use of condom

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poverello90

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hi ,

i came across a very different question form a brother of mine who seems recently to leave catholic faith cos of the various teaching of catholic church!!1

he asked me this.

use of condoms according to catholic church is wrong. therefore if i get married and i dont want a child i have to wait say for the menstrual cycle of my wife to reach the safe period to have sex.

the intentions of using the condom is avoid a baby and express my love to my wife freely… even if i follow the menstrual safe period my intentions are the same. i don wanna have a baby so i’m waiting for the right time to have sex. if intentions are the same why cant i just use a condom??? why does the church put hefty rules?

please clarify this one for me

thank you
 
NFP and artificial methods share the same intent and both still have the possibility of conception, I also do not understand the reasoning behind this one.
 
NFP is open to life.
Condoms are not.

With NFP, you are willing to accept that even if you follow the rules as well as you can, you may conceive a child, and you will accept that child lovingly. Barrier and chemical methods of birth control go hand in hand with a different type of mentality: the mentality that says “I am in control and if I conceive a child, it is an accident.”

NFP can be used for:
  • trying to avoid pregnancy
  • trying to achieve pregnancy
  • trying to diagnose a problem with the woman’s body
  • being aware of a woman’s cycle for planning purposes (other than intercourse…I’m talking about planning trips to the beach and things like that, it’s just nice to know sometimes) 🙂
Does that help at all?
 
Geist said:
NFP and artificial methods share the same intent and both still have the possibility of conception, I also do not understand the reasoning behind this one.
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As someone considering conversion to Catholicism the RCC’s teachings on contraception are something I still struggle with understanding and accepting. I understand why abortifacients are wrong, but I fail to see how means of artificial contraception such as condom that prevent fertilization from occurring in the first place are wrong, given that one might use NFP with the same intention as a condom and yet NFP is moral yet condoms are deemed not to be so. The reality is BOTH condoms and NFP are open to life in that both have a failure rate and anyone using either method of preventing pregnancy need to accept that. I guess NFP is ok because it’s natural and condom aren’t because they’re not…but then again we don’t apply that logic when it comes to medication for illness.
 
Sex has two part the **Unitive **and the **Procreative **.

if one actively works against one it is sinful I.E. Condoms actively work against procreation and rape actively works against unitive.

If a couple *passively * (not the right word) works against them like NFP then it is not sin full.

Catholics pledge before God and all present at the matrimony that they are open to children and rasining them according to God’s laws. That is why condoms are not acceptable. Condoms blocks pregnancy when NFP mearly avoids it.
 
But if someone knows that condoms have a failure rate (maybe even as high as 10%+) and accepts that the martial embrace might result in pregnancy, aren’t they using an imperfect method of birth control to avoid pregnancy?
 
MattofTexas said:
But if someone knows that condoms have a failure rate (maybe even as high as 10%+) and accepts that the martial embrace might result in pregnancy, aren’t they using an imperfect method of birth control to avoid pregnancy?
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No. Or rather, it’s not just that the method is imperfect that matters.

In short, it’s the difference between trying to subvert the way the whole thing works for our own goals, vs working within it. It’s the difference between bulimia (bad) and dieting (acceptable). There is no reason why such things as family size and child spacing cannot be controlled, but it should not be done by subverting sex itself. In NFP one accepts that the act is what it is, and is for what it is for, but then abstains during certain periods to achieve a goal. Whereas ABC is a denial of what sex is, is a twisting of its purpose, an attempt to use it for pleasure while ignoring it’s true meaning.
 
Iron_Donkey said:
No. Or rather, it’s not just that the method is imperfect that matters.

In short, it’s the difference between trying to subvert the way the whole thing works for our own goals, vs working within it. It’s the difference between bulimia (bad) and dieting (acceptable). There is no reason why such things as family size and child spacing cannot be controlled, but it should not be done by subverting sex itself. In NFP one accepts that the act is what it is, and is for what it is for, but then abstains during certain periods to achieve a goal. Whereas ABC is a denial of what sex is, is a twisting of its purpose, an attempt to use it for pleasure while ignoring it’s true meaning.
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That’s the best explanation I’ve seen.
 
