Website arguing that the teaching on birth control can be changed

[svoboda]

bear06:

Here are some great pre-Vatican II documents that teach the procreative and unitive aspects of marriage.
papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13cmr.htm
vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_31121930_casti-connubii_en.html

I already provided you the argument as to Onan but you don’t buy it. Re-read the 20 threads you’re on right now and you’ll see more than I answered this one. Yikes. Here’s yet another article that explains why the story of Onan is not what you think it is. In fact, it uses your very same arguments. Do you think you might try reading it?
soma.npa.uiuc.edu/~dbranch/script_cath/BC.HTM

Thank you for the links, unfortunately I find myself already spending too much time on the forums and I will not have the time to read them.

However, since you’ve already read them and know they contain those references, would you mind quickly quoting a few?

I will respond to those references specifically, but I just can’t read three huge letters. Edit: I will look at the Onan arguments, but it would be too mcuh for me to carefuly read through the encyclicals looking for the parts about unitive components of sex and marriage being as important as procreative.

Edit1: The Onan argument is wrong for this reason:

Though Judah did not do his familial duty, nor did he allow his son to carry out that duty, **neither Judah nor his son Shelah were killed. Onan’s death, therefore, did not result from his failure to do his familial duty, but resulted from some other aspect of his behaviour. ** Onan willingly undertook the act which would normally bring about new life, but he actively tried to close off the possibility that such a life would be engendered. Onan engaged in a form of birth control, Judah did not.

It is wrong to infer from the fact that God did not kill Judah or Shelah that it was not a sin for him to fail to do his familial duty.

Because in that same story Tamar pretends to be a prostitute and fornicates with Judah, while Judah sees a woman he believes to be a prostitute and fornicates with her.

Those are sins if ever there were sins, God does not kill them for it either.

God is inconsistent in killing people when they sin, sometimes he does it, sometimes he doesn’t.

Looking at the Onan story:

8 Then Judah said to Onan, "Unite with your brother’s widow, in fulfillment of your duty as brother-in-law, and thus preserve your brother’s line." 9 Onan, however, knew that the descendants would not be counted as his; so whenever he had relations with his brother’s widow, he wasted his seed on the ground, to avoid contributing offspring for his brother. 10 What he did greatly offended the LORD, and the LORD took his life too.

I think it speaks for itself.

Please paste the unitive + procreative being equally importnat in sex and marriage quotes.

 

[svoboda]

ReformedCatholic:

You may be right. The challenge is suspending the idea that it is a “Church teaching” and that it comes from an “infallable source” and see if the reasoning is solid or even makes sense.
…
I understand that it is scarey to doubt one’s religious teachings, but if they are the Truth, they will endure any amount of doubt or scrutiny, and remain Truth.

This is a great post. It is also my perception that nearly everyone here is operating under the assumption that the Church is 100% right in all its teachings, and anyone who disagrees is wrong by definition, no matter what the arguments are.

But this makes sense because nearly everyone here is Catholic.

But it is a great point that IF Catholicism really is the truth, then any amount of scrutiny and intellectual argument will only confirm it, not defeat it.

So Catholics should not fear to pretend, for the sake of an honest investigations, that the Church could very well be wrong. And that teachings should be evaluated by reason + moral conscience.

If they are true teachings, they should stand up to honest investigation and moral arguments.

 

[bear06]

I understand that it is scarey to doubt one’s religious teachings, but if they are the Truth, they will endure any amount of doubt or scrutiny, and remain Truth. If the teachings turn out to have some “errors” in them, then the scrutiny will lead you through this and ultimately to the Truth, and you will be the better for it.

It should be scary but more than scary it is dangerous and I will never try to suspend the idea that it’s Church teaching and infallible. I’m pretty sure that the devil would love it if I did! The smart way to go is to believe that the Church is right and then study and learn why. Look at our example of the saints. Can you name one that took your challenge? There were definitely some that started out where you are suggestin but the ones that were already in communion with the Church didn’t take this tact.

