What 10 Priests Say About Contraception

[Brendan_64]

Please, check the work of married couples that were part of the HV commission.

And you are saying that that proves, as a fact, that abstinence is bad for people’s health?

 

[Brendan_64]

I think it would be more accurate to say: “I have not met a Catholic in the last 40 years who doesn’t know that the Church says contraception is a sin”.

I know plenty of Catholics who claim it isn’t a sin. They certainly can’t claim invincible ignorance. They probably cannot claim a well-formed conscience either. But they all think the Church is wrong, or for various reasons, the teaching doesn’t apply to them. You might get the odd one to admit “yeah, I know it’s a sin, but I’m just too weak to follow that teaching”.

Somehow, the message hasn’t gotten through. Or rather, that it has and has been fairly widely rejected, is probably more accurate to say.

Let’s just all admit that the marketing on this teaching has failed abysmally.

I would say that it’s a symptom of the moral relativism and the cult of individualism that pervades our society. People are encouraged to decide what is right for them personally, and think that so long as what they do doesn’t interfere with whatever someone else wants to do then nobody has the right to tell them that it is wrong. That culture that is ingrained in the West, so much so that many Catholics embrace it as part of their notion of ‘freedom’ and ‘human rights’, even though this culture is counter to the Catholic faith.

And many in our clergy haven’t helped with this. We have a crisis in catechesis in our Church. Many priests are afraid to teach anything that runs counter to this prevailing, secular culture, for fear of upsetting people and being accused of being ‘unwelcoming’ or ‘judgemental’. And how many Catholics today have even opened a Catechism?

It’s not about ‘marketing’, it’s about teaching the Faith clearly and about challenging the prevailing culture of individualism and moral relativism, not marketing ourselves to accommodate this cultural mindset.

 

[Jaaanosik]

Masturbation (any sort) is a sin against chastity, and is sinful for very similar reasons that contraception is. But that doesn’t mean one should include it in the definition of contraception.

There is no doubt that many people struggle with this topic. But then again, we live in a culture that fundamentally mis-understands what sex IS, so is that really surprising?

God made humanity, right? God has clearly indicated that the sexual relationship is of serious moral import, right (It’s in the 10 commandments, for crying out loud). So why is it so hard to believe that God may have given significant revelations to help Christians avoid pitfalls related to our human fallen-ness?

You seem to have no small amount of bitterness in regards to NFP and some of that may be due to poor explanations by catholics over the years that lead to faulty expectations. NFP itself is NOT good for a marriage. What’s good for marriage is open communications, mutual respect and willingness to sacrifice for one’s beloved. The practice of NFP to avoid pregnancy requires all those things, but does not produce them. You gotta work at it. NFP does add stress to life because it is NOT the catholic alternative to contraception. It’s the catholic alternative to total abstinence when prudence dictates non-pregnancy. Viewed in that light, it’s not so bad!

Open communication, mutual respect and willingness to sacrifice is not dependent on NFP. These are good things for marriage and they can be achieved many ways.
Why the total abstinence or NFP way of achieving them is being enforced on married couples?

As you allude to, both contraception and maturbation violate the purpose of sexual union in the first place. I think HV is right, but that doesn’t mean it explains things perfectly. One of the problems (IMO) is that it suggests a substantial difference between the unitive and procreative facets of human sexuality in such a way as to almost invite thinking of them as separate topics. They aren’t. They are no more separate than different facets of a diamond. You can’t intentionally cut off one facet of a diamond and not damage the beauty of the other. Human sexuality is a tangled up, messy, beautiful and wonderful thing within the bounds of chastity. But like almost all good things, it can be warped and made harmful. Contraception (and mutual masturbation) changes what the sexual encounter between man and wife IS. It subtly removes the self-giving aspect while growing the selfish aspect.

You can find plenty of catholics who disagree with the church. And that group will have divorce rates absolutely no different from the general public at large. I’ve been married 15 years and seen the carnage in my secular and lukewarm catholic friends over and over. I also have dozens of friends who have from the beginning of their marriage accepted church teaching on the subject and done their best to be faithful to it. Know how many of them are divorced? None.

None.

They appear as separate topics. The unitive aspect is a goal of a marital act. The procreative aspect is not a goal, it’s a way how to have sex.

The way how to have sex should not be a goal. It just does not make sense. But it sure looks like it’s being presented that way.

 

[Jaaanosik]

And you are saying that that proves, as a fact, that abstinence is bad for people’s health?

There is a percentage of people who are negatively affected by NFP.
That’s the reality, that’s the fact.

 

[LongingSoul]

There is a percentage of people who are negatively affected by NFP.
That’s the reality, that’s the fact.

Only if they are desiring more control over it than nature and God affords them. That’s like saying some people are negatively affected by rainy weather or some people are negatively affected by having daily baths.

