Q about birth control & Purgatory

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alwayssearching

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I find myself drawn to the Catholic chuch. My husband is Catholic, and we batpized our first son in the Catholic Church. I am considering converting, but there are some things I have questions about.
One of them is birth control.
WHERE do the Catholics get the idea that birth control is bad? Is that specifically stated in the Bible?
What about Purgatory? Where did this idea come from? Is that mentioned in the Bible?
 
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alwayssearching:
I find myself drawn to the Catholic chuch. My husband is Catholic, and we batpized our first son in the Catholic Church. I am considering converting, but there are some things I have questions about.
One of them is birth control.
WHERE do the Catholics get the idea that birth control is bad? Is that specifically stated in the Bible?
What about Purgatory? Where did this idea come from? Is that mentioned in the Bible?
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Birth control is stated in the bible. Onan withdrew and spilled his seed. God killed him for it.

Not to mention if you look up NFP it’s much more accurate, and it’s safe. No oral pills, patches, or anything.

Welcome home!
 
Also, you shouldn’t try to base everything from the Bible, even though everything that the Catholic Church teaches is in there either implicitly or explicitly…but even the Bible says that the pillar and foundation of Truth is the Church.

God bless you in your seeking of the Truth! 🙂
 
Actually, until the year 1930 NO CHRISTIAN BODY or denomination accepted artificial or unnatural means of birth control. The Catholic view is based on the first “book” of revelation: The created universe – i.e., natural law (which is not the same thing as the law of the jungle).

The Catholic Church DOES allow birth control: It’s called Natural Family Planning, and it works better than condoms and such (I won’t ask why, if your husband is Catholic, you don’t already know this :o ). A little manual by Christopher West entitled Good News about Sex and Marriage" (get it through Amazon or Barnes & Noble) gives the Catholic position in Q&A format that is easy to handle. My constant chant,by the way, is that “NFP” does **not **stand for “Not For Protestants” – and in fact, many Protestants are beginning to reclaim the beauty of this theology of marriage and life – which has only been obscured in the last 75 years…

The fact that some Catholics fail to live up to Church teaching does not make the teaching incorrect.

As I said, there are “Catholic” ways of regulating the number of children you have, provided your reasons are serious. The papal Encylical Humanae Vitae (vatican.va/holy_father/p…e-vitae_en.html,) in which Pope Paul VI re-stated the age-old teaching of the Church, includes economic, psychological, and social conditions among those “serious reasons.”

I’ll let somebody else tackle Purgatory; go to the CA home page and click on the tract there for starters.

Godspeed
 
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Pro-Life_Teen:
Birth control is stated in the bible. Onan withdrew and spilled his seed. God killed him for it.

Not to mention if you look up NFP it’s much more accurate, and it’s safe. No oral pills, patches, or anything.

Welcome home!
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Pro-life,

Not trying to pick on you, but be careful not to have a contraceptive mindset about NFP. We must always remember that even with NFP, the Church still mandates that we must have a serious reason for using NFP.

God bless.
 
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UKcatholicGuy:
Pro-life,

Not trying to pick on you, but be careful not to have a contraceptive mindset about NFP. We must always remember that even with NFP, the Church still mandates that we must have a serious reason for using NFP.

God bless.
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I know. I should have mentioned that in my post >< , thanks for the reminder!
 
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alwayssearching:
I find myself drawn to the Catholic chuch. My husband is Catholic, and we batpized our first son in the Catholic Church. I am considering converting, but there are some things I have questions about.
Click to expand...
excellent news!
One of them is birth control.
WHERE do the Catholics get the idea that birth control is bad? Is that specifically stated in the Bible?
Click to expand...
Consider the contrasting question "Where do protestants get the idea that contraceptives are good?" keep in mind that until 1930 all Christians held the truth that contraceptives were gravely sinful - also consider that in times past folks had more serious circumstances to try to justify contraceptives (famine, medical technology, etc…) however the Church never changed Her teaching on the matter.
There is a booklet titled “Birth Control and Christian Discipleship” which can be had here omsoul.com/item308.html for just $3.50 and I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a short read on the history of the subject.
What about Purgatory? Where did this idea come from? Is that mentioned in the Bible?
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lets take this one at a time - we’ll get back to this once you feel we’ve discussed the contraceptive matter fully. 🙂
 
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geocajun:
lets take this one at a time - we’ll get back to this once you feel we’ve discussed the contraceptive matter fully. 🙂
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Yes, threads get distracting when we try to cover too much at once. But for those already thinking about entering the Catholic Church, the teachings on Purgatory doesn’t require the same change of lifestyle that the teachings against contraception might. That makes it much easier to explain, so I’ll address it just a little here.

