1ke,
Ok, rendering the act infertile and determining infertility sounds like hair-splitting to me. But fair enough, I understand your argument though I disagree.
One is acting against an intrinsic good, i.e., something good in itself, the othr is simply studying and recognizing the signs and symptoms of the good – a world of difference in Catholic moral theology.
On another note, you simply are wrong when you state,“because that is not the reason it is wrong.” This is what I have heard on Catholic radio itself. Also, a friend of mine called Catholic Answers asking if it was moral to use contraception if another pregancy would be dangerous. The apologist himself said, “No, you cannot block life.”
I will be consulting the Catechism and the encyclicals to get more info.
Here are some Church quotes to consider in your search for the truth of this matter:
1643 “Conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter - appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply personal unity, a unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it demands
indissolubility and
faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to
fertility. In a word it is a question of the normal characteristics of all natural conjugal love, but with a new significance which not only purifies and strengthens them, but raises them to the extent of making them the expression of specifically Christian values.” (CCC)
2370 Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, “every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” is intrinsically evil:
Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. . . . The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle . . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality. (CCC)
Q. 2.When the uterus (e.g., as a result of previous Caesarian sections) is in a state such that while not constituting in itself a present risk to the life or health of the woman, nevertheless is foreseeably incapable of carrying a future pregnancy to term without danger to the mother, danger which in some cases could be serious, is it licit to remove the uterus (hysterectomy) in order to prevent a possible future danger deriving from conception?
Q. 3.In the same situation as in no. 2, is it licit to substitute tubal ligation, also called “uterine isolation,” for the hysterectomy, since the same end would be attained of averting the risks of a possible pregnancy by means of a procedure which is much simpler for the doctor and less serious for the woman, and since in addition, in some cases, the ensuing sterility might be reversible?
From the moral point of view, the cases of hysterectomy and “uterine isolation” in the circumstances described in nos. 2 and 3 are different. These fall into the moral category of direct sterilization which in the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith’s document Quaecumque Sterilizatio (AAS LXVIII 1976, 738-740, no. 1) is defined as an action « whose sole, immediate effect is to render the generative faculty incapable of procreation ». And the same document continues: « It (direct sterilization) is absolutely forbidden … according to the teaching of the Church, even when it is motivated by a subjectively right intention of curing or preventing a physical or psychological ill-effect which is foreseen or feared as a result of pregnancy ».
During an audience granted to the undersigned Prefect, the Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II approved these responses adopted in an ordinary session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and ordered them to be published.
Rome, at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the 31st of July 1993.
- Joseph Card. Ratzinger
Prefect
- Alberto Bovone
Titular Archbishop of Caesarea in Numidia
Secretary
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_31071994_uterine-isolation_en.html