 

[manualman]

1. Open communication, mutual respect and willingness to sacrifice is not dependent on NFP. These are good things for marriage and they can be achieved many ways.
2. Why the total abstinence or NFP way of achieving them is being enforced on married couples?
3. They appear as separate topics. The unitive aspect is a goal of a marital act. The procreative aspect is not a goal, it’s a way how to have sex.

The way how to have sex should not be a goal. It just does not make sense. But it sure looks like it’s being presented that way.

1. We agree here at least as far as the words you wrote go. Too many NFP advocates claim that NFP itself is good for the marriage. It’s not. It’s just that NFP REQUIRES those virtues if the marriage is to thrive. When those virtues are lacking (or when health issues severely obscure fertility symptoms), NFP is very tough to live. NFP is helpful to marriage like the canary in the coal mine was once helpful to the health of miners. The canary did not do a single thing to protect the lungs of the miners directly. What it did was die well before the miners and in so doing provide an early warning signal of bad air so they could get respirators on in time (or get out). If a couple without serious health issues interfering with fertility symptoms can’t practice NFP without major stress, something is already wrong with the marriage that needs to be addressed ASAP.
2. Because taking action to sterilize sex changes what sex IS and makes it less than it was before.
3. They appear so only because you are a product of your culture and have been imbued with a view of sexuality chopped into bits your whole life. Such a view didn’t prevail anywhere in Christendom until just over 100 years ago. That’s a blip in time. And don’t fool yourself that contraception is anything new. It’s as old as humanity.

The goal is to convince people to accept human sexuality as it is, rather than as we’d prefer to “improve” it to. God is simply better at designing complex physical / spiritual interactions than we are. He made the unitive and procreative tangled up together and the reasons run deep. We are arrogant fools to declare that God goofed and accidentally tangled the procreative and unitive aspects of sex together and that we’ve advanced now to where we can fix that for Him. We barely begin to scratch the surface of understanding how this all works, yet we’re prepared to discard 2,000 years of church teaching and revelation on the matter? Pride beyond words, which is why it leads to such a fall for so many couples.

 

[Jaaanosik]

Only if they are desiring more control over it than nature and God affords them. That’s like saying some people are negatively affected by rainy weather or some people are negatively affected by having daily baths.

God gave us a natural way of moving - walking and running.
Isn’t a car, a human invention, desiring more control over it than nature and God afford us?

There is nothing wrong with desiring the control.

 

[Brendan_64]

There is a percentage of people who are negatively affected by NFP.
That’s the reality, that’s the fact.

And of course we can’t do anything, or abstain from anything, if it might ‘negatively affect’ us, can we? I know people who are ‘negatively affected’ from reducing their alcohol intake, I also know people who are ‘negatively affected’ if they don’t eat chocolate or cream cakes. I even know people who think they are ‘negatively affected’ if they don’t go away for a fortnight’s holiday every year.

Life isn’t meant to be a cosy bunch of roses. Life can be tough and involves things that appear to affect us negatively. If we base our judgement of the rightness or wrongness of an act on whether it affects us negatively or positively then we really are on the wrong track. It wasn’t a bunch of roses for Christ as a man when he was nailed to the cross.

 

[Jaaanosik]

1. We agree here at least as far as the words you wrote go. Too many NFP advocates claim that NFP itself is good for the marriage. It’s not. It’s just that NFP REQUIRES those virtues if the marriage is to thrive. When those virtues are lacking (or when health issues severely obscure fertility symptoms), NFP is very tough to live. NFP is helpful to marriage like the canary in the coal mine was once helpful to the health of miners. The canary did not do a single thing to protect the lungs of the miners directly. What it did was die well before the miners and in so doing provide an early warning signal of bad air so they could get respirators on in time (or get out). If a couple without serious health issues interfering with fertility symptoms can’t practice NFP without major stress, something is already wrong with the marriage that needs to be addressed ASAP.
2. Because taking action to sterilize sex changes what sex IS and makes it less than it was before.
3. They appear so only because you are a product of your culture and have been imbued with a view of sexuality chopped into bits your whole life. Such a view didn’t prevail anywhere in Christendom until just over 100 years ago. That’s a blip in time. And don’t fool yourself that contraception is anything new. It’s as old as humanity.
4. The goal is to convince people to accept human sexuality as it is, rather than as we’d prefer to “improve” it to. God is simply better at designing complex physical / spiritual interactions than we are. He made the unitive and procreative tangled up together and the reasons run deep. We are arrogant fools to declare that God goofed and accidentally tangled the procreative and unitive aspects of sex together and that we’ve advanced now to where we can fix that for Him. We barely begin to scratch the surface of understanding how this all works, yet we’re prepared to discard 2,000 years of church teaching and revelation on the matter? Pride beyond words, which is why it leads to such a fall for so many couples.