In addition to the book of II Macabees which the Protestant Reformers did not include in their Bible, other books in the Old Testament show almsgiving for the dead. In the New Testament, Jesus says in Matt 12:32 “whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this world or in the world to come”. This implies that other sins can be forgiven either in this world or in the world to come. St. Paul writes about being purified in a fire. And the book of Revelation tells us that nothing impure will enter heaven, so clearly a soul must be perfectly purified to enter heaven.

In addition to the Bible, the early Church prayed for their dead and asked mercy from God. Evidence of that is found in the writings in the caves and catacombs of Rome and Palestine. Early Church fathers such as St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, etc. preached and wrote about it. The word “Purgatory” is not found in these writings, but they certainly believed in prayers for the dead, and the concept of what the Church later called “purgatory” is certainly in the writings of the early Church.

Much more could be written and quoted about Purgatory, but I’ll leave it there for now. I hope that helps the originally poster of this thread get over that obsticle so she can join her husband and son in the Catholic Church.
 
Concerning the question on Birth Control, I think many of the post already have been a good source of thought. Although all Church teaching is rooted in Scripture, Catholic teaching has been more immediately influenced by the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law. He saw the sex act as having two basic “goals” (my words) for it to be done according to Nature (thus God’s will) Sex must be an expression of love and opened to the possibility of life. I think one could see in this position a root in the 4th Commandment, if you understand the commandment as I do, that the principle for this commandment is the Sancity of life. Also, if Thomas iscorrect and this is how God intended our sexual relations to be, then there is also the 1st Commandment - we are following God’s ways thus acknowledging that there is only one God (and we are not it).
 
There was the question about the origins of the Catholic Church’s teachings on purgatory. I would like to offer my reflections on it and hopefully (and with out a doubt if I am wrong I will be corrected). First, the classic scriptural refrences for Purgatory are Rev 21: 27, 1 Cor 3: 11 - 15 and 2 Maccabees 12: 40 -42. My own reflections is as follows. I begin with a negative, Purgatory is not a second chance state where one may go to and if there are enough people praying for the person God will forgive him and relent and won’t send him to Hell. No when you die that’s it heaven or hell (you made the choice here during your life) But we know from scripture only that which has been perfected will enter heaven, But, our own experience tells us that while we may have been basically a good person (perhaps a very good person, like me) we are far from perfect. Purgatory is that state that exist when were are perfected from the remenants of our sins. Our sins may have been forgiven but we still have to make up for it (for example if I break your window while I hit high C, you may forgive me but you would expect me to replace the window. Or better, the man who shot Pope John Paul II was publiclly forgiven by the Pope, but he’s still imprision) For me, Purgatory is a state of true forgiveness and total growth (we forgive ourself and grow into the knowledge person we actual are the person God has known eternally and become that person - how’s that for suffering?) It’s a state of purifying thus a state of Love so that we can experience fully God’s Love in the Beatific Vision.
 
All of the Purgatory responses are good so far… I just had a few thoughts to add to them:

Purgatory is like taking a shower before going to a wedding. If you die in a state of grace (without unconfessed mortal sins) then you will probably still be “dirty”… bad habits… attachment to worldy things, etc. Purgatory gives your soul a chance to be completely purified. We are pretty sure that 99% of “saved” souls will be in Purgatory unless they spend that time on Earth. (someone correct me if I’m wrong) but sometimes you can withstand redemptive suffering while you are still alive. For example, a person who suffers severly from Cancer over a long period of time and if he offers that suffering up to God, he will probably spend little or no time in Purgatory.

That’s all for now… 😉
 
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alwayssearching:
I find myself drawn to the Catholic chuch. My husband is Catholic, and we batpized our first son in the Catholic Church. I am considering converting, but there are some things I have questions about.
One of them is birth control.
WHERE do the Catholics get the idea that birth control is bad? Is that specifically stated in the Bible?
What about Purgatory? Where did this idea come from? Is that mentioned in the Bible?
Click to expand...
Believe it or not, artificial birth control is indeed nastily condemned in the Bible – 4 times.

In 3 out of 4 cases, the writer says that those (presumbably unrepentant) users of ABC will be damned to eternal Hell fire. Purgatory also appears to be mentioned in the Bible.

But before I go on, what will you do if I prove my case?

Leave Christianity, because it is inconvenient?

Do you revolve around God, or must God revolve around you?
 
Artificial birth control is de-humanizing. It reduces man to livestock.

Scott
 
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