 

[bear06]

Thank you for the links, unfortunately I find myself already spending too much time on the forums and I will not have the time to read them.

Argh! What a cop out. There’s waaaaaaaaaaaaayyy to much in them to quote and they address the issues you’ve brought up. Don’t tell me I didn’t provide evidence of my statements. You just don’t want to actually read the Church teachings. You just want to go on conjecturing.

I will respond to those references specifically, but I just can’t read three huge letters. Edit: I will look at the Onan arguments, but it would be too mcuh for me to carefuly read through the encyclicals looking for the parts about unitive components of sex and marriage being as important as procreative.

You supposedly wanted to know about the Church teachings. There they are.

Edit1: The Onan argument is wrong for this reason:

It is wrong to infer from the fact that God did not kill Judah or Shelah that it was not a sin for him to fail to do his familial duty.

Because in that same story Tamar pretends to be a prostitute and fornicates with Judah, while Judah sees a woman he believes to be a prostitute and fornicates with her.

Those are sins if ever there were sins, God does not kill them for it either.

God is inconsistent in killing people when they sin, sometimes he does it, sometimes he doesn’t.

Wrong. They did the same thing. It was the way they did it that they were punished for. You have your theory and I have the Church’s. This is why it’s impossible to debate this issue with someone who doesn’t believe in the Church.

 

[bear06]

svoboda:

This is a great post. It is also my perception that nearly everyone here is operating under the assumption that the Church is 100% right in all its teachings, and anyone who disagrees is wrong by definition, no matter what the arguments are.

But this makes sense because nearly everyone here is Catholic.

But it is a great point that IF Catholicism really is the truth, then any amount of scrutiny and intellectual argument will only confirm it, not defeat it.

So Catholics should not fear to pretend, for the sake of an honest investigations, that the Church could very well be wrong. And that teachings should be evaluated by reason + moral conscience.

If they are true teachings, they should stand up to honest investigation and moral arguments.

Hey, I encourage honest investigation. I just think that you are at an incorrect starting point.

 

[svoboda]

bear06:

Argh! What a cop out. There’s waaaaaaaaaaaaayyy to much in them to quote and they address the issues you’ve brought up. Don’t tell me I didn’t provide evidence of my statements. You just don’t want to actually read the Church teachings. You just want to go on conjecturing.

You’re right, I don’t want to read two long letters that I am not particularly interested in just for this debate. This is what debates are about: people bringing their best arguments to the table AND LEARNING FROM EACH OTHER.

It is your job to back up your statements, and not with links, but with arguments here. I can post about a hundred links and say “the evidence for my arguments is there, don’t want to read, okay, but don’t tell me I haven’t provided evidence.”

Unless you back up your statements here, I have no reason to believe they are true. I don’t see what the issue is though, presumably you’ve read those encyclicals, presumably you know about where the relevant passages are, why not just post them. I twould take you 5 minutes versus me taking possibly an hour to read both letters.

The fact that you’re not willing to do something makes me think that either you haven’t read those letters but have just posted them hoping that something is there, or that those teachings aren’t there.

 

[svoboda]

bear06:

Wrong. They did the same thing. It was the way they did it that they were punished for. You have your theory and I have the Church’s. This is why it’s impossible to debate this issue with someone who doesn’t believe in the Church.

They did the same thing? Onan had a duty to make children for his brother, he had sex with the widow but spilled seed because the offspring wouldn’t be his.

After Onan and Er both were killed by God, Judah did not want Shelah to suffer the same fate so he told Tamar that she should wait until Shelah grows up (or something like that).

Shelah grows up, presumably his father still doesn’t let him do the duty (in which case he would not be at fault, but in fact nothing is mentioned about Shelah so it’s possible God does kill him later for it).

Tamar pretends to be a whore and gets herself impregnated by Judah, who sees her in disguise, thinks she’s a whore, and immediately asks her to “get it on.” (These are disgusting sins, by the way, about which God does nothing.)

