The unnaturalness of 'unnatural'

[Darnrarejob]

Laurie Gibson, your question is perfectly legitimate and I’ll try to answer it as best I can.
I like the way Christopher West explained the differences between contraception and NFP in his book “Good New About Sex and Marriage”, which I will try to do for you now.
But before I get started, lets pretend. Lets pretend that you are getting married and your sending everybody invitations. Lets also pretend that sending wedding invitations, for some odd reason, was really really fun and enjoyable. Suppose there was a jerk in your family that you’d prefer didn’t come to your wedding. Would you not send them an invitation, or would you send them an invitation NOT to come? Of course you would do the former because the latter is just rude and silly. Are you sure you would do the former? (remember, sending wedding invitations is fun).

You could apply the same logic to your question.
God created the “wedding invitation” as a means to invite people to your wedding. Now, of course, he made “sending the wedding invitations” fun, but he did it in order to give us incentive to do it. Just think about. How often would humans eat if we did not enjoy eating. If anything, we would see it as a chore. Now to send an invitation to someone you didn’t want to come, just to have the pleasure of sending the invitation, this would offend God because that’s not the reason he created the “wedding invitation”. On the other hand, you could just not send him an invitation, and the dignity of “sending the wedding invitation” remains intact because you never sent an invitation to begin with. Now on the other hand, God also created the mail system. Likewise, he created it so that there was no mail on Sundays. This only begs the question “Could I send my Uncle Jerk an invitation on a day that I know for a fact he will NOT receive any mail?” Absolutely not! That’s the whole principle behind NFP.
I hope this helps.

 

[Abu]

Laurie Gibson
the Catholic concept of ‘unnatural’ is a very particular one…You must not use a condom to control the size of your family but you can frustrate the purpose of sex by using NFP… when the woman is past child bearing age.

St Thomas Aquinas:
“The venereal act is rendered unbecoming through being contrary to right reason, and because, in addition, it is contrary to the natural order of the venereal act as becoming to the human race: and this is called the unnatural vice. This may happen by copulation with an undue sex, male with male, or female with female, as the Apostle states (Rom 1:27): and this is called the vice of sodomy (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 154, a. 11).”

Fr John F Harvey (The Truth About Homosexuality, Ignatius 1996, p 132) shows that the act of homosexual intercourse lacks the two components that make sexual intercourse natural:

1. The gastrointestinal tract is a hole running through the body – oral or anal intercourse remains on the surface and is not inside the human being, whereas vaginal intercourse is about a real physical union.
2. Since the homosexual act cannot be procreative it cannot unify those engaged in it by tending toward a child who will have characteristics of both parents.

Homosexual acts are ipso facto unnatural.

The continued failure to recognise the cause and effect with which God has imbued man’s nature continues to be blinded to the fact that the purpose of sexual union is for the unitive as well as the procreative aspects, which makes sexual union for the aged normal, and the use of the God-given infertile period similarly normal, unless the latter is used without serious reason for limiting families. The infertile periods are just as much a part of our human nature which may be used or misused.

Even the pagans accepted the fact that there were higher beings to whom they owed obedience in following the natural moral law implanted in human nature.