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Big_Pat
Guest
My concern is can I still be considered a practicing R.C. If I don’t buy all this. I must say I agree with “Lost Sheep”. Paralyzed waist down, hysterectomies, old folks, siblings, eunuchs etc. I believe the church must catch up with science also. Like I have said, why doesn’t love, commitment, conscience, sanctity of marriage, charity etc. count more more. The church has changed stances many times through the centuries. It just takes a long time to do so. I am also very concerned I see so few young people at Mass and so very few prominent members of my community.
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Newbie2
Guest
We’re on the same page there. However, changing moral positions just to get people in through the doors is not the answer.
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1ke
Guest
You must give Church teaching religious assent.
You have comingled entirely different things. For the ump-teenth time, sterility is NOT an impediment to marriage.
Truth is eternal and does not change.
Because that is not what marriage is.
You confuse disciplines and doctrines.
Moral relativism at work. I hope you can overcome your own version of it.
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oneofmany
Guest
I guess the church sees some of this as a slippery slope.
I married a divorced man 20 years ago but in earlier years the church said that was not allowed under any circumstances. My aunts, who fell in love with divorced men, were not allowed to marry them in the church. There was no thing as annulments or they were very hard to get one. Most of my aunts gave up marriage and one lived with the man most of her life—they had no children. He had one by his first marriage.
The church finally saw so many people just living together they had to do something about it. People living together and having families. I am glad for my situation the church allowed my hubby to get an annulment but it was not to be for my aunts.
A lot of priests thought the church would allow for married priests someday and when they did not a lot of them left the priesthood. At least, that is what I heard from a priest.
I married a divorced man 20 years ago but in earlier years the church said that was not allowed under any circumstances. My aunts, who fell in love with divorced men, were not allowed to marry them in the church. There was no thing as annulments or they were very hard to get one. Most of my aunts gave up marriage and one lived with the man most of her life—they had no children. He had one by his first marriage.
The church finally saw so many people just living together they had to do something about it. People living together and having families. I am glad for my situation the church allowed my hubby to get an annulment but it was not to be for my aunts.
A lot of priests thought the church would allow for married priests someday and when they did not a lot of them left the priesthood. At least, that is what I heard from a priest.
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valient_Lucy
Guest
What a cruel, heartless thing to say about the millions of women who desperately long for a child and mourn their infertility, and yet cannot have children.
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Big_Pat
Guest
A wee bit off the subject but still in the ball park. How does one teach the Billing’s Method in sub Sahara villages? Or in the poverty areas of the world.
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Abu
Guest
Get the facts.
Charlotte Hays, Solving The Puzzle Of Natural Family Planning
Crisis, P14 – 26, The Morley Institute, Inc., Washington, D.C., December 2001
Wilson’s Family of the Americas Foundation now teaches NFP in more than 100 countries, including China. “God would not be so cruel that unless you can read you can’t follow natural family planning,” she insists. “Why make it so complicated?” Wilson’s bold decision to dispense with the thermometer and rely solely on observations of mucus was followed by the Billings in Australia several years later.
NFP families, whether Couple to Couple or Billings followers, report an astonishingly low divorce rate — one informal study puts it at 1.3 percent, as compared with about 50 percent in society at large. Even accounting for the high level of dedication of the NFP group studied, experts estimate that the divorce rate for NFP couples does not go above 4 percent. Wilson’s Family of the Americas has a study that shows a 2 percent divorce rate. Advocates say that NFP promotes communication between husband and wife because both must be involved. Husbands are encouraged to help with the charting.
Wilson claims an effectiveness rate of 99 percent among “the poorest of the poor” in Guatemala. “There’s no excuse anymore to pretend that only those with strong religious convictions can follow natural family planning,” she writes.
Unlike the rhythm method, the Billings method does not depend on a stable menstrual cycle. Numerous independent trials have confirmed the 99 percent success rate of the Billings Method, including a recent study following thousands of women for more than a year. If any further proof is needed, the method has been regularly used up to date by over 2,686,400 fertile couples in China for avoiding pregnancy with an overall success rate of approximately 99 percent.
Meet a giant in the Catholic World of Justice, Love and Peace:
Mrs Mercedes Arzú Wilson is founder and President of Family of the Americas Foundation since 1977.
She has received three Honorary Doctor Degrees and numerous awards for her work in the pro-life/family movement, most recently from Franciscan University at Steubenville. (Doctor of Humane Letters 2006)
In 1994, she was appointed as a founding Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life by His Holiness, John Paul II, and continues to defend life from the moment of conception until its natural end.
omsoul.com/catalog/wilson-mercedes-arzu-m0102.html
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1ke
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RaymondJensen
Guest
Luke 1:36 And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age; and she who was called barren is now in her sixth month.
God doesn’t care if your sterile or not or baren or not. If you are such and He wants babies out of you, babies can still come.
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Wardog
Guest
You could also say that regardless of you using ABC or NFP, if God wants you to have “babies out of you, babies can still come”.
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Nate13
Guest
Do you see no difference between whether a women is barren because of natural occurrences or if she makes herself barren? I believe you do which brings us back to where this argument always begins, which is the difference between ABC and NFP. You think ABC and NFP are both contraceptives. We don’t. Unless you have something new to add we should probably just save our breath and not keep going down this road.
