraception to a religious or faith issue at all. :ehh:
 
Monergistic said:
An expert on meat is not a vegan. And this comparison makes more sense.
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An expert on meat can, thanks to his or her expertise, determine that animals raised for meat eggs and dairy are treated inhumanely and indeed become vegan. Lots of meat eaters are turned off by learning about meat production.

By no means are all priests virgins inexperienced either of sex or marriage. Some have sexual relationships before entering seminary. Some are married (and remain so with permission of Rome) when they become priests, others are widowed or possibly divorced.

Not forgetting Eastern Catholic priests who have always been able to be married and affirm with us Church teaching on artificial contraception.
 
My wife uses the pill and has never had any problems with it whatsoever. She has actually been on it long before we were married/having sex as she has the added dimension of hormone issues and very severe menstrual symptoms that it helps control. She has been off it for a given cycle a couple times over the years and it is a very unpleasant experience for her.

As a physician, I simply don’t have the boogyman fear of birth control that many christians do. Are there risks and potential side effects? Absolutely, but they are virtually non-existent when compared to those we see from psychological medications, painkillers and even antibiotics. If you are opposed morally fine, but I tend to regard those who run around screaming about the physical dangers of birth control only slightly higher than those who say vaccines cause autism. The birth control pill is not especially dangerous as far as drugs go. It is essentially listed as a carcinogen for legal purposes as relatively few cancer cases have ever been conclusively linked to it. Alternatively, smoking and alcohol which are endorsed by many christians conslusively causes hundreds of thousands of cancers per year in this country.

As for the moral side, understanding the science is useful. Yes, there is a remote chance that certain versions of the pill can potentially cause a fertilized egg to fail to implant in the uterine wall. However, when used correctly (taken the same time every day) most unbiased research shows these odds are incredibly remote. We’re talking taking 10,000 women who correctly use the pill and are having regular intercourse and maybe one or two would have a pregnancy prevented by a failure to implant. Most women who use it correctly will go their whole lives without experiencing it (not that they would know). The pill will simply prevent fertilization in almost all cases.

Now, even IF preventing implantation was a frequent occurence (and it’s not) the problem is that most people don’t understand how a fertilized egg matures. Medically, pregnancy starts at implantation, not fertilization. This is because a fertilized egg that has not implanted somewhere is no more capable of growing into a human than an unfertilized egg. Many women are infertile BECAUSE their uterine wall is naturally thin and unable to receive the egg. A fertilized egg that doesnt implant will never ever ever mature, it will simply disentegrate and be expelled. A fertilized egg MUST implant for human life to be generated. Saying life begins at fertilization is a PURELY religious construct not grounded in science in any form or fashion. If a fertilized egg on it’s own is incapable of generating a human being, how can one consider that the beginning of “life”?

And as far as sex being solely for procreation, there really isnt any reason for me to believe God created it solely for that purpose. Children are a wonderful gift, but so is sex. Additionally, which is the worse sin: Having eight kids you can’t support or waiting several years and then having two or three that you can?

The downfall of society argument is philosophically flawed at it’s core. Even if we accept such studies relating the use of the pill to divorce rates and such (the majority of which are conducted with biased researchers and even more biased sample sizes) and ignore the fact that correlation doesnt equal causation, the idea that something is sinful simply because people abuse it is ridiculous. Is having a beer a sin just because some people are alcoholics? Is sex itself sinful because people abuse it? Are guns inherently immoral because some people use them for murder? Likewise, is birth control a sin simply because some use it as a crutch and let it lead to bad relationships?
 
edwest2 said:
Here is the manufacturer package insert for one birth control pill:

drugs.com/pro/ortho-novum.html#WARNINGS

Scroll down to Warnings.

Peace,
Ed
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Fast food, alcohol, tobacco products and living in a big city all increase the risk of MI, stroke, cancer, etc. by several ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more than any form of birth control. There is a higher dosage of carcinogens in one cigarette than in ten years worth or birth control pills. If you have one drink per week for a year you’ll have already introduced more carcinogens into your body than any women will ever get from birth control.

The fear-mongering over the pill is ridiculous. It’s like people who complain about the mercury in vaccines even though you get more mercury from one tuna sandwich than in a lifetime’s worth of shots.
 
edwest2 said:
Medical science is done by humans and is sometimes manipulated by other humans for profit.

hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674047143

Peace,
Ed
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Oddly enough, one of the biggest reasons for scientific bias is religious bias. The most frequently thrown out and discredited surveys/studies are conducted by ambitious religious scientists and “pseduo” scientists who used faulty methods and biased sample sizes to fit their beliefs.

There are a lot of christian “scientists” who give christians who actually know science a bad name. It’s part of the reason why there is such a witch hunt against christians in many scientific fields, we do a lot of it to ourselves. It’s tough to defend my bretheran with good intentions who frankly just make stuff up.
 
Well… if males could control there urges then there would be no need for contraception.
Without the male not much happeneds
 
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