Pope condones contraceptives for zika outbreak?

[Rau]

We know that unusual and extreme circumstances make situations where double effect principle might apply, theologically difficult. Take for example US gun policy. The unanimous feeling of most Western countries is that owning a gun with the express purpose of killing or threatening to kill an aggressor based on personal interpretation at any given time… is outside the bounds of blameless self defense.

“But as it is unlawful to take a man’s life, except for the public authority acting for the common good, as stated above (Article 3), **it is not lawful for a man to intend killing a man in self-defense, **except for such as have public authority, who while intending to kill a man in self-defense, refer this to the public good, as in the case of a soldier fighting against the foe, and in the minister of the judge struggling with robbers, although even these sin if they be moved by private animosity.” - Summa theologica

The US believes that this intention to kill infused in the actual ownership of a lethal self defense weapon, does not equal ‘intending to kill a man in self-defense’. In other countries, that is exactly what it equals. The Church hasn’t directly commented on the intentionality of the US self defense gun as yet but the fact is that many, many other Christian countries have rejected such a policy according to conscience. It is always going to be influenced by a myriad of unique circumstances at the end of the day. The nuns from the Congo demonstrate such circumstances.

St Thomas’ assertion is true when understood to be a reference to the first font of morality - that is, the “intended end”. So yes, a man acquiring a gun holding the view that anyone setting foot in his house will be shot dead, is contemplating a gravely wrong act. For we may not intend as an end harm to another. But, in the course of self-defence, we may judge that to save ourselves (intended end, good moral object) requires an act to end the life of the aggressor (intended means, physical evil). The physical evil of that death may be licitly intended as a means to the end of self-defence.

Thus, a person does not - IMHO - necessarily intend wrong acts by acquiring a gun for self-defence. Nevertheless, the act may well be rash and potentially cavalier, and find the notion of every house equipped with a gun as quite frightening.

 

[Rau]

1. yes though I believe he expressed himself well. He always does. All one has to do is read what he says about economics or the environment or attachment to rules to see his vast Jesuit knowledge of theology and the church.
2. he was as clear as can be about what he was trying to say.
   He is also wrong.
3. the pope did not make that distinction. In fact he directly compared it.

Here’s a wild speculation about what the Pope “might” have meant…the Pope believes that to widely call upon persons to not use contraception to avoid a Zika baby would be an action ***that itself ***would do more harm than good - consequently, we (the Church) choose to “tolerate” the (lesser, in aggregate) evil of contraception. This does not however mean that persons using Contraception do not do wrong.

I make this wild speculation in light of my belief that the Pope knows full well that:

1. we may not choose any evil at all as either a means or an end.
2. The Church teaches (irreformably) that using a contraceptive in marriage to avoid conceiving a child is immoral.

My speculation at least sits comfortably - theologically speaking - alongside the above facts and a reference to “lesser evil” in the Pope’s remarks. Though I admit the Pope’s words don’t seem to clearly align with this speculation.

Recall HV(14):
“Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good,” it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it"

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I have asked you three times to retract your comments and you have refused.

Abucs I believe I made no refusal but simply ignored your over the top demands - Robert is afterall the forum moderator here rather than your good self.

I won’t be dialoguing with you further on this topic other than to suggest you discover for yourself why Pope Paul VI gave up the triple Tiara at his coronation (a symbol of the Church’s claim to temporal powers since medieval times) and no Pope has been crowned since.

You might also like to investigate why Pope Benedict quietly removed the Triple Tiara from his Coat of Arms also breaking with an unbroken custom since medieval times. Pope Francis’s Coat of Arms re-inforced Pope Benedict’s innovation.

In line with the intent of Vatican II the Church seems to be rediscovering and leading from the top its more humble and pastoral roots, a Kingdom but not of this world, one where “I know my sheep and my sheep know me.”
Pope Francis epitomises this shift in balance by his one on one phone calls, the washing of women’s feet, living outside of the Papal Palace, unscripted pastoral moral teaching, respect for the elements of goodness in other world religions, concern for the plight of the innocent remarried and a letting go of many of the “royal” privileges, symbols and baubles of the Papacy.

Some see this relinquishing of temporal powers as the death of Catholicism, others see it as its overdue rebirth.

Pope Paul VI relinquishes the Triple Tiara:
youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=80372xyWcP4

Pope Benedict XVIs Coat of Arms:
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

Pope Francis’s Coat of Arms:
http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Content/Site140/Blog/2096franciscoaj_00000001251.jpg

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Here’s a wild speculation about what the Pope “might” have meant…the Pope believes that to widely call upon persons to not use contraception to avoid a Zika baby would be an action ***that itself ***would do more harm than good - consequently, we (the Church) choose to “tolerate” the (lesser, in aggregate) evil of contraception. This does not however mean that persons using Contraception do not do wrong.

