The Gates of Heaven

[masondoggy]

Well I was raised by a Catholic “alcoholic, never at home” father and a Protestent mom who was the one that took me to a Catholic church every weekend with my paternal grandmother. I was raised that birth control is ok, honestly I just found a link last year that explains each of the 10 commandments in detail. I knew all the commandments but I guess I just followed what I thought they meant and not too much in depth.

I was raised not going to confession or even knowing any one else (like my Catholic friends) going regularly to confession.

I’m not a follower and don’t think its ok to do just b/c
others do. All these rules were made YEARS ago before birth control and other medical technologies. What about those who seek help getting pregnant, are they going to go to Hell b/c they want to raise and love a child, but couldn’t do it naturally???

I think if you studied up on the reasons why birth control is wrong, you’d be amazed at how much sense it makes. Check out the sources others cited here, it’s a great place to start. The truth of the matter is, as somebody else mentioned, the birth control “rules” were put in place long, long ago. All the way back to the book of Genesis (check out the story of Onan, who basically used the withdrawal method to prevent pregnancy and God punished him with death. Death=mortal sin). I could go on and on, but the point is that the rules were always there. And believe it or not, there has always been “technology” on ways to prevent a pregnancy. The difference is that they just were generally viewed as sinful by ALL Christians up until 1930.

Just a handful of reasons why contraception is wrong…

-The first command God gave to man…do you know what it is? “Be fruitful and multiply”. Check out the book of Genesis and count how many times He gives that command to man. He really made his point clear. He gave us fertility as a gift and he gave us a command to respect that gift. Nowhere in the Bible did God say, “Well, OK, you’ve multiplied enough, you can scratch that rule”. So, who are we, as mankind, to just decide that the rule has changed when it has been there from the beginning?

-Do you know that hormonal forms of Contraception cause early abortions? They all alter the lining of the uterus to make it hostile to a newly formed embryo (life), causing the embryo to die before it ever has a chance to grow. Some forms of contraception work only in this way, the Pill has this function along with the function of preventing ovulation. But we don’t know if it always prevents ovulation so we can only guess that at least some of the time, an early abortion is the result.

-Hormonal contraception is like putting poison into your body. They are very bad for your health and can cause life-threatening conditions. WHY put something like that into your body without a very, very good reason? There is no good reason, especially when there is a very good alternative like NFP.

-Condoms. Ok, not only do condoms go back to the story of Onan using withdrawal, “spilling his seed on the ground”, but they also put a barrier between a husband and wife that shouldn’t be there. They interfere with the marital bond.

-Do you know that couples who use NFP have a very, very low divorce rate compared to those who use contraception? I think it’s something like 3-5% if I remember corrrecctly. Now that’s not saying that contraception is definitely a cause for divorce, but it really makes one think. Maybe, just maybe, putting a barrier like that in your marriage isn’t such a good idea after all.

This just barely scratches the surface. You can do more research yourself and you’ll be surprised.

It sounds like you missed out on Catholic instruction as a child, as many, many other Catholics have. That’s not your fault. But it’s never too late to study the Faith. If you take the time to do that, you will come to understand why we have to follow “the rules”.

And the bottom line is that we follow the rules because we know that Jesus established a Church, He gave that Church authority to teach, He promised to send the Holy Spirit to guide that Church into all truth, and he gave the leader of that Church (the Pope) the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven (a symbol of authority), and told him that whatever he bound on earth would be bound in Heaven, and whatever he loosed on earth would be loosed in Heaven.

So, that Church established by Christ himself is where all those “rules” come from, and we know that we have to obey that Church because Jesus said so. When we disobey the Church, we are disobeying Jesus and that is what puts our souls in serious jeopardy.

 

[ChristineML]

I am concerned that Drafdog has left a false impression. What he said sounds like an evangelical Protestant’s “we are all sinners” (true enough) and “salvation comes from FAITH in Jesus ALONE,” no requirement of any specific actions on our part.

On the subject of faith alone vs. faith plus WORKS:
Jn 14:15 - if you love Me, keep My commandments
Mt 19:16-17 - if wish to enter in (eternal) life, keep commandments
Mt 7:21- not those who cry “Lord, Lord,” but he who does the will of the Father will enter kingdom of Heaven
Jam 2:14-24 - a man is justified by works and not faith alone

On the subject of judgment according to DEEDS:
Rom 2:5-8 - God will repay each man according to his works
2 Cor 5:10 - recompense accord to what did in the body
2 Cor 11:15 - their end will correspond to their deeds
1 Pet 1:17 - God judges impartially according to one’s works
Rev 20:12-13 - dead judged according to their deeds
Col 3:24-25 - will receive due payment for whatever you do

So, unlike Protestant churches which teach that you can (supposedly) have assurance of salvation merely by “accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior,” the Catholic Church teaches there’s more to it than that. You have to conform your conscience and your actions (with genuine sorrow, confession, and trying again after failures) with Church teachings on faith and morals, in order to have hope of eternal life with God in Heaven.

