Protestants AGAINST Contraception!

[JSmitty2005]

deb1:

Could you provide a few links to this or name some books? I have never heard that women of long ago were encouraged to refuse their hubbies as much as possible. I thought that the opposite was true, that women were supposed to fulfill their ‘wifely duties’.

Do you see the irony in it, Deb? The Catholic Church is attacked by its enemies from both sides on the same issue! First, the Catholic Church hates sex because She promotes chastity and celibacy amongst the Latin Rite clergy and condemns contraception, abortion, and homosexuality. BUT, at the same time, the Catholic Church is so obsessed with sex! Catholics have so many babies, compare the marital embrace to the joy we’ll experience in Heaven, etc. This reminds me of a great article by Mark Shea and especially the G.K. Chesterton quotes that he uses in it:

“If you hear a thing being accused of being too tall and too short, too red and too green, too bad in one way and too bad also in the opposite way, then you may be sure that it is very good.”

AND

“Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too fair. One explanation… would be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape. Outrageously tall men might feel him to be short. Very short men might feel him to be tall. Old bucks who are growing stout might consider him insufficiently filled out; old beaux who were growing thin might feel that he expanded beyond the thin lines of elegance. Perhaps Swedes (who have pale hair like tow) called him a dark man, while negroes considered him distinctly blonde. Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre.”

This whole idea is at the very essence of the Catholic Faith.

 

[JaneFrances]

Vincent1560:

If you read the relevant scriptures it is clear that what Onan failed to do was obey God’s commandment to provide his brother with an heir, that is the key issue the passage is dealing with. Inorder to draw the conclusion that what displeased God was the withdrawal in and of itself you have to interpolate that into the text. Usually when I have brought up this issue with Catholics they say that the penalty for failure to provide etc. is not death. In response I would like to point out that God is free to merit out punishment as he sees fit. God punished Lot’s wife with death because she looked back,and did the same to Annanias and his wife for HOLDING BACK (interesting parallel) part of their offering. On the other hand God often shows mercy to people who commit sins for which the penalty is death. (see Cain, King David, and Mary Magdoline) God is not constrained by the law, only men are.

I think you would be hard pressed to find an historical Christian (ie, pre-1930) assessment that disregard Onan’s act as unimportant to the the issue of contraception. Surely there are and have been viable exegesis which provide additional insight, but to propose that Onan’s act of contraception was irrelavent in light of his greed and disobedience to the law is to be ignorant of history and Scripture on the whole.

What about what the sacred author actually SAYS? Genesis 38:10 states (language varies, so I’ll cite a couple versions): “What he did greatly offended the Lord. . .” “He did a detestable thing. . .” “What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight. . .” It is very clear here that Onan DID something wrong. What was IT? There is no linguistic indication that his sin was merely one of omission (ie, not provding his brother an heir). “He wasted his seed on the ground” (Gen. 38:9). Now, the confusion of interpretation between us I think is based fundamentally on whether he was punished for his intentions in doing the deed or in the actual deed itself. The sacred writer states that “What he did greatly offended the Lord, and the Lord took his life too.” It is his positive action (not sin of omission or intent) that greatly offended the Lord enough to take his life. It does not logically pan out within the whole context of this Scripture that Onan was killed because of WHY he did what he did.

Insisting that Onan was punished by death for his sins of intention or interior disobedience to the law is not in accordance with what the sacred writer tells us is a sin of deed, not intent. The only proximate deed mentioned is the deed of willfully spilling his seed upon the ground. Within the language of scripture, his deed has a causal link between an illicit and unlawful sex act and the wrath and punishment of God. What the sacred writer does not say, however, is “What he did greatly offended the Lord, because he did want to provide his brother an heir, and so the Lord took his life too.” It is what he DID that caused his demise, not the reasons he did it, as we perceive them. In fact, imposing the possibly implicit or presumed reasons of greed, vanity, jealousy, etc. would be to judge Onan’s heart, which we can not do lest we add to Scripture what is not written or draw conclusions based strictly on matters of possible intention.

Also, it is inconsistent with sacred Scripture that if simple refusal to give legal offspring to his deceased brother were Onan’s only offence, it seems extremely unlikely that the text would have spelt out the crass physical details of his contraceptive act. And beyond Gen. 38, the Old Testament’s only fully explicit mention of sexual illicit behavior is in a prophetical and allegorical context wherein Israel’s infidelity to Yahweh is denounced scathingly in terms of the shameless lust of a harlot (Ez. 23). In both instances, the explicit graphic detail of illicit sex strongly suggests the condemnation of such acts.

And YES, God is a loving God who shows mercy on those he wills. Examples of others whom God has shown his exquisite mercy upon is not an arguement to be used regarding his ultimate justice which we see demonstrated in the sin of Onan. We are not to judge. We are simply to learn from Scripture the precepts that will keep us holy and dependant on Him. Contraception, including withdrawl and barrier methods, takes our focus from our providential and merciful Lord and claims for ourselves a sense of independence that draws our hearts and minds away from true and self-donating love towards God and our spouse.

 

[DeFide]

Vincent1560:

Most of them bordered on thinking sex was intrisically evil along with Catholics. Much of the literature of the day encouraged women to refuse their husbands as much as possible and only “give in” grudgingly.

Quite the contrary on both counts. From antiquity, children were considered a blessing, and sex was the way you got them.

I notice you steered clear of why Sola Scriptura failed all your Protestant ancestors on this issue.