I make this wild speculation in light of my belief that the Pope knows full well that:

1. we may not choose any evil at all as either a means or an end.
2. The Church teaches (irreformably) that using a contraceptive in marriage to avoid conceiving a child is immoral.

My speculation at least sits comfortably - theologically speaking - alongside the above facts and a reference to “lesser evil” in the Pope’s remarks. Though I admit the Pope’s words don’t seem to clearly align with this speculation.

Recall HV(14):
“Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good,” it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it"

Theologian Janet Smith has an interesting article indirectly commenting on Pope Francis’s interview.
catholicworldreport.com/Item/4594/contraception_congo_nuns_choosing_the_lesser_evil_and_conflict_of_commandments.aspx

While it probably doesn’t help in understanding all of his interview it does provide a good insight into the moral use of contraceptives as opposed to immoral acts of contraception.

She reminds us that we may choose the lesser of two evils only if they are physical evils and not moral evils.

To use a condom for the primary purpose of contraception in very difficulty circumstances is always wrong because such an evil is always a moral evil.

However, as Pope Francis seems to be saying, the mere physical barring of conception is not itself a moral evil but a physical evil and is less evil than a child deformed by the Zika virus.

So if a condom is used, in the short to medium term, with the primary intention of avoiding a zika diseased baby, then the physical evil is chosen (the avoidance of a pregnancy) but not the moral evil of contraception.

I believe Janet is onto something here and this does seem to be Pope Francis’s reasoning.

 

[Rau]

Theologian Janet Smith has an interesting article indirectly commenting on Pope Francis’s interview.
catholicworldreport.com/Item/4594/contraception_congo_nuns_choosing_the_lesser_evil_and_conflict_of_commandments.aspx

While it probably doesn’t help in understanding all of his interview it does provide a good insight into the moral use of contraceptives as opposed to immoral acts of contraception.

She reminds us that we may choose the lesser of two evils only if they are physical evils and not moral evils.

To use a condom for the primary purpose of contraception in very difficulty circumstances is always wrong because such an evil is always a moral evil.

However, as Pope Francis seems to be saying, the mere physical barring of conception is not itself a moral evil but a physical evil and is less evil than a child deformed by the Zika virus.

So if a condom is used, in the short to medium term, with the primary intention of avoiding a zika diseased baby, then the physical evil is chosen (the avoidance of a pregnancy) but not the moral evil of contraception.

I believe Janet is onto something here and this does seem to be Pope Francis’s reasoning.

Did you read her article Blue?

Janet affirms established Church teaching and can find no suggestion that contraception to avoid a Zika baby would be licit, regardless of emergency circumstances or otherwise.

Janet RULES OUT the very thing you are suggesting:

“The PCLE does not justify a woman using contraception to prevent a pregnancy because she fears the child may suffer some harm during the pregnancy. Here a woman is choosing to do something immoral to prevent harm. This choice violates the fundamental principle that we must never do moral evil to achieve good. She would be intending to thwart the purpose and meaning of the sexual act in order to protect any child conceived from harm, but she is doing harm—to the marital act and her marital relationship—by using contraception to prevent a pregnancy.”

“The Church has never taught that if the harms are serious enough, it is permissible to use contraception, for that would be choosing to do moral evil to avoid harm.”

Janet affirms that the proper course is abstention or NFP. Her article canvasses entirely conventional moral theology. She makes no proposition whatsoever along the lines you suggest.

 

[_Abyssinia]

Canon lawyer Ed Peters, excerpt:

Misunderstanding the (alleged) ‘Congo contraception’ case

Preliminarily, I note that the burden is not on the negative to prove that something did not occur, it is on the affirmative to prove that the alleged something did occur. That said, though, it now seems all but certain that the ‘permission’ or ‘approval’ which Francis has claimed his predecessor Pope Paul VI gave for Congo nuns facing rape to use contraception simply does not exist. See e.g. Fr. Zuhlsdorf or John Allen*.

Unfortunately this myth has been invoked by the pope as if it were a fact of Church history, and, more importantly, in a way that suggests it might be a precedent to be considered in deciding whether contraception may also be used to prevent pregnancy in some cases of possible birth defects. That claim would take Pope Francis’ contraception remarks into a very different area. No longer are we musing about a point of Church history (as interesting as that might be), now we are dealing with Church moral teaching. The stakes become dramatically higher.

