This is your personal interpretation of canon law.
Your repeated references to Canon Law, and the complete absence of references to Church teachings, suggests very strongly you are making this up as you go. Canon Law is neither the source nor the vessel of Church Teachings.
You cannot take a generalized teaching of the Church and use it as an umbrella for your own purposes to suit your personal agenda.
The teaching that Contraception is intrinsically evil is not generalised, but in fact highly specific and definitive. My only agenda is to express what the Church teaches. You clearly have another, given you don’t reference Church Teaching at all.
And I have referenced a very specific, unique situation: A mother could very much want more children. She could want a growing family. But, due to medical issues, a pregnancy would result in her certain death. NFP is not the answer, and neither is permanent abstinence for the next 50 years of her life. The mother has an obligation to protect herself from certain death, as well as to keep the marriage and family intact.
The Church goes to great lengths in teaching a key principal of its moral theology - that specific Intentions and specific Circumstances don’t alter the evil inherent in an intrinsically wrong act. Such acts are “
always wrong to choose”. You may wish to declare that, with this understanding, contraception ought not to be “intrinsically evil”. Unfortunately, the Church teaches that it is.
It is correct that a mother has a duty to self and to family - but she is not free to pursue that duty by any means! Contraception may be a palatable means to do that, but the Church teaches that it is an immoral means, and the Church teaching states specifically that the reasons one may feel inclined to choose contraception cannot change the immorality of it.
These are, quite clearly, not black-and-white issues. They require debate and discussion among competent authorities. Your citation of general Church teaching does not address specific life circumstances. They are a guide, a doctrine, a teaching, even a religious and philosophical viewpoint. They are quite helpful, but do not address specific, unique life circumstances that have to be carefully evaluated utilizing reason, logic, medical science, and considerable prayer.
The issues are hard, but entirely black and white. The need for debate to answer the morality question arises when one rejects the idea of “intrinsically evil” acts and embraces the idea of “consequentialism” - weighing up the consequences of acts to determine what is moral. That approach is utterly rejected by Catholic Moral Theology (spelled out by Pope St JP II in VS75).
When the Church says “no intentions or circumstances can render an intrinsically evil act good”, your response, apparently, is to say…“that’s merely a general guide”? Seriously?
…It is, instead, a gross misinterpretation of Church teaching…
Please provide a true representation of the Church teachings on contraception, and intrinsically evil acts, quoting Church documents to support you view.
“He who is without sin, cast the first stone”
Noone has cast a stone - other than yourself in suggesting I misrepresent Church Teaching and have “an agenda”. Is it casting a stone to observe and state accurately, on a discussion thread about Contraception, what the Church teaches, viz:
“Abortion is intrinsically evil - it may never be chosen”
“Contraception is intrinsically evil - it may never be chosen”
I am referring to a common scenario where a mother faces certain death in the event of pregnancy.
Not so common I suggest. What is common though is that the thought of abstaining from sex is rejected as too difficult. It surely is difficult.
Pope St JP II addressed and rejected this notion that “intentions and circumstances” could make the difference between immoral (in general) acts and moral (in specific cases) acts.
*56. In order to justify these positions, some authors have proposed a kind of double status of moral truth. Beyond the doctrinal and abstract level, one would have to acknowledge the priority of a certain more concrete existential consideration. The latter, by taking account of circumstances and the situation, could legitimately be the basis of certain exceptions to the general rule and thus permit one to do in practice and in good conscience what is qualified as intrinsically evil by the moral law. A separation, or even an opposition, is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the precept, which is valid in general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called “pastoral” solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a “creative” hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept. * VS56
In respect of Intrincally Evil acts, the Pope goes on:
*These are the acts which, in the Church’s moral tradition, have been termed “intrinsically evil” (intrinsece malum): they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances. Consequently, without in the least denying the influence on morality exercised by circumstances and especially by intentions, the Church teaches that “there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object”. * VS80
w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor.html