Geist said:
NFP and artificial methods share the same intent and both still have the possibility of conception, I also do not understand the reasoning behind this one.
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The Church agrees with you that the intent and possibility of conception are the same for both. The intent and success of contraception is not at all why the Church condemns it. Rather the Church believes that there is something inherently immoral about the means of contraceptives. Why exactly the church believes this is harder to understand because it involves all sorts of nuanced arguments and a good understanding of philosophy and theology. But at the very least hopefully you can see that the Church’s position is much more logical than it seemed before. The Church agrees that there is nothing in the intent to differentiate NFP to avoid from contraception, and, well, to be honest, rate of success has nothing to do with it. Instead the Church looks at the means involved (abstinance vs changing the nature of a particular act of sex) and says that one is moral and the other immoral, and so the condemnation of contraception is not at all based on intent, but on the means of contraception.
 
If I may be so bold as to critique a papal encyclical, one of the things Humanae Vitae did NOT adequately explain is the fact that the unitive and procreative functions simply AREN’T separate topics, but are actually different sides of a coin.

Those who use contraception fancy that they are chopping off the procreative aspect in order to enjoy the unitive. But it doesn’t work that way. By trying to create a human sexuality that is fundamentally not related to makin’ babies unless the couple WILLS it to, the entire nature of the encounter is changed and the unitive aspect is damaged as well. (This doesn’t happen in NFP because the nature of the method rubs the couple’s face regularly in the fact that sex and babies are all tied up together).

To go back to the analogy, you can’t remove the tails from a coin and merely spend the heads. It isn’t legitimate money anymore when you mutilate it.

If you never learn anything else about human sexuality, learn this: God made marriage, sex and babies fundamentally tangled up with one another in a single, indivisable,beautiful package. Any intentional action that tries to sever one or more of these three aspects from the others does serious harm to the souls of those involved.

If you GET the above, you will be able to comprehend church teaching on: premarital sex, contraception, gay marriage, in vitro, surrogate motherhood…
 
I say that it is wrong and sinful. What makes sex holy is that you represent the trinity: two people loving each other and making a third. It is wrong to have sex but not want a baby, because religiousely and biologically, you mate to produce offspring. If you try to find a loophole where you don’t have kids, then you are perverting the gift of sexuality.
 
MattofTexas said:
As someone considering conversion to Catholicism the RCC’s teachings on contraception are something I still struggle with understanding and accepting. I understand why abortifacients are wrong, but I fail to see how means of artificial contraception such as condom that prevent fertilization from occurring in the first place are wrong, given that one might use NFP with the same intention as a condom and yet NFP is moral yet condoms are deemed not to be so. The reality is BOTH condoms and NFP are open to life in that both have a failure rate and anyone using either method of preventing pregnancy need to accept that. I guess NFP is ok because it’s natural and condom aren’t because they’re not…but then again we don’t apply that logic when it comes to medication for illness.
Click to expand...
“natural” and “unnatural” are not relevant here i.e. artificial vs. natural. What IS important is the notion that both the intention and the act itself need to be taken into consideration when evaluating the morality of an act.

NFP is doing nothing during a fertile time of the cycle, condom use is an act contrary to life i.e. contraceptive.

The intention is the same, in a sense, avoiding a pregnancy, but you are mistaken in saying “The reality is BOTH condoms and NFP are open to life”. Condom use is not being open to the possiblilty of life, it is working against that possibility.
 
So if sex is to be unitive **and **procreative, should couples in which the wife is post-menopausal or one spouse infertile also be abstinent since obviously procreative is out of the question?
 
Geist said:
So if sex is to be unitive **and **procreative, should couples in which the wife is post-menopausal or one spouse infertile also be abstinent since obviously procreative is out of the question?
Click to expand...
No, infertile couples do not need to be abstinent. Infertility is not an imediment to marriage or enjoying the marital act.
 
Geist said:
So if sex is to be unitive **and **procreative, should couples in which the wife is post-menopausal or one spouse infertile also be abstinent since obviously procreative is out of the question?
Click to expand...
This is a very common misconception that comes from a misunderstanding of the way Catholics use the word ‘procreative’. They don’t mean that there has to be a possibility of procreation, what they mean is that no-one takes any action to render an act of sex infertile. Huge difference. So putting on a condom or taking a pill is an action that is taken so that a specific act of love-making will not end in conception. Being infertile because thats just the way your body is (whether you are pregnant, post-menopausal, or its just that time of the month) involves no action on the part of any person to make any particular act of love-making infertile.
 
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