What 10 Priests Say About Contraception

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Corki said:
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.
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“… as in they might be unhappy.” - that’s a diminishing description.

One of the biggest issues is underestimating of sexual power.
Just reading how many bad things happen because of sex is a never ending list.

It seems that’s where Vatican missed the mark.
The issue is so big that majority of Catholics ignore Church’s teaching. That’s a big thing by itself and it proves the power of sex drive.
 
I think the lack of that aspect of bonding in extended abstinence makes marriage harder. Also, being in a marriage that is not sacramental when it could be sacramental makes marriage harder.

I agree that use of contraception seems to overlay a communication to each other that is difficult to pin down, but real, and may cause an increase in hardship.

Hardship is not the determinant of the moral course of action. But hardship is real.
 
Jaaanosik said:
Life is tough enough on it’s own. It’s not good enough, let’s make it even tougher. Right?
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So we should just go ahead and sin because it makes life a little bit easier?

Hedonism is not the answer.

Our decisions on how we act should not be based on whether or not the action makes our life easier or harder, our decision should be based on what is morally right. We are called to do as Christ did, we are not called to make our decisions in order not to mkae our life tougher.

And anyway, the vast majority of us living in the West have no idea at all what a really tough life is.

Ask the Christian exiles fleeing from Mosul because they refused to convert to Islam. How easy was it for those poor souls in Mosul who faced death (some by crucifixion, others by beheading) for refusing to convert to Islam. Would it have been better if they took the option that didn’t make their life tougher?
 
Jaaanosik said:
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.
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Yeah, right. You find taking a walk and being intimate with your wife to be roughly equally profound experiences of being human. Sure. :rolleyes: I actually hope you’re being deliberately obtuse, because if you’re serious, just. wow.
 
Jaaanosik said:
One of the biggest issues is underestimating of sexual power.
Just reading how many bad things happen because of sex is a never ending list.

It seems that’s where Vatican missed the mark.
***The issue is so big that majority of Catholics ignore Church’s teaching. ***That’s a big thing by itself and it proves the power of sex drive.
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That’s such a crock. The majority of Catholics also support so-called same sex marriage. The majority of Catholics favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt children. The majority of Catholics support women priests. Catholics are equally divided on the legality of abortion. So according to your way of thinking, if the majority of Catholics support something, they must be right…right? :rolleyes:

Peace, Mark
 
Contraception has been the harbinger of a whole host of social evils. It enabled the sexual revolution; it enables fornication, adultery, cohabitation. It unlinks children from marriage and brings about single mothers, absent fathers, broken families. We seem to forget that for the first 400 years following the Reformation, every Protestant denomination had the exact same teaching about contraception as the Catholic Church did and still does.

I’m not going to go into the list of all the evils brought about by contraception. I’ll just recommend Mary Eberstadt’s book “Adam and Eve” after the Pill" for a recitation of the sorry statistics.
 
JimG said:
Contraception has been the harbinger of a whole host of social evils. It enabled the sexual revolution; it enables fornication, adultery, cohabitation. It unlinks children from marriage and brings about single mothers, absent fathers, broken families. We seem to forget that for the first 400 years following the Reformation, every Protestant denomination had the exact same teaching about contraception as the Catholic Church did and still does.

I’m not going to go into the list of all the evils brought about by contraception. I’ll just recommend Mary Eberstadt’s book “Adam and Eve” after the Pill" for a recitation of the sorry statistics.
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I agree that marriage should not be separated from procreation. Without procreation, marriage is meaningless.

I think by spending so much energy on ensuring that every sex act is done in a specific way, that we are wasting energy that could otherwise be directed toward supporting a social structure that would encourage people to live in a such a way as to reduce the social ills you listed.

This very narrow focus on precluding even a single use of contraception has come to the point where it has lost any substantial value toward producing anything positive.

Banning contraceptives is not going to solve any problems. Building a society where people willingly live as we hope they will is what will produce the outcome we are seeking.
 
Thinking10 said:
I agree that marriage should not be separated from procreation. Without procreation, marriage is meaningless.

I think by spending so much energy on ensuring that every sex act is done in a specific way, that we are wasting energy that could otherwise be directed toward supporting a social structure that would encourage people to live in a such a way as to reduce the social ills you listed.

This very narrow focus on precluding even a single use of contraception has come to the point where it has lost any substantial value toward producing anything positive.