So here’s my point: not only does the Congo nuns permission seem NOT to exist, but, even if it does exist in some form, it could NOT, I suggest, by its own terms, be used by Francis (or anyone else committed to thinking with the Church) to call into question the Church’s settled teaching that “each and every marital act quilibet matrimonii usus] must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life” (Humanae vitae 11) and that therefore “excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after conjugal intercourse coniugale commercium], is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means” (Humanae vitae 14).

Obviously the Congo nuns case (or the Balkan nuns story in the 1990s, to take another variation of the myth) was not about marital acts, it was about religious women facing criminal acts of violent sexual intercourse; the Congo question was not about possible birth defects, it was about stopping rapists’ sperm from reaching ova that perchance had been ovulated. Between women facing rape and wives worried about birth defects there simply is no parallel relevant to the moral question of contraception. One can like that fact or hate it, but one cannot change it or ignore it. Moreover, Church teaching on the immorality of contracepted marital acts is, I believe, taught infallibly; but, even if I were wrong about that technical claim, there is no question about what that teaching is, namely, that contracepting acts of marital intercourse, whether doing so as an end in itself or as means to some other end, is objectively immoral.

canonlawblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/misunderstanding-the-alleged-congo-contraception-case/

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Did you read her article Blue?

Janet affirms established Church teaching and can find no suggestion that contraception to avoid a Zika baby would be licit, regardless of emergency circumstances or otherwise.

Janet RULES OUT the very thing you are suggesting:

“The PCLE does not justify a woman using contraception to prevent a pregnancy because she fears the child may suffer some harm during the pregnancy. Here a woman is choosing to do something immoral to prevent harm. This choice violates the fundamental principle that we must never do moral evil to achieve good. She would be intending to thwart the purpose and meaning of the sexual act in order to protect any child conceived from harm, but she is doing harm—to the marital act and her marital relationship—by using contraception to prevent a pregnancy.”

“The Church has never taught that if the harms are serious enough, it is permissible to use contraception, for that would be choosing to do moral evil to avoid harm.”

Janet affirms that the proper course is abstention or NFP. Her article canvasses entirely conventional moral theology. She makes no proposition whatsoever along the lines you suggest.

Did you read my post properly Rau .

While it probably doesn’t help in understanding all of his interview it does provide a good insight into the moral use of contraceptives as opposed to immoral acts of contraception.

She reminds us that we may choose the lesser of two evils only if they are physical evils and not moral evils.

She explains those principles well.
Clearly Pope Francis applies them differently to Janet.
He seems to believe that in this case the evil of avoiding pregnancy is only a natural/physical one. It may therefore be chosen as the lesser of two evils.

We get it that you and Janet will disagree with this application of these principles.
That’s okay, this is a forum - just as Pope Francis, I trust you will allow, is also free to disagree with Janets conclusion ably identified for us by yourself in case we missed it .

 

[abucs]

Hello Blue Horizon,

i encourage you to look at the last 1000 years of popes for their charity, personability and kindness.

For example John Paul II met with my grand mother who was in a wheelchair after a stroke. He was very kind and personable. In a world of easier travel he took his love to the world, visiting poor and rich alike. He helped the oppressed Poles suffering under Socialism and instigated the World Youth day for the young when he invited them to Rome.

Pope Pius XII opened up the Vatican, Castle Gandolfo and religious houses of clergy to persecuted Jews during WW2 There is a deposition that when the Socialist Nazis invaded Rome, the pope would dress as a priest and minister to the poor at night.

So while i do not criticise Francis for his love of people, God bless him, it is incorrect to see him as breaking with the past in ministering to the poor and persecuted.

What has changed with this pope is that the media present him in a favourable light as opposed to their usual practice of denigrating the church. It is clear that this has happened because of continued remarks he has made which they have interpreted as supporting the media culture’s values against the church.

I have spoken to people who really hate the church but are favourable to Francis. When i ask what it is that they like about Francis it basically boils down to the false perception that he is attacking the church and validating their hatred for it. They have no intention to join the church but make the point that because the church is wrong in so many things we should join them in leaving it.

That doesn’t make pope Francis bad in any way. Many Catholics simply want to point out the duplicitousness of the media and draw the line when it tries to claim somehow this pope loves people whereas other popes haven’t. That lie should be opposed and exposed.

 

[TCEL]

I have to say, for not wanting people to focus on abortion and contraception, Pope Francis inadvertently invited just that (at the behest of the journalist)! Oy vey.