And this is somehow the same as Onan’s spilling seed on the groud to avoid making offspring for his dead brother?

It is questionable whether Shelah could have married Tamar, it seems that his father sent her away. He did not do the same thing Onan did.

It was not Judah’s duty to make children for Tamar, unless there is a rule where if the son dies the father has to go impregnate the wife.

God doesn’t kill either Judah or Tamar for the very obvious evils of feigned prostitution/fornication.

Are we to infer from that that they are not sins? NO! Therefore why infer from God’s lack of punishment that Shelah/Judah didn’t sin in other ways?

 

[bear06]

It is your job to back up your statements, and not with links, but with arguments here. I can post about a hundred links and say “the evidence for my arguments is there, don’t want to read, okay, but don’t tell me I haven’t provided evidence.”

Unless you back up your statements here, I have no reason to believe they are true. I don’t see what the issue is though, presumably you’ve read those encyclicals, presumably you know about where the relevant passages are, why not just post them. I twould take you 5 minutes versus me taking possibly an hour to read both letters.

Now you’re going to call me a liar because you’re too lazy to read the documents. Are you afraid you might learn something? I’d actually have to read through them again to copy and paste too. You wanted them, you’ve got them. BTW, it wouldn’t take you too long to find it in the Summa either. I don’t think you’ve seen how it’s laid out. I’ll will tell you that neither of the documents stress equal or unequal weight of the procreative and the unitive. They simply teach of both aspects. That wasn’t orginally your argument. You simply said that the unitive wasn’t stressed until Vatican II or something to that effect.

You’ll read website upon website supporting your theories and post those links (which I actually do read) but you won’t look at the actually teachings of the Church on marriage. You’re not actually in this for discovery, you are in it to spout your beliefs.

 

[svoboda]

bear06:

Now you’re going to call me a liar because you’re too lazy to read the documents. Are you afraid you might learn something? I’d actually have to read through them again to copy and paste too. You wanted them, you’ve got them. BTW, it wouldn’t take you too long to find it in the Summa either. I don’t think you’ve seen how it’s laid out. I’ll will tell you that neither of the documents stress equal or unequal weight of the procreative and the unitive. They simply teach of both aspects. That wasn’t orginally your argument. You simply said that the unitive wasn’t stressed until Vatican II or something to that effect.

You’ll read website upon website supporting your theories and post those links (which I actually do read) but you won’t look at the actually teachings of the Church on marriage. You’re not actually in this for discovery, you are in it to spout your beliefs.

Fine, you win, but after this I am done.

 

[svoboda]

Bear’s link proves that she was wrong:

vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_31121930_casti-connubii_en.html

The observance of this sacrament is such in the City of God . . . that is, in the Church of Christ, that when for the sake of begetting children, women marry or are taken to wife, it is wrong to leave a wife that is sterile in order to take another by whom children may be hand

Since, therefore, **the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, ** those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious.

For in matrimony as well as in the use of the matrimonial rights there are also secondary ends, such as **mutual aid, the cultivating of mutual love, and the quieting of concupiscence ** which **husband and wife are not forbidden to consider so long as they are subordinated to the primary end ** and so long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved.

These two passages confirm exactly what I said: that the primary purpose of sex was procreation, and that secondary ends of marriage and the martial act are mutual aid, mtual love, and THE QUIETING OF CONCUPISCENCE

Love is mentioned, but among secondary aids such as mutual help and fight against concupiscence.

Guess what, this is nearly exactly what I said. I am done reading this letter.

Moving on to the second one:
papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13cmr.htm

There are some good things here:

Secondly, the mutual duties of husband and wife have been defined, and their several rights accurately established. They are bound, namely, to have such feelings for one another as to cherish always very great mutual love, to be ever faithful to their marriage vow, and to give one another an unfailing and unselfish help.

But this is not about the unitive vs. procreative aspects of sex, which was the original question.

