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Castello
Guest
This is shocking, I know, but people DO get through medical school on scholarships, grants and by (gasp) working and saving for it - today, not back in the stone ages of the 90’s.
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Debora123
Guest
What would you know regarding my trust in God?
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Castello
Guest
You speak of great fear that you “cannot afford” children. Fear and trust do not go hand in hand.What would you know regarding my trust in God?
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Gabriel_Serafin
Guest
I don’t see faulty reasoning whatsoever. NFP abstains from sex, which is a natural way to avoid getting pregnant. Artificial contraception indulges in sex while willfully trashing the life-giving seed.
The problem is that when Catholics who do not want to abide by Church teaching they usually find “faulty reasoning” on the side of the Church, when in fact it’s a simple case of a refusal to change one’s own lifestyle. There are Catholics who also reject the Church’s teaching on abortion, premarital sex and gay marriage. This either makes them non-practicing Catholics/bad Catholics and lukewarm Christians, and have been vastly responsible for the deterioration of society and culture over the past 4 decades.
Christ warned “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Matt. 7:21 for a reason.
There are many who want to follow Christ without the cross, but Christianity without the cross is a demonic deception. Thus the reason why Christ said over and over:
And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:27
The widespread acceptance and use of artificial contraception has a direct link to most of the ills which plague society and the poison which has rotted culture over the past 40 years. The widespread use of artificial contraception ushered in the age of widespread promiscuity, premarital sex (fornication), adultery, abortion, fatherless children, broken homes, and violence. 80% of criminals in prison come from fatherless homes. The worst part of it is that there are Catholics who actively dissent from Church teaching and lead others into sin…
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Debora123
Guest
Um, I didn’t mention the word “fear.”
I know that now is not a good time for children and that doing so would be irresponsible of me, and yes, we cannot afford it. I have serious reasons to postpone pregnancy right now, and am doing so.
Postponing pregnancy due to just reasons =/= no trust in God.
But you know that.
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Abu
Guest
“I’LL SAY” and “AGAIN”? Wow, another “Catholic” who has “I” trouble and knows better than God.
What these contrived objections show clearly is that the “Catholic” objectors choose to reject Christ the Son of God when He emphatically gave His Church His authority to teach in His Name. For them there is no truth only feelings, wishes, desires, views, prejudices, culminating in “I will not serve” when it suits ME.
Neither do they know or seem to care that Christ’s Church teaches infallibly, with Christ’s mandate, on defined doctrine in His Name.
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Havard
Guest
I’m sorry it doesn’t make sense to you. It makes perfect, reasonable sense to me, and I would be happy to discuss it further with you.
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Abu
Guest
There is every need to do precisely that as the CCC 837 and Canon # 205 proclaim that those fully incorporated into the Church possess the bonds of profession of faith and ecclesiastical governance.
Those who think that they can pick and choose what to believe in Her teaching merely fool themselves; real Catholics believe and try to live Her teaching.
The dogma on papal infallibility in Vatican I was issued with a warning:
“So then, should anyone, which God forbid, have the temerity to reject this definition of ours: let him be anathema.” (=excommunicated).
From Vatican I (Pastor Aeternus), for infallibility to be exercised the Pope must teach
(a) ex cathedra (from the Chair of Peter), that is as Shepherd and Teacher of all Christians,
(b) speaking with Peter’s apostolic authority to the whole Church,
(c) defining a doctrine of faith and morals.
Thus is the doctrine against contraception infallibly taught, and dissenters are not in full communion with Christ and His Church.
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Debora123
Guest
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John21652
Guest
Actually Deborah, Abu is totally right.
Once one dissents in action from an infallably taught doctrine, one is excommunicated ******“Latæ Sententiæ” ******which means by the act itself. It is incurred as soon as the offence is committed and by reason of the offence itself (eo ipso) without intervention of any ecclestiastical judge. Read about it in the Catholic Encyclopedia. Thus a dissenter’s title as “Catholic” is probably even too geneous.
Contrary to Blacksword’s opinion, the thinking is not “faulty” at all. It is based upon extremely tight philophical and theological reasoning.
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Abu
Guest
This is no “struggle to see eye to eye” – this is a rejection of an infallible teaching which is demeaned as:
It is high time to know Jesus and His Church.
Do you not know how the Christ spoke to His own Apostles? To His own Apostles, “whom He loved to the end” Jesus exclaimed: “Have you no sense, no wits, are your hearts dulled, can’t you see, your ears hear, don’t you remember?” (Mk 8:17-18) (Frank Sheed, Christ In Eclipse, Sheed & Ward 1978, p 42). "With individuals He was very much the doctor with a duty not only to tell them what was wrong with them, but to make sure they realized it.” (Ibid. p 40-41).
His Church does no less.
There has never been, and is no, “licit dissent” as Pope John Paul II has confirmed: “It is sometimes claimed that dissent from the Magisterium is totally compatible with being a ‘good Catholic’ and poses no obstacle to the reception of the sacraments. This is a grave error that challenges the teaching office of the bishops of the United States and elsewhere.” [Meeting with US Bishops at Our Lady Queen of Angels Minor Seminary, Los Angeles, Sept 16, 1987].