Banning contraceptives is not going to solve any problems. Building a society where people willingly live as we hope they will is what will produce the outcome we are seeking.
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Certainly, as you said, without procreation, marriage is meaningless. And contraception directly separates marriage from procreation. It turns children into optional products. That is why over the past decades, marriage has indeed become increasingly meaningless. It is why young people are less interested in marriage. And why more people are interested in cohabitation. It’s what led to gay marriage.

It’s pretty simple. Don’t separate the procreative power of the conjugal act. It leads to bad results. Keeping the simple integrity of the conjugal act and keeping it within marriage leads to good results.
 
Jaaanosik said:
  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.
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I think that’s the trouble. You are only viewing sex as a merely perfunctory activity like driving. It serves a practical purpose in getting kids and can be pleasurable. In your model, its value is as a personal service like being able to get from a to b and then sometimes just having a nice drive in the country with no functional purpose except pleasure.

In Catholic terms, as well as its human purpose, intercourse between a man and woman is an expression of communion in the divine sense. Within the strict bounds of marriage, it serves a higher human purpose and a divine purpose. Even pre Jewish/Christian societies held sexual relations in a sacred sense surrounded by taboos, as having a connection to societal welfare in general.

Sex is not primarily a perfunctory service. It is more like recieving Holy Communion than driving. You might say why should I have to be in a state of grace and meeting such strict requirements to receive Holy Communion? Isn’t it supposed to *give me grace to change *and serve a functional purpose? But no, it has greater meaning in the Catholic faith than as a service. It takes us to the presence of the Lord where He died for our sins on Calvary. We have to be in a state of grace to go to be there otherwise our reception of the host is relegating the act a service to our personal view of it. It demeans the sacred to deliberately ignore the requirements.
 
JimG said:
Certainly, as you said, without procreation, marriage is meaningless. And contraception directly separates marriage from procreation. It turns children into optional products. That is why over the past decades, marriage has indeed become increasingly meaningless. It is why young people are less interested in marriage. And why more people are interested in cohabitation. It’s what led to gay marriage.

It’s pretty simple. Don’t separate the procreative power of the conjugal act. It leads to bad results. Keeping the simple integrity of the conjugal act and keeping it within marriage leads to good results.
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A simple object does nothing on its own. People determine how objects are used.

Contraception does not cut off a marriage from children. Suppose the Duggars used a condom one time or ten times. They have 19 children, and a few uses of a condom would do nothing to change that.

You can influence how people behave by doing your part to create an environment where people feel a desire not to separate procreation from marriage.

Are people rewarded for having children?
Are they encouraged by the people around them to have children?
Are they surrounded by people who value children and family life?
Is there incentive to have children?

People are influenced in their behavior by what is socially normal and acceptable.

This focus on how sex must be done is far too narrow in my opinion. I think the people strictly standing for this teaching need to step back and look at the bigger picture. They aren’t promoting any sort of moral principles, or any teachings that will improve anyone’s life. It is dogma for dogma’s sake, and all other aspects of marriage and raising children are overlooked for this very specific definition of how one particular action should be done.

Our social structure is falling apart. We need to work on improving our relationships with other people, and creating a way of life that promotes living morally, and supporting each other for the common good. We should be supportive of married couples who have multiple children.

If a couple has four or five children, gives them the best upbringing they can provide, has sex with no one but their spouse, lives by a respectable moral code, and does their part in supporting themselves by their work and contributing to their community, what more can you ask for? Does it really matter to anyone whether they abstain or not?
 
I don’t see Catholic teaching as a narrow focus on ‘how sex must be done.’ Indeed, sex is a natural thing, it’s the contraceptive mentality that wishes to interfere with it, not Catholicism, which is in line with nature.

Our social structure is indeed falling apart. It began falling apart with the widespread acceptance and use of contraception, which took something natural and made it complicated. It made children an optional ancillary, or even a product to be bought and paid for, or to be discarded if defective. And as I mentioned before, it enabled a host of social ills, including gay marriage. Because when marriage becomes meaningless, anything goes, families disintegrate, women become objects.
 
JimG said:
I don’t see Catholic teaching as a narrow focus on ‘how sex must be done.’ Indeed, sex is a natural thing, it’s the contraceptive mentality that wishes to interfere with it, not Catholicism, which is in line with nature.

Our social structure is indeed falling apart. It began falling apart with the widespread acceptance and use of contraception, which took something natural and made it complicated. It made children an optional ancillary, or even a product to be bought and paid for, or to be discarded if defective. And as I mentioned before, it enabled a host of social ills, including gay marriage. Because when marriage becomes meaningless, anything goes, families disintegrate, women become objects.
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Contraception is an inanimate object. It can’t possibly be responsible for causing anything on its own.