I don’t have the energy to read it, but I skimmed through it and didn’t find anything about sex, or procreation, or the relative importance of procreative and unitive aspects of sex.

I am not going to bother, either way, Pius Xi’s Casti Connubii did explain them and proved my point.

---

For my last comment I want to make clear that there is a lot of good in both of those letters, for example both popes talk about wifely obedience to their husbands, but soften it by talking about how it is a loving obedience, how the wife is a companion, not a servant. They talk about the holiness of marriage, the evil of divorce, they say many good things.

Those popes were by no means cruel or stupid, they were very likely doing their best, and like all human beings they had some good things to say, some bad things to say (i.e. the whole idea of obedience in general), and some well meant things that show an imperfect understanding (i.e. the whole primary is procreative, secondary is love and aid to overcome concupiscence).

I think there is a lot of wisdom in Church teaching, but clearly it changes (Vatican II vs. that encyclical), I have no reason to believe it will not continue to change.

 

[svoboda]

And you know what, that it changes doesn’t mean it’s not from God, nor not “infallible”. Even within Catholicism infallible doesn’t mean perfect or final, it just means it contains no errors, and infallibility only applies to very specific teachings, not anything the pope says.

There is another encyclical, Humani Generis, which suggests that we literally had to have had two parents, that polygenism a.k.a. evolution was contrary to Catholic teaching.

Pope John Paul II wrote about htis subject and says that we probably had a number of first parents, or something along those lines.

He knew what he was talking about. Something written in a Pope’s letter doesn’t mean it is infallible. There are things written in popes’ lettesr (i.e. condemning the idea that burning heretics is against the will fo the spirit) that now nearly everyone within the Church disagrees with.

It is possible to change without breaking the whole system. See change as our gradually improving understanding of God’s teaching.

 

[setter]

Originally Posted by fix
Wrong. They have not supprssed their fertility.

svoboda:

You are right, **there is no fertility ** to suppress. But I refined my position in the post about sex for unitive purposes alone. Better to keep this focused on whether teaching on ABC can be changed.

Why this persistence in denying the male fertility as just as viable a component to the procreative aspect of the marital act? You are beginning to come across as a sexist.

There is openness to life in the husband’s procreative potential, i.e., fertility, which NFP does not in any way suppress (i.e., “contra”, act against, frustrate in the marital act).

 

[WorBlux]

It is not the ends of contraception that is immoral, but it’s means. Using NFP to avoid pregnany is acceptable to avoid conception in order to wait for more secure finances, space children, or where the health of the mother is a concern. ABC can in no way shape or form be considered unitive, is is disunitive.

Love that fears its consequent is not love at all, but is something entirely else.

NFP although it can be used to very effectively prevent conception, does not fear the consequence of it’s love. There is no denial of the fertility of either partner, instead it is a recognizence of it, a moitering of fertility and a concious joint effort to avoid conception until such a time that it is more fitting

 

[setter]

WorBlux:

NFP although it can be used to very effectively prevent conception, does not fear the consequence of it’s love. There is no denial of the fertility of either partner, instead it is a recognizence of it, a moitering of fertility and a concious joint effort to avoid conception until such a time that it is more fitting

A word to clarify in your otherwise accurate statement:

NFP does not “effectively prevent conception”, rather NFP “effectively avoids coneption”. “Prevent” carries the connotation of to impede or counter in advance, which is NOT what NFP does in practice or intent.

 

[bear06]

Maybe you shouldn’t read so late. The whole premise is that if we do not have this conjugal faith, we cannot raise our children as we out. They have to go hand in hand.
First of all you seemed to miss the wonderful teachings before your quote. It’s also intesting that your arguments seem to have changed. First it was that the Church didn’t teach of the unitive aspect before Vatican II and now it’s that they are not on an equal par. The Church teaches that they are intertwined and cannot be separated.