To knowingly dissent from a doctrine means not to be in full communion with Christ and His Church. Post #222 shows clearly the reality of infallible doctrine (no dogma is required).
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Bookcat
Guest
It is important to note that the Catholic Encyclopedia there is over a 100 years old. The new Code of Canon Law is from 1983.
So one would have to look to the 1983 code for such questions not the old Encylopedia.
Excommunication is a rather defined and restricted thing.
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Blacksword
Guest
A few good examples of bad reasoning here. First, you use charged and arbitrary definitions are inherent in your statements about the difference between NFP and ABC. There’s nothing “natural” under any normal understanding of that term about the lengths people go to with NFP to figure out “safe” times for intimacy. Terms like “trashing” and “life giving seed” also are charged and sound as though they were taken from a tome written by Luther rather than a reasoned medical or ethical analysis based on objective scientific knowledge. It carries shades of the Homonculii, and it’s intellectually dishonest to really even get into the historical reasoning for contraceptive bans without discussing this HUGE part of that reasoning. St. Aquinas, St. Augustine, and others passing opinion on this operated under the misconception that semen contained actual little humans, and thus “wasting one’s seed” was tantamount to murder. We know better now.
You also, frankly, arrogantly assume then that I or others questioning this teaching do so out of selfishness, when I’m saying the arguments fail, and they do, on rational grounds. You imply it’s a refusal to change my lifestyle, or to carry my cross. But you don’t know me, you have no idea of what I do in my marriage, and if you hold the idea that I somehow don’t carry crosses in my life for my faith in Christ, trust me, you’re way off base.
Lastly, as has been said numerous times on the issue of Papal prescience on predicting the social ills of contraception, the fact that the divorce rate went up while contraceptive use increased does not in any way establish any connection between the two. Maybe there is one, or maybe not. But the bald assertion that there is is a logical fallacy: ad hoc ergo propter hoc. One would notice in the US that legal impediments to contraception and divorce both were greatly eased at roughly the same time, and one can very reasonably argue that the legal easing of the divorce process was responsible for the rise in divorce, or the increased social acceptability of divorce, and not access to contraception.
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ValPal
Guest
I just read through this thread.
That is 15 minutes of my life I’ll never get back!
That is 15 minutes of my life I’ll never get back!
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Debora123
Guest
First of all, no one here has any idea whether BlackSword has “dissented in action from infallibly taught doctrine.” One thing is to openly admit that you simply cannot see the logic in a teaching, another thing is to actually act on that - which he hasn’t said he’s done.Actually Deborah, Abu is totally right.
Once one dissents in action from an infallably taught doctrine, one is excommunicated ******“Latæ Sententiæ” ******which means by the act itself. It is incurred as soon as the offence is committed and by reason of the offence itself (eo ipso) without intervention of any ecclestiastical judge. Read about it in the Catholic Encyclopedia. Thus a dissenter’s title as “Catholic” is probably even too geneous.
Contrary to Blacksword’s opinion, the thinking is not “faulty” at all. It is based upon extremely tight philophical and theological reasoning.
Second, even if any of us WERE excommunicated (though you wouldn’t know), that does NOT make us not a Catholic anymore.
Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.
And again, I’ve also said it twice now that calling someone not a real Catholic or referring to them as a “Catholic” with quotations like that insinuating that they are actually NOT Catholic is VERY rude. (also false)
…Though I guess some of you have proven to not seem to care.
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Blacksword
Guest
Ok, please, you speak for God now?
My objections aren’t contrived, they’re based in the use of the God-given faculty of reason. And you have NO IDEA what I am doing in my own life and marriage, so I’ll thank you to kindly stop with the heavy-handedness. And with the “Catholic” in quotations. I’ve tried to be charitable, and I don’t report posters as a rule, but you have no idea as to my level of attachment to the Church, or desire for Christ in my life. Any more posts like this implying I’m not “really Catholic” and I may start reporting for lack of charity. I’ve left the Protestant faith of my entire family behind, separated myself from all my family history, and caused no small degree of strife to my parents, sisters, and relatives because of my desire for Christ and the Church he founded, and I don’t appreciate the insinuation that because I can rationally point out the holes in these arguments for NFP that I’m just morally deficient and unfit for the Church.
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vsedriver
Guest
ok, so they want to avoid pregnancy but not really avoid pregnancy. They just want to avoid it a bit, because ABC is no guarantee against getting pregnant. They can play Russian Roulette if they want. They should then have a plan for when the ABC fails.
The only 100% effective birth control is to abstain.
To use ABC is the same as saying I want to have sex just for the fun of it. Unfortunately the church teaches that this is sinful behavior. So the couple abstains for a few years. If they really love each other they would make it work. It’s only important if you care about your immortal soul.
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John21652
Guest
In 1331 the 1983 articles of Canon law reference a person who does not have the use of full reason and states *“In the circumstances mentioned in §1, the accused is not bound by a latae sententiae penalty.” *
Canon Law 1314 (1983) states…if the law or precept expressly establishes it, however, a penalty is latae sententiae, so that it is incurred ipso facto when the delict is committed.
Canon 1331 (1983) states that an excommunicated person may not take part in celebrating any of the sacraments.
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