People are to blame. The underlying cause of all the problems you list is people, and changing social norms. If we want to turn this disaster around, we need to start by reforming ourselves and how we relate to people. Look through the thread “Why do people leave the church.” It is a question we need to be asking ourselves.

We are having the problems we are in society not because of this or that incorrect object or action. It is because we ourselves are doing something wrong. People aren’t attracted to our way of life. We need to live in such a way that people are attracted to living as we do. We don’t need to accept radical modern views. We need to lead by example, and be people that others want to emulate.
 
The choices people make are indeed the problem. A great many people ignored the prophetic words of Humanae Vitae, ignoring the dangers of doing so, with the result that the dangers all came to pass with a vengeance.
 
Can you imagine all the Catholics who are guilty of rejecting Humanae Vitae without ever having read the document(I am ashamed to say that the list includes me)?
 
Hello BBen.
bbentrup said:
I enjoyed all their wise reflections, but I want to address your methodology point. The answers in collective fail to impress me anymore than the individual answers. For all I know, the editor is selectively quoting each priest, and possibly culling only ten favorable responses from a much wider selection of, say, 100 responses, some of which may disagree with the editor’s personal point of view. In light of that, the forum would be more impressive if I knew who was going to be asked what beforehand and that each priest quoted was quoted in full (assign a mandatory maximum word count if needed). These checks keeps the method more honest and gives the message even stronger force.
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It wouldn’t matter if only ten Priests out of all the Priests in the USA agreed with Church teaching that contraception is morally reprehensible and cannot be reconciled to living an authentic married life, whether Catholic or not, for anyone. The Church is not a democracy and if they voted on it and the 10 faithful Priests were out numbered, it wouldn’t change the teaching of the Church on this issue. It would only prove there are only 10 faithful Priests left in the country. So, the numbers crunch in this regard is simply showing how many may be faithful in this matter and thusly can be trusted to remain faithful in other matters. If I were on the fence about the whole contraception issue it might be helpful to help me hop off on the right side, but if I need to go with the flow and the majority said “Go ahead, contracept. God will understand your needs and fears,” and I used this as my excuse, then I’d be as wrong as all those in the majority.

Glenda
 
Hello Katholish.
Katholish said:
I am the editor of Catholic Household, and assembled the article.

That is good advice. This is just the first in a series of “What 10 Priests Say” posts.
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I suspected this is so. Congratulations on the delivery of your baby! Keep up the good works! I’ve added it to my favorites and hope to use it for further dialog here at CAF and elsewhere, so please, get busy and fill 'er up!

Glenda
 
Hello Crow.
theCrow said:
A few other thoughts:
  1. Using Contraception will greatly and I mean HUGELY reduce abortions and STDs, this is a FACT. So wouldn’t that be a GOOD thing, especially in some hard hit third world countries.
  2. Most young people are having sex for pleasure and yes, as an expression of LOVE. Of course it can be for LUST, but I know many committed couples who have been together for years, even decades, both married and unmarried who obviously are having lots of sex.
So some good logical points to think about.
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Point #1: the Pill causes a chemical abortion when contraception occurs. This is a fact.

Point#2: having been both young and lustful and married and procreative, I can say one cannot be confused with the other. To call one the other is proof one has only experienced the former and simply has a fondness for or a preference towards a particular partner at that time.

Glenda
 
Hello LostSheep.
Lost_Sheep said:
People who advocate abstinence obviously have never had sex. They make it sound so easy.
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Sorry, but I’m a widow and have been for quite a few years. I’ve had plenty of sex and enjoy my permanently abstinent state. And guess what? Christ makes it easy. Those of us who rely on Him, rely on Him for everything and that includes the grace to remain abstinent. Does it occur to you to even ask for this grace? Those who get married so they can have sex have no clue to even ask for chastity inside their marriages. DUH. You need it there too to preserve the marital innocence that was given by God in the Nuptial Rites on your wedding day until death do you part. A no brainer to those of us who’ve given serious consideration to** all **the reasons for marriage, not just the relieving of a burden to abstain until the wedding from sex.

Glenda
 
Hello Jaa.
Jaaanosik said:
If you missed it:

This is not healthy. I’ve seen this type of behavior to harm good families.
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Does that make everyone who is not currently sexually active unhealthy and what degree of unhealthy would you ascribe to them? Do they need medication for this? And does it include children and the elderly as well as all religious and priests? Just how unhealthy is abstinence? Give us some more info. Perhaps a scientific study or two and please include sources.

Glenda
 
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