1. It can be less in one way but it can be more in the other way. That’s as generic answer as yours.
2. God is better, God is the best, still how come we don’t walk everywhere? Why do we use cars?

 

[manualman]

1. It can be less in one way but it can be more in the other way. That’s as generic answer as yours.
2. God is better, God is the best, still how come we don’t walk everywhere? Why do we use cars?

1. And if this was my reasoning against yours, that would be a tie. But it’s your reasoning versus that of 2,000 years of apostles, saints and doctors of the church. But I’m sure you’re right…
2. You prove my point. Sexual intimacy is degraded in your view to the point where it has no deeper meaning than transportation? Wow. Stepping aside the issue of magnitude, there is still a difference of substance. Method of transportation doesn’t engage any significant aspect of who we are as human beings. And yet even still, the advent of totally car reliant people HAS had the negative effect of creating a society in poor physical condition and with an epidemic of obesity. Does that make the car wrong? No, because method of transportation is a trivial part of who we are as human beings and yet we STILL do a bad job on the whole of mitigating the negative side effects. This only illustrates the hopelessness of expecting to be able to compensate for the negative side effects of purposely and fundamentally altering one of the most intimate areas of human experience.

 

[Mulligan2]

I would say that it’s a symptom of the moral relativism and the cult of individualism that pervades our society. People are encouraged to decide what is right for them personally, and think that so long as what they do doesn’t interfere with whatever someone else wants to do then nobody has the right to tell them that it is wrong. That culture that is ingrained in the West, so much so that many Catholics embrace it as part of their notion of ‘freedom’ and ‘human rights’, even though this culture is counter to the Catholic faith.

And many in our clergy haven’t helped with this. We have a crisis in catechesis in our Church. Many priests are afraid to teach anything that runs counter to this prevailing, secular culture, for fear of upsetting people and being accused of being ‘unwelcoming’ or ‘judgemental’. And how many Catholics today have even opened a Catechism?

It’s not about ‘marketing’, it’s about teaching the Faith clearly and about challenging the prevailing culture of individualism and moral relativism, not marketing ourselves to accommodate this cultural mindset.

I’m going to respectfully disagree with your combining the concepts of moral relativism and individualism, especially in relation to the concepts of ‘rights’. ‘Rights’ - by their very nature - are individual, and refer to freedom of action. An individual is free to pursue their own goals in accordance with their own voluntary, un-coerced choices. And the rights of an individual impose no obligation on others. This is the basis for a free and just society. There isn’t anything relative about it.

 

[Brendan_64]

I’m going to respectfully disagree with your combining the concepts of moral relativism and individualism, especially in relation to the concepts of ‘rights’. ‘Rights’ - by their very nature - are individual, and refer to freedom of action. An individual is free to pursue their own goals in accordance with their own voluntary, un-coerced choices. And the rights of an individual impose no obligation on others. This is the basis for a free and just society. There isn’t anything relative about it.

And the concept that one ought to be free to do whatever one wants so long as it doesn’t interfere too much with the right of someone else to do what they want is by its nature relativist. As Catholics we are not individual islands determining our own ‘rights’. Right and wrong are not relative and individual, they are absolute. Individualism is by its very nature relativism, and leads to a notion that holds that “I ought to be able to do exactly what I like, just so long as it doesn’t interfere with too much with other people’s right to do what they like.” This does lead to moral relativism on an individual basis.

 

[Corki]

There is a percentage of people who are negatively affected by NFP.
That’s the reality, that’s the fact.

No one is negatively affected physically by using NFP. Now, it’s entirely possible that some people will resist using NFP when called to and that will affect them negatively - as in they might be unhappy. But that’s the case with lots of things in life.

If you are a diabetic, there are certain foods you can’t eat. Does that affect you negatively? Eating those foods would make you sick and not eating them might make you somewhat unhappy.

If you are an alcoholic, you cannot drink spirits. Does that make you unhappy? Quite possibly. It would if it were me. But it doesn’t mean that abstinence is bad for you or that it affects you negatively.

Same thing with NFP. Can periodic abstinence make you unhappy? Possibly. But the alternative is much less healthy.

 

[Mulligan2]

And the concept that one ought to be free to do whatever one wants so long as it doesn’t interfere too much with the right of someone else to do what they want is by its nature relativist. As Catholics we are not individual islands determining our own ‘rights’. Right and wrong are not relative and individual, they are absolute. Individualism is by its very nature relativism, and leads to a notion that holds that “I ought to be able to do exactly what I like, just so long as it doesn’t interfere with too much with other people’s right to do what they like.” This does lead to moral relativism on an individual basis.

