Well, I’ve never been eastern Orthodox, so I don’t really know what it’s like on the ground. You can’t always trust what random people online say, and it’s very possible that the impression some posters give of economia doesn’t do justice to its actual application.
Ah… you’re welcome.That is precisely what I was responding to…Some clever Roman rite participant here who mocked the Orthodox and called their permission to divorce a permission to sin.
Thanks for catching on to the irony in my comments and not lecturing me…
Abortion is the singular exception to “Whatsoever…”Actually,I’m sure you missed the memo on binding and loosing
*CCC *
1445 The words bind and loose mean: whomever you exclude from your communion, will be excluded from communion with God; whomever you receive anew into your communion, God will welcome back into his. *Reconciliation with the Church is inseparable from reconciliation with God. *
And what are you implying? You think your Bishop can permit you to kill your unborn baby because Jesus said “whatever” in that sentence? Context, my friend. It’s everything when it comes to interpreting scripture or church teaching.
I am also curious as to what Patristic writing specifically condemns contraception. The early Fathers condemned practices that were against already known sins–some of these practices happened to be contraceptive in some way, but from reading the early Fathers there are no definitive objection against contraception, mainly because the issue wasn’t even such in their time, nor population was for that matter. I have read the blog post: socrates58.blogspot.com/2007/03/contraception-early-church-teaching.html but those are not specifically against contraception. For instance, castration was objected to not because it was a form of contraception, but was a form of mutilation, which is against Scripture. The canons forbade it specifically because it was mutilation, not contraception.
But the Gnostics, on the principle that (1) the second coming was imminent, (2) sexual intercourse was evil, (3) anything brought into this world naturally shares in the nature of evil, used castration specifically as a form of contraception to prevent (2) and (3). It is true that castration is a sin of self-mutilation, but it is specifically the Gnostic purpose of it (as a contraceptive) against which St. John Chrysostom is preaching.
Well, I’ve never been eastern Orthodox, so I don’t really know what it’s like on the ground. You can’t always trust what random people online say, and it’s very possible that the impression some posters give of economia doesn’t do justice to its actual application.
Until I know more, I do intend to give the Orthodox the benefit of the doubt. They have always struck me as very serious about opposing sin and promoting virtue.
Ah… you’re welcome.
Well, you answered it yourself: the Gnostic use of it is condemned again not because it is contraception, but on the basis of their belief that anything of this world is evil. So the focal point is still not contraception in itself, but that the very teaching of Gnosticism itself is against what the early Church believed in.
I think we are confusing some basic concepts here - but I take the blame. The Catholic Church is not against the principle of contraception, but against ARTIFICIAL contraception. Contraception is part of Nature as God made it. It is part of the cycle of life. There are some times when conception is simply impossible according to God’s plan. NFP seeks to align human will with God’s will by seeking to understand these natural cycles of fertifility and infertility that God created. What is considered ARTIFICIAL contraception is when one tries to PREVENT fertility during its natural cycle as God intended.
I agree.
I am having a difficult time understanding your comment here. On the one hand, I competely agree with your statement highlighted in red above. On the other hand, when you say “the mitigation of the law itself” (highlighted in blue above), it appears you mean the exact opposite.
Not just a form of contraception, but Gnosticism is very much against anything material or of this world. So it is not merely a form of contraception, but something which is against anything of this world.
You need to distinguish between natural contraception (God-ordained cycles when it is impossible to conceive) and artificial contraception (humanity opposing God-ordained fertility). I believe it was St. Augustine who explicitly recognized that God created times of natural infertility, and considered sexual intercourse during these times as merely a venial sin (the Catholic Church has never gone that far, of course, and don’t consider intercourse during these times as any kind of sin at all).
But you cannot deny that St. John Chrysostom was teaching against the castration practice of Gnosticism specifically because they used it as artificial contraception. That’s one early Church Father who teaches against artificially opposing God-ordained fertility. Do you trust his teaching?
I don’t see the reason why; did the early Fathers make the same distinction? Or, in the first place, as I have asked, did they even go against contraception in itself?
Again, was he going against contraception in itself, or was he actually going against the false teaching of Gnosticism? It is noteworthy that the Gnostics used castration as one means to go against anything of this world, but did that necessarily mean that they were using it as a contraceptive, or because in their view anything of this world is evil, and so sex then is also evil?
Eastern Catholics, like Fr. Thomas Loya, are in Communion with Rome, and follow the Magisterial teaching of the Church.
If the Gnostics were believed that this world and the flesh were evil, then why did they use castration? What was the point of castration?
Castration is a means to prevent sexual relations by a couple–the physical joining of a man and woman. Thus, a castrated man cannot have any union with a woman. It goes well with the Gnostic view of anything of this world as evil. So, as one can see, it was not out of contraception in itself that the Gnostics did that, but to illustrate that sex is evil, and thus in order to prevent it from even happening in the first place, a man has to be castrated.
Nothing of that sort can be garnered in reading the story of Onan, as you seem to suggest. Again, contraception is a foreign concept in the ancient world–it was not a part of their society. Onanism generally referred to masturbation, not contraception. It’s a nice try, but no dice.
I would say he was teaching against artificial contraception - humanity’s attempt to oppose the natural fertility created by God. It was a facet of their “matter is evil” teaching that St. Chrysostom felt important enough to address separately.
Again, he was not; his opposition was mainly at what Gnosticism taught. The Gnostics used castration as a means to prevent sex in the first place, not merely as a means of contraception. As noted, they view everything of this world as evil, including sex, and the best way to prevent sexual relations is to castrate a man. As one can see, this is far from mere contraception.
