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Abu
Guest
Using a condom during intercourse for a married couple is objectively mortally sinful. Haven’t you read what the Church teaches through Her Magisterium, in this thread?
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Blue_Horizon
Guest
Abu, I am sorry but I am no longer going to debate with you on this topic, ultimately because, for reasons I cannot understand, you seem incapable of real debate. I have come to this conclusion for the following reasons:
(a) You are incapable of focussing on specifics - only responding in often irrelevent generalities. You do not respond to direct challenges to justify your more extreme statements when refuted.
(b) You only argue from “authority” and appear unable to apply logic/reason in practical matters. Most people want to debate/discuss with a real person who actually understands/reads the authorities he agrees/disagrees with. You don’t. I do not know who you are. You seem to think you can influence people without personal involvement and that all that is needed in the cause of truth is to throw out chunks of generic text from some authority. You could be an automated “bot” for all I know
.(c) When you argue from the authority of the Magisterium you appear totally unaware of ambiguity and assume your interpretation is the only interpretation.
(d) When you argue against respected authorities/experts who point out these ambiguities it is clear you do not read reflect on or understand their arguments. You simply rely on the nearest countering authority whose conclusions you personally like. This is jejeune and intellectually solipsistic.
(e) I have twice pointed out to you that your “authorities” have clearly misquoted/misunderstood the persons you seek to refute. You do not care or acknowledge same. In this way you show yourself closed to a debate that searches for truth regardless of positional consequences.
(f) You attempt to demean without juification those authorities you disagree with by saying they are on poor standing with the Papacy. Your basis for such detractions is, ultimately, that other authorities tell you they do not agree with your interpretation of Catholic teaching. You do not personally investigate the arguments/principles of the persons you disrespect in this way. Most readers would see such public anonymous niping as neither brave norcharitable.
(g) Other authorities whose conclusions you agree with you do not scrutinise nor check to see if they are actually fair in their understanding of those you seek to refute - nor whether their arguments are coherent or acceptable, You seem to assume that if their conclusions agree with you then their arguments are good enough. You certainly do not show such warm tolerance to those authorities you regard as suspect simply because they do not seem to accept your simplistic understanding of Magisterial writings.
(h) You appear youthfully unaware that all theologians can be found to be in error in something if one digs deeply enough, including Popes (even Aquinas was condemned by the Church). This is by no means a problem. It is obstinancy in error that we should be concerned about.
For these reasons your responses in the end do not really connect (in either content or engagement) in a manner that could be called human “dialogue” or debate. I believe some of your responses would fail the Turing Test.
Abu you seem like a highly intelligent sort of younger guy but your above prudential weaknesses, highly authoritarian background and lack of balance in matters of practical judgement seems to be leading you into over extended statements/behaviour that are less than charitable and strangely unbalanced and impersonal.
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Blue_Horizon
Guest
Abu, your statement here, theologically, is a good case of “I know what you mean but I heard what you said.”
But first to look at the poster’s question:
"Does a married couple commit a mortal sin if they [use] a condom? "
A mortal sin is one which kills the life of God in the soul (ie removes sanctifying grace), renders habitual goodness impossible and immediately destines one for hell by reason of a free and informed human act (as opposed to being half asleep).
Obviously most sane people would observe that a black and white answer is impossible given we do not know much more detail than this. In the absence of such detail I think many of us would probably have to say “prob not” if forced tro respond.
However, if we were asked “is an act of marital contraception always one of objectively grave matter” then all of us would no doubt agree.
Abu you may have confused “mortal sin” with “grave/serious matter.”
One doesn’t really talk about “objective mortal sins” as mortal sins are always a fully personal “human act” and hence “subjective.” It is the “object” of a “human act” that is, unsurprisingly, the objective “font” of a “human act.”
Some objects of a “human act” are by their very nature intrinsically evil. An intrinsically evil object is often called “grave sin”, “grave matter”, “serious matter” etc.
