To clarify my earlier response: I meant to say “no” to the general notion of “giving it the benefit of the doubt.” But really I should have pointed out that your talking about “even if you couldn’t determine if ovulation had occured” is really not relevant to the moral issue. The relevant issue is whether it could be determined whether our actions might be hostile to a newly conceived human being.
That is was well before Humane Vitae and at that time the full understanding of the morality of using the “pill” was not clearly well understood by everybody including Bishops, and that is why we got Humane Vitae. So we cannot use it as a reference for acceptance of behaviors as moral.
Would you be so kind to give a more detailed explanation of your thinking. I am not disagreeing with you, I just value your opinion and am trying to think more about this very specific scenario.
Yeah, it’s tough. On one hand, the hierarchy of the Church does give the USCCB jurisdiction to make these kind of decisions, but on the other hand it seems to contradict the logic behind the moral theology.
As someone pointed out in another thread, these kind of contradictions go away if you take “marital act” to mean sex within the context of marriage. In the other thread it is put forth that contraception outside of marriage is not itself necessarily disordered.
It was a dispensation given by their bishop. I forget the exact country and circumstances but they were not breaking the rules. I will look for the evidence.Prophylactic contraception - good phrase. I should’ve put that in the title of this thread.
My question is more about the unusual, extreme circumstances, not the average woman. Someone facing certain or near-certain rape, like some countries in Africa. In South Africa, 1 in 3 women has been raped!(news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/258446.stm)
I had never heard of these nuns in Central America taking prophylactic contraception. Was that allowed, or were they breaking the rules?
Item quivis respuendus est actus, qui, cum coniugale commercium vel praevidetur vel efficitur vel ad suos naturales exitus ducit, id tamquam finem obtinendum aut viam adhibendam intendat, ut procreatio impediatur.That is not correct. Consensual sex between a man and a woman is more uxorio and so even when it is wrong it is still subject to the same constraints. Rape by its own definition rejects the concept of consent from one of the two parties and so it is not anymore more uxorio.
I was wondering about that. The tests I mean. As I noted before, a woman is not pregnant until it implants - in other words, she could have conceived, but have a negative pregnancy test. You probably knew that; my question with the LH though is, if the LH level was high, how could you know if a woman is on the upswing of the LH surge or the downswing, without a previous specimen? Furthermore, some (most?) hospitals don’t test for LH on site, they send it out to reference labs. This takes several days so isn’t really helpful since emergency contraception works better the sooner after intercourse it is taken.
Why? We have the teaching here from the bishops. Why would we not listen? The reason that ABC is sinful is not because the chemical compounds are intrinsically sinful, or that we have an obligation to produce children through rape. Rather, it separates the procreative function from sex. Making sex unholy. It is a given that rape is unholy and therefore rape does not require a procreative function.
There is not such thing as a regional exception to moral law. This is the understanding of these shepherd and an application of moral law. It is their opinion of what Humanae Vitae teaches applied to this situation, just like your opinion that it does not teach it is your opinion. The encyclical did not address rape.
Here you go.
The LH surge is very brief and usually lasts about a day, often less than that. And it can be measured with a rapid test. Even if there was a need for a lab, most hospitals have one.
So what about the nuns in Bosnia or the Spanish nuns that were in the Congo? They are celibate and going to help destitute people. Should we just stop sending missionaries to warzones?
Given the principle of double effect, I actually find it easier to understand an allowance on condoms to prevent disease. But maybe in that case the Church was just taking a stand against freely passing them out.
A condom itself is not “evil”. The use of a condom in marriage is intrinsically wrong because the intention is to thwart the procreative end of the marital act in marriage. From this, a condom in rape is “morally irrelevant.”
There’s no such thing as 'fertilized egg" despite it falling into common usage. Once an egg is fertilised it is then called a zygote.
How about we just arm them with machine guns? That way they wont’ get raped in the first place.