Here’s some of the beautiful quotes on the unitive aspect of marriage:

1. By matrimony, therefore, the souls of the contracting parties are joined and knit together more directly and more intimately than are their bodies, and that not by any passing affection of sense of spirit, but by a deliberate and firm act of the will; and from this union of souls by God’s decree, a sacred and inviolable bond arises.

I’m sure you’re goingt to say that it doesn’t have anything to so with sex but you’d be wrong since there is not marriage without it!

These," says St. Augustine, “are all the blessings of matrimony on account of which matrimony itself is a blessing; offspring, conjugal faith and the sacrament.”[10] And how under these three heads is contained a splendid summary of the whole doctrine of Christian marriage, the holy Doctor himself expressly declares when he said: "By conjugal faith it is provided that there should be no carnal intercourse outside the marriage bond with another man or woman; with regard to offspring, that children should be begotten of love, tenderly cared for and educated in a religious atmosphere; finally, in its sacramental aspect that the marriage bond should not be broken and that a husband or wife, if separated, should not be joined to another even for the sake of offspring.

1. Wherefore, conjugal faith, or honor, demands in the first place the complete unity of matrimony which the Creator Himself laid down in the beginning when He wished it to be not otherwise than between one man and one woman. And although afterwards this primeval law was relaxed to some extent by God, the Supreme Legislator, there is no doubt that the law of the Gospel fully restored that original and perfect unity, and abrogated all dispensations as the words of Christ and the constant teaching and action of the Church show plainly. With reason, therefore, does the Sacred Council of Trent solemnly declare: “Christ Our Lord very clearly taught that in this bond two persons only are to be united and joined together when He said: ‘Therefore they are no longer two, but one flesh’.”[21]

There is not change between HV and these documents. They are both consistent.

 

[Kirane]

WorBlux:

It is not the ends of contraception that is immoral, but it’s means.

I don’t think that this is true according to papal statements which say that it is wrong to defeat the primary purpose of marriage.

 

[bear06]

Kirane:

I don’t think that this is true according to papal statements which say that it is wrong to defeat the primary purpose of marriage.

You might want to read the Humanae Vitae.

 

[svoboda]

bear06:

Maybe you shouldn’t read so late. The whole premise is that if we do not have this conjugal faith, we cannot raise our children as we out. They have to go hand in hand.
First of all you seemed to miss the wonderful teachings before your quote. It’s also intesting that your arguments seem to have changed. First it was that the Church didn’t teach of the unitive aspect before Vatican II and now it’s that they are not on an equal par. The Church teaches that they are intertwined and cannot be separated.

Here’s some of the beautiful quotes on the unitive aspect of marriage:
I’m sure you’re goingt to say that it doesn’t have anything to so with sex but you’d be wrong since there is not marriage without it!

There is not change between HV and these documents. They are both consistent.

But the conversation here is about sex, about the unitive and procreative aspects of sex, and about their relative importance.

Piux XI defined those two very clearly and prioritized them very clearly in the post I provided.

Of course they acknowledged the love in marriage, they’d be inhuman not tol But when Piux XI chose to gave a clear definition he put love in the secondary purpose along with mutual help and fight against concupiscence.

He did not elevate it to the same level as the begetting of children.

 

[bear06]

svoboda:

But the conversation here is about sex, about the unitive and procreative aspects of sex, and about their relative importance.

Piux XI defined those two very clearly and prioritized them very clearly in the post I provided.

Of course they acknowledged the love in marriage, they’d be inhuman not tol But when Piux XI chose to gave a clear definition he put love in the secondary purpose along with mutual help and fight against concupiscence.

He did not elevate it to the same level as the begetting of children.

And? Are they intertwined? They are quite relative as the document states. The Church has always taught of the unitive aspect for marriage and it’s necessity. Right?

 

[John_Higgins]

Finally, it is for parents to take a thorough look at the matter and decide upon the number of their children. This is an obligation they take upon themselves, before their children already born, and before the community to which they belong—following the dictates of their own consciences informed by God’s law authentically interpreted, and bolstered by their trust in Him.

How 'bout guessing who wrote this?

John