 

[fin]

I don’t get this at all. From what I know, the use of contraception even in grave cases (like the possibility of the unborn baby to have a defect) is still a mortal sin.

Which means the Pope and that spokesperson were incorrect. There can be no circumstance in which a contraceptive is used in order to avoid pregnancy. I can’t believe we have reached this point.

So if a person doesn’t want to give birth to a baby with a defect supposedly caused by the zika virus, then why can’t the couple just abstain from sexual relations??? That seems to be the safest method. This is just basic biology and not rocket science.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I don’t get this at all. From what I know, the use of contraception even in grave cases … is still a mortal sin…

Fin be careful not to confuse “use of contraceptives” (a merely outwardly observed physical deed) with the Church’s “contraceptive act” which always involves the unseen inner intention of the agent.

There are well known cases where the use of a contraceptive is not a contraceptive act.

 

[Rau]

…So if a person doesn’t want to give birth to a baby with a defect supposedly caused by the zika virus, then why can’t the couple just abstain from sexual relations??? That seems to be the safest method. This is just basic biology and not rocket science.

Blue’s general observation above is correct, but I don’t see how it has application in the scenario at hand.

The requirement is to not become pregnant till the risk is passed. That is what we might call the generic means (absent vaccines, etc.) to achieve the good Intention of not afflicting a child with the effects of Zika.

They can take the approach you suggest, but I imagine it is discarded because it is very difficult and has bad consequences for the parents, perhaps for their marriage and family too.

To avoid these bad consequences, persons may reason that they can keep having sex, and take contraceptive measures. All agree (I hope) that we may not do any (moral) evil to avoid bad consequences - or for any other reason. But I know of know theological analysis that can find the taking of contraceptives in this situation anything but a moral evil, given current doctrine. Others speculate to the contrary. Their speculation requires that contraception measures directed at not becoming pregnant can somehow be not the wrong of contraception, under these circumstances. How this could be so has not been spelled out - or even sketched out - by anyone to my knowledge.

 

[Sabundus1385]

A couple may be contraceiving for the sake of avoiding a child with a terrible deformity, or they may be contraceiving for less honorable reasons. Judging the motive for contraceiving is fraught with difficulty when we are not in their shoes.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

A couple may be contraceiving for the sake of avoiding a child with a terrible deformity, or they may be contraceiving for less honorable reasons. Judging the motive for contraceiving is fraught with difficulty when we are not in their shoes.

Do you think contracepting to prevent deformities is a moral Catholic option.

 

[Rau]

A couple may be contraceiving for the sake of avoiding a child with a terrible deformity, or they may be contraceiving for less honorable reasons. Judging the motive for contraceiving is fraught with difficulty when we are not in their shoes.

Excellent and honourable motives cannot make an intrinsically bad act into a good one. The Church teaches that deliberately contracepting conjugal relations is always a bad act (regardless of why you want to do it). A good act, in this difficult situation, is the difficult act of refraining from conjugal relations.

 

[Sabundus1385]

Whether or not to contraceive is a moral question to be deliberated by each couple.

 

[Sabundus1385]

Excellent and honourable motives cannot make an intrinsically bad act into a good one. The Church teaches that deliberately contracepting conjugal relations is always a bad act (regardless of why you want to do it). A good act, in this difficult situation, is the difficult act of refraining from conjugal relations.

If contraceiving in not an option, then not having sex at all is a possibility. Some couples simply stop having sex after their children are born. That takes the issue of conceiving or contraceiving off the table.

 

[Usige]

Whether or not to contraceive is a moral question to be deliberated by each couple.

Being that this is a Catholic forum, that is simply incorrect. Morality is not subject to individual whims. While many reject the disordered nature of contraception it does not change Church teaching of the objective sinfulness of misusing God’s gift.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

Whether or not to contraceive is a moral question to be deliberated by each couple.

There is no deliberation. The couple either chosen to sin or not.

How can something be moral for one but sinful for another? Your position makes no sense and reeks of justification.

 

[EmeraldOak]

Whether or not to contraceive is a moral question to be deliberated by each couple.

^ That is not Catholic teaching. I am currently in this situation right now because I am on a birth defect causing medication. My local parish priest had me contact The National Catholic Bioethics Center. I was informed by them that contraception for the sake of contraception, even with a good motive in mind, is always a mortal sin. There was no option for my husband & I to deliberate privately and determine the morality of contraception ourselves. Their number is (215) 877-2660 if you don’t believe me.