S
Scottgun
Guest
Last question first. Pope Benedict DID NOT in any way authorize the use of condoms. He gave an interview and what he said was grossly distorted.
Now pardon me while I post my NFP =/= ABC explanation that I wrote years ago and paste whenever this comes up:
(I’m lifting and paraphrasing most of this from CCC 1749-1761): The goodness or badness of an act must be evaluated according to 3 criteria:
- The objective–this is the rightness or wrongness (or indifference) of an act in and of itself. (Examples: murder is objectively bad, almsgiving is objectively good.)
- The subjective–this is the intent of the one doing the act (called the agent). Note that a good intention does not make an objectively evil act good, and that an evil intent can render a good act evil. (Such as giving alms in order to trick people into thinking you are pious).
- The relative–this is all the surrounding circumstances and the actual result of the act or the end achieved. These do not change the objective goodness or badness of the act in and of themselves.
Plugging the above in it becomes abundantly clear that NFP is NOT morally equivalent to ABC and that the Church’s teaching is entirely consistent.
By the way, the techniques of NFP are not really an act, it’s information gathering. Having marital relations is the act. So: - The objective–Abstaining from sex is in and of itself morally indifferent (not doing something is never wrong unless there is a duty to do something). Putting barriers between couples in the marital act or rendering the womb hostile to life with chemicals is objectively wrong. (Doing something and deliberately thwarting the proper, natural and good consequences of that act.) NFP passes gate #1. ABC does not, so it goes down as morally unacceptable up front. NFP passes, but is not quite out of the woods yet ’till we get to:
- The subjective–as stated above, good intentions do not make objectively evil acts good. Here we can see that with an NFP-practicing couple, there is a possibility of evil intent which would render abstinence evil, but obviously it is hard for outsiders to judge others, because ta-da! it is subjective. (We can have a giant debate about what constitutes bad intent, but here I’m just dismantling the NFP=ABC canard.
- The relative–and here is the cause of much of the contentiousness regarding this teaching. We are living in the age of a widespread mental blindness that denies the existence of #1 (objective right and wrongs), that everything is #2 and #3, and says the ends justify the means (consequentialism). So people look at the ends: ABC=no pregnancy, NFP=no pregnancy, and wrongly conclude they are morally equivalent. T’ain’t so.
So while one can lodge all kinds of complaints against the Church’s teaching on contraception, logical inconsistency or “distinction without a difference” with ABC should not be among them.