On the subject of birth control, it is nothing new; it has been around for thousands of years. In Genesis 38 of the Old Testament Onan was killed by God for deliberately “spilling his seed on the ground,” i.e. withdrawal. And there are three or four New Testament verses against “pharmakeia,” the mixing of potions for secret purposes, with prayers to the spirits for greater efficacy. Included in lists of sexual sins, we surmise they are referring to birth control and abortifacient potions, which we know did exist in New Testament times.

Please don’t think something (pre-marital sex, birth control, missing Mass) “isn’t a big deal” because “everybody’s doing it.” You’ll ALWAYS be able to find SOMEONE who’ll tell you “oh, doing such and such isn’t that bad,” BUT “Wide and easy is the road that leads to destruction; Narrow and difficult is the road that leads to eternal life.”

I’m not trying to discourage you. By NO MEANS am I trying to say that you’re a bad person; I don’t think that at all. I am not perfect; I am conscious of my own sinfulness and shortcomings. I can see that you want to please God and be with Him in Heaven, and I see that you take final judgment (prospect of Heaven or Hell) seriously. That desire and that understanding are gifts of faith in this day and age! It may be HARD to follow Church teachings, but it’s not impossible, and it’s WORTH IT!

 

[drafdog]

I’m afraid that Christine missed or didn’t understand my last paragraph.
No matter what good works we perform they do not earn us brownie points with God. We are still completely sinful. We do the best we can which cannot possibly be enough. That’s why we must trust in the mercy and generosity of God’s love.
The point of the scriptures regarding works is that good works arise from our belief and faith in God.

Christine may present this to any Catholic theologian and I am certain that no fault will be found in it. It is in accord with Catholic theology.

Matthew

 

[ChristineML]

I re-read Drafdog’s post #20, and I did indeed misunderstand his points. I apologize, Drafdog, and I thank you for your gentle correction instead of getting mad and yelling at me. I have been reading up on apologetics lately, how to answer evangelical Protestants’ “faith alone” arguments, so when I read, “…trust in God’s generous mercy,” I jumped the gun and started in. Remember the old saying, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail?”

My concern, not just with faithhopejoy (that is a beautiful name, by the way) but with anyone we are trying to share the Good News with, is how to balance out knowledge of God’s mercy with knowledge of God’s justice. For example, in the Gospel story of the woman caught in adultery, Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you,” but he also said, “Go, then, and sin no more.” How do we gently and lovingly encourage people to make changes in their lives in a way they can hear and respond to, and not discourage or offend them and turn them away? This is an extremely difficult question I’ve been struggling with for years.

 

[FCEGM]

I’m afraid that Christine missed or didn’t understand my last paragraph.
No matter what good works we perform they do not earn us brownie points with God. We are still completely sinful. We do the best we can which cannot possibly be enough. That’s why we must trust in the mercy and generosity of God’s love.
The point of the scriptures regarding works is that good works arise from our belief and faith in God.

Christine may present this to any Catholic theologian and I am certain that no fault will be found in it. It is in accord with Catholic theology.

Matthew

Do not be so certain, Matthew. You have left out the truth of our transformation in Christ whereby He through His grace and our cooperation with it - which is itself a response to grace - so identifies us with Himself as to make our works in Him meritorious and sanctifying, i.e., frees us from our sin (and from sinning) - though concupiscience remains til our death - as we become ontologically identified with Him, adopted sons and daughters of the Father. As such, our works in Christ do indeed “earn us brownie points” because they are Christ’s work in us.

IOW, He accomplishes in and through us by His transforming grace what He would have us be and do. So Christ is meriting within us for us. We, then, by the gift of our free will (a will that is truly set free as it more and more embraces the will of the Father) give our assent to His action in our lives - or not.

So it is not an accumulation of our “good works” that saves us, but rather the good works that Christ Himself accomplished in us if we offer no resistance; the growth of our spiritual life depends on responding to that grace and being more attentive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit to extend the Incarnation by our acts of faith, hope and charity, and by the practice of the virtues. To paraphrase Scott Hahn, Christ did not do all the works so that we don’t have to do anything, but Christ sends His Holy Spirit on us so that we now CAN live by the Law of Love.

With God’s grace we can avoid sin and must be determined to avoid mortal sin or we will lose God’s grace and thus salvation. With God’s grace we can further determine to avoid venial sin. With God’s grace we can do this because, as our Lord told St. Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you,” i.e., to live virtuously under trial and not sin. Some erroneously take an either/or position, i.e., either it’s all God’s grace and not our doing at all, **or **its all our doing and not God’s grace at all. The Scriptural Truth is that it is all God’s grace and our doing it at the same time. Thus when a Catholic says salvation depends on avoiding serious sin he presupposes that this is with God’s grace, while Protestants presuppose the opposite because of simplistic either/or thinking which is a defect of the mind applied to the question of grace and free will.

Thus the Protestant understanding of grace is stemming from an erroneous human way of thinking in absolute either/or categories. They cannot image a cooperation between man and God, i.e., of God putting a person in a state of grace qualitatively so that his free will actions under grace and with grace brings about the result of salvation first willed by God and simultaneously willed by the person’s free will, i.e., that the grace of God’s will enters the free will of the believer in a way that does not force it, but can be ignored, which if not ignored brings about salvation, God and the person acting together.