Pursuing your own rational self-interest, and respecting the same of others, is not relative. It’s absolute, and is the basis for the best societies. Those societies that have thought otherwise, and that have either subjugated individual rights, or pushed collective rights enforced via government force, have been the least moral of the last century.

 

[Brendan_64]

Pursuing your own rational self-interest, and respecting the same of others, is not relative. It’s absolute, and is the basis for the best societies…

That depends what those self interests are. If those self interests are objectively immoral then that is hardly the basis for the best society. Surely the basis for a just society is objective morality, not personal self-interest?

Those societies that have thought otherwise, and that have either subjugated individual rights, or pushed collective rights enforced via government force, have been the least moral of the last century.

This is getting way off-topic and heading towards the realms of secular right-left politics.

As Christians we are not individual islands pursuing our own self-interests, we are a communion, we are the Body of Christ on Earth. What one of us does affects all of us, specifically with regard to sin. There is no such thing as a private immoral act that does not hurt the rest of the body of Christ on Earth. Therefore what a person does in private is not simply his purely private business. Sin is not just an action between a man and God, it is an action that hurts us all.

As Catholics we are not individual self-sufficient islands, we are communion that is obedient to the authority of the Church. Pope Leo XIII condemned the separation of Church and State and spoke against the over-emphasis on individual initiative, which was deemed incompatible with Catholicism.

 

[DerekTM]

Neuroscience has demonstrated that regardless of whether or not sexual intercourse produces children it does strengthen intimacy. It is a biological fact. Sex and physical contact between intimate partners increases oxytocin and facilitates emotional bonding.

 

[Brendan_64]

Neuroscience has demonstrated that regardless of whether or not sexual intercourse produces children it does strengthen intimacy.

That may well be so, but is sex therefore a tool to be used in this way, as a utilitarian tool to strengthen intimacy? No doubt the same would apply to unmarried couples and to homosexuals, so does that therefore make it justifiable? Do the perceived health benefits of an action determine the morality of that action? To a lot of people I guess it would, but from a Catholic standpoint this utilitarian approach to sexual intercourse is wrong.

 

[manualman]

Neuroscience has demonstrated that regardless of whether or not sexual intercourse produces children it does strengthen intimacy. It is a biological fact. Sex and physical contact between intimate partners increases oxytocin and facilitates emotional bonding.

Of course it does. It’s also a biological fact that without the intake of calories, you will die. This is hardly a license for indiscriminate and gluttonous calorie intake. Don’t mistake my meaning in the comparison, the issue with intimacy is not quantity, it’s substance. The emotional bonding is fundamentally damaged when the couple is telling each other “I don’t want your fertility” while their bodies are saying what is supposed to be “I love you so much that I’m ready to make babies with you.”

 

[Jaaanosik]

1. And if this was my reasoning against yours, that would be a tie. But it’s your reasoning versus that of 2,000 years of apostles, saints and doctors of the church. But I’m sure you’re right…
2. You prove my point. Sexual intimacy is degraded in your view to the point where it has no deeper meaning than transportation? Wow. Stepping aside the issue of magnitude, there is still a difference of substance. Method of transportation doesn’t engage any significant aspect of who we are as human beings. And yet even still, the advent of totally car reliant people HAS had the negative effect of creating a society in poor physical condition and with an epidemic of obesity. Does that make the car wrong? No, because method of transportation is a trivial part of who we are as human beings and yet we STILL do a bad job on the whole of mitigating the negative side effects. This only illustrates the hopelessness of expecting to be able to compensate for the negative side effects of purposely and fundamentally altering one of the most intimate areas of human experience.

1. No, the sexual intimacy is not degraded. It’s important and fundamental to our existence as transportation.
   If transportation does not affect you as a human being then it should be easy for you to stop using any car or any means of transportation for a month or a year. Would you do that experiment?

We are talking about morality of human acts here. Cars or condoms are just objects. They can not be right or wrong in a moral sense.

Having said that the comparison between having sex in a natural way and walking in a natural way (not using any other means of transportation) seems to be as good as it can be.

 

[Jaaanosik]

And of course we can’t do anything, or abstain from anything, if it might ‘negatively affect’ us, can we? I know people who are ‘negatively affected’ from reducing their alcohol intake, I also know people who are ‘negatively affected’ if they don’t eat chocolate or cream cakes. I even know people who think they are ‘negatively affected’ if they don’t go away for a fortnight’s holiday every year.

Life isn’t meant to be a cosy bunch of roses. Life can be tough and involves things that appear to affect us negatively. If we base our judgement of the rightness or wrongness of an act on whether it affects us negatively or positively then we really are on the wrong track. It wasn’t a bunch of roses for Christ as a man when he was nailed to the cross.

Life is tough enough on it’s own. It’s not good enough, let’s make it even tougher. Right?