I’ve had an issue with Catholic teachings on procreation. I know the dogma,but I would love to hear how you deal with it.
It’s doctrine, not dogma. Dogma is official infallible definitions. It’s a doctrine. In this case, it is the Church being very specific about how the principles of Catholic Moral teachings apply to something very specific. The principles matter more than the conclusion. Anyone using the conclusion as if it were a moral principle will fall into moral problems when they try to reason through moral situations that the Church doesn’t directly address.
In this case, the primary root of this teaching rests on Natural Law Theory. I have yet to read a formulation over how the natural law reaches it’s conclusion that makes sense to me and I feel this often leaves me at a level of an obedience to the specific teaching while struggling to figure out moral situations the Church doesn’t speak on. I believe in natural law theory. I just need to study it more.
JP II’s Theology of the Body has been very influential, and I love it but I find most people who do follow the teaching do so out of obedience more than conviction. Most of us are still seeking understanding and trying to form our consciences rightly around it.
However I see the prohibition or contraceptives and the sin of abortions, in anything less than extraordinary conditions as one exacerbating the other. I’d rather see an conception not happen than a child aborted.
I don’t think the Catholics who embrace the teaching regarding contraceptives are more likely to abort. In fact, I’d say they’re far less likely. That said, in regard to public policy, contraceptive overall does decrease the rate of abortion though it doesn’t touch about the ratio. Whereas most GOP policies tend to result in a higher abortion rate while the ratio remains the same as well.
I do think anyone who thinks restricting access to contraceptives will undo the harms of the sexual revolution. The dam already broke and taking away people’s boats isn’t going to do anything. But this isn’t a disagreement on doctrine. It’s a disagreement on HOW to promote morality, much like how people can have differing ideas over how to combat prostitution. There are actually Catholic countries where prostitution is legal and the Church encourages it to be so because what’s actually illegal is the hiring of a prostitute. As such, you imprison the person hiring the prostitute, not the prostitute and destroy the market. But that seems backward to some people. Again, we’re free to disagree there and still be faithful Catholics.
men did not have to wear white at their wedding to display their virtue.
The white wedding gown tradition orginates from the 19th century. Queen Victoria wore white simply because she liked white. It’s hard to say how it became a symbol of virginity, though our priest talked about it as us wearing our baptismal garmets. You can attach whatever meaning you want to it. It’s not a part of the actual wedding liturgy.
Also I see some social justice issues with the prohibition of condoms.
What’s funny, is that the USCCB was actually having a discussion on this and taking the situation seriously in the 80’s. Then Cardinal Ratzinger made a statement that scared the bishops away from discussing it. Then, as Pope, he made an analogy about a gay prostitute with HIV and how he’s taking a better step in putting on a condom than having sex without one, but it’s still less than perfect. The point was we’re called to holiness, but people freaked out by his statement.
In this case, I’d say the big issue is that the Church (as in the faithful members) have been so concerned about being clear that contraceptives are immoral, that they’re afraid of addressing the use of a condom because they know if they go into depth and are exact about Church teaching, the media will generalize some random statement and it’ll lead likely to Catholics deciding contraceptives are being okayed now for some reason.
It’s a bit of group think going on, and I think any clarification about more ambigious and complicated areas of Catholic morality is going to rest upon a well articulated explanation of Natural Law theory so that we’re actually reasoning from it rather than using our starting premise as “Condoms are immoral.”