I find it interesting/sad that noone asks about “intrinsically good” human acts
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Blue_Horizon
Guest
Abu it will make no difference to you I know, but it may for open readers.
Despite your very selective quoting from May, May actually agrees with Rhonheimer that condomistic marital intercourse to stop HIV infection is probably not a contraceptive act. See here 2786.datatrium.com/fcs/PDFFiles/v30n4win2007.pdf
Yes, May himself still sees the act as wrong, but not on contraceptive grounds.
He sees it as illicit because condomistic sex here, he argues, is a perverted sexual act and essentially non unitive masturbation. I hardly need point out that, from discussion above, this position (that condomistic sex is wholly non unitive) has never been even hinted at by the Magisterium. His view of condomistic marital sex as perverted would seem to many an even further bridge to far.
So Abu, this appears yet another resounding example of your less than candid over-extended attempts to uphold your position at all costs.
May I kindly point out to you once more that the topic debated at present is whether or not all condomistic sex is contraceptive, and hence intrinsically evil. Use of a condom may be illicit for a variety of reasons, but I think it has been ably demonstrated (even by your own authorites) that respected theoligical opinion may hold that not all use of contraceptives (including condoms) are contraceptive acts.
Therefore, if intrinsically evil is off the table, there may be some rare condomistic situations that are of small moral consequence - if not acceptable. This is all I, and others, are opining. We may one day be proven wrong … or confirmed right.
I rest my case.
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Abu
Guest
Condomistic intercourse, as has been shown clearly, is not morally indifferent, but morally evil to prevent the transmission of AIDS in the married, specifically ruled out as being moral by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, as the Church can never regard condom use as “a real or moral solution”, and the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life condemns the morning-after pill and makes no exceptions for cases of rape treatment, whether or not conception/fertilization has occurred.
William E. May
Michael J. McGivney Professor of Moral Theology
John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family at The Catholic University of America:
‘The moral object here is “to have condomistic intercourse,” and this is a morally bad object specifying the act. “The Catholic tradition,” I noted in my 1988 essay, “repudiated condomistic intercourse not only because it was usually chosen as a way of contracepting but also because it was ‘against nature’. Older theologians judged that in such intercourse the male’s semen was deposited in a *vas indebitum *or ‘undue vessel.’ Although this language is not in favor today [and it may reflect an understanding of natural law I do not share] the judgment embodied in it, I am convinced, is true. When spouses choose to use condoms they change the act they perform from one of true marital union (the marriage act) into a different kind of act. The ‘language of the body’ [to use Pope John Paul II’s way of speaking] is changed. In the marital act their bodies speak the language of a mutual giving and receiving, the language of an unreserved and oblative gift. Condomistic intercourse does not speak this language; it mutilates the language of the body, and the act chosen is more similar to masturbation than it is to the true marital act.” ’
William E. May
Michael J. McGivney Professor of Moral Theology
John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family at The Catholic University of America:
‘The moral object here is “to have condomistic intercourse,” and this is a morally bad object specifying the act. “The Catholic tradition,” I noted in my 1988 essay, “repudiated condomistic intercourse not only because it was usually chosen as a way of contracepting but also because it was ‘against nature’. Older theologians judged that in such intercourse the male’s semen was deposited in a *vas indebitum *or ‘undue vessel.’ Although this language is not in favor today [and it may reflect an understanding of natural law I do not share] the judgment embodied in it, I am convinced, is true. When spouses choose to use condoms they change the act they perform from one of true marital union (the marriage act) into a different kind of act. The ‘language of the body’ [to use Pope John Paul II’s way of speaking] is changed. In the marital act their bodies speak the language of a mutual giving and receiving, the language of an unreserved and oblative gift. Condomistic intercourse does not speak this language; it mutilates the language of the body, and the act chosen is more similar to masturbation than it is to the true marital act.” ’
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