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Wardog
Guest
No, I was responding to the statement that God can make an infertile couple have a baby; I am just saying that God can do the same thing if a rubber barrier is stopping the sperm. I was not saying that there is no moral difference between ABC and NFP, but using the argument that God can make anything happen can be used both for and against ABC and NFP. One should not use arguments that can be turned around and used against one’s position.
My statement had nothing to do about the relative morality of ABC and NFP.
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Nate13
Guest
We were headed towards that discussion and I wanted to stop it in its tracks.
Yes, there is a difference between accepting the infertility of an act that is already there and seeking to make an act infertile that otherwise wouldn’t be.
Two people are walking and they pass by a homeless person on the sidewalk. The homeless guy asks if either has any money they can spare. One of them has $10 and the other has no money. Neither gives anything to the homeless man and they keep walking. By your reasoning the actions or inaction of these two people are the same and I have to disagree and I’m sure the homeless man would as well. God knows you have the $10 dollars even if your hiding in your pocket.
We are supposed to make a complete gift of ourselves to our partner during sex. As humans we are always going to do this imperfectly, but we should never be striving to make this gift any more imperfect than it already is without us trying to make it so.
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Nate13
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I think there was some misguided guessing from 1ke about the intent behind your question haha. If anything though it should be obvious that NFP is a better method to teach in developing countries as opposed to using contraceptives. One reason being that it is much cheaper, as well as the fact that once you teach one generation how to use it, they can pass on that knowledge on to the next generation. As the other poster noted it also has been proved to be effective in places like India, China, and Guatemala.
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EasterJoy
Guest
Why is it so hard to understand that openness to procreation gives coitus a particular place in human life that other sexual acts do not have? Even from the prospective of biology, the unique nature of the marital act and the unique relationship that exists between the male and the female is so obvious that I fail to see how you could pass Biology 101 if you failed to see it. It doesn’t take prejudice to see it. It takes a deep-seated, solidly-reinforced prejudice to fail to see it!
How can someone really argue with a straight face that homosexual acts are the equivalent to coitus? Try to tell a married couple that they can engage in every sexual act that homosexuals engage in, but not coitus. Tell them that there is nothing unique about the marital act, that if they are sterile it should hold no special place in their minds or emotions above any other kind of sex. Think about telling them that. How nuts is that?
Even when coitus is sterilized, objectified, and falsely reduced to some sort of recreation or physical release, or when attempts are made to divorce it from its true nature by false romanticism, the unique nature of that particular act *and the unique nature of the relationship that it exists to express and consummate *cannot ever be fully obscured, save by willful blindness:
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body. Gen. 2:24
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take Christ’s members and make them the members of a prostitute? Of course not! [Or] do you not know that anyone who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her?* For “the two,” it says, “will become one flesh.”** But whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Avoid immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.* 1 Cor. 6:15-19
I can appreciate that homosexuals want to be accepted as human beings, which of course everyone deserves. Having said that, and with all sympathy towards the frustrating nature of their condition, the arguments being trotted around these days in an effort to make their sex acts not only morally legitmate but equivalent to the foundational act and relationship by which humankind is sustained are nothing short of absurd.
No, homosexual relationships are not just “different”, as if heterosexuality were chocolate and homosexuality were vanilla. There is a fundamental absence in homosexual relations. A nut and a bolt have something that two nuts or two bolts do not have. The difference is just that great, and more. Why all the willful pretense to ignore that?
How can someone really argue with a straight face that homosexual acts are the equivalent to coitus? Try to tell a married couple that they can engage in every sexual act that homosexuals engage in, but not coitus. Tell them that there is nothing unique about the marital act, that if they are sterile it should hold no special place in their minds or emotions above any other kind of sex. Think about telling them that. How nuts is that?
Even when coitus is sterilized, objectified, and falsely reduced to some sort of recreation or physical release, or when attempts are made to divorce it from its true nature by false romanticism, the unique nature of that particular act *and the unique nature of the relationship that it exists to express and consummate *cannot ever be fully obscured, save by willful blindness:
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body. Gen. 2:24
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take Christ’s members and make them the members of a prostitute? Of course not! [Or] do you not know that anyone who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her?* For “the two,” it says, “will become one flesh.”** But whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Avoid immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.* 1 Cor. 6:15-19
I can appreciate that homosexuals want to be accepted as human beings, which of course everyone deserves. Having said that, and with all sympathy towards the frustrating nature of their condition, the arguments being trotted around these days in an effort to make their sex acts not only morally legitmate but equivalent to the foundational act and relationship by which humankind is sustained are nothing short of absurd.
No, homosexual relationships are not just “different”, as if heterosexuality were chocolate and homosexuality were vanilla. There is a fundamental absence in homosexual relations. A nut and a bolt have something that two nuts or two bolts do not have. The difference is just that great, and more. Why all the willful pretense to ignore that?
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Nate13
Guest
I think 1 Cor there really shows why the Church cares about sexual sins so much. Its’ because your committing a sin against your own body. If a person can’t even accept the dignity of their own body and uphold it how can they be expected to uphold the dignity of other people? How can we expect to be able to defend the dignity of the unborn if we can’t yet defend our own dignity?
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Bookcat
Guest
Bl. Mother Teresa’s Sisters teach NFP to the poorest of the poor …in the poor areas of the world. No sweat.
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