Why Do Most Catholics Ignore Humane Vitae?

[CopticChristian]

I would like to broach this simple question. Is the problem with Catholics who ignore the teachings of the church on contraception, or with the teachings of the church?

One view of Catholic moral theology is that engaging in sexual intercourse with one’s spouse while wearing a barrier has the net effect of “using” one’s partner as a means to one’s own gratification. Well, I’d suggest that whoever wrote that probably hasn’t been in a position of trying to please one’s partner in bed. It’s not self-gratification, it’s mutual love.

I’m one of those shames of the Catholic Church – a divorced Catholic. But prior to that divorce, my ex-wife was advised by her doctors not to get pregnant again. I’m not going to divulge personal details, but suffice it to say that it was serious.

The loss of her ability to have more children was utterly devastating to my ex-wife. Did I think that I’d practice marital chastity, as my Church commands? Not for a second. To have her fertility taken out of her hands was a blow to her identity – having her sexuality dry up would be another whip of the lash. I wanted to comfort her, to make her feel whole and loved again. And I did not obey the church.

Yes, there are methods of effective “natural family planning” – which seem to me to be as natural as chewing a rough board. The “Calendar Days” approach is slip-shod effective. The thermometer approach? How natural is that? I know it works because it’s the flip side of how you optimize fertility naturally when trying to GET pregnant. But seriously, is any of that any less “self-gratifying” than artificial contraception?

I’m the last to argue that there’s not a downside to cheap and easy artificial contraception – the “demographic winter” notion is a real one facing a lot of countries, including urban centers in places like Detroit and Cleveland. But I’m really unconvinced by a Theology of the Body that says that trying to bring pleasure to one’s spouse (without getting her pregnant) is selfish.

A part of the problem is the Gynecologist. The Gynecologist usually does not meet with 2 people,just one. The Gynecologist often does an exercise on the benefits of BC and often suggests the use. It is the tempation provided by outside forces that does not necessarily involve 2 people to decide.

 

[Nate13]

@Chronos13
Calling something venially sinful that isn’t sinful seems pretty minor to me St. Augustine’s words aren’t infallible Church teaching either. My point earlier was that St. Augustine talks about intent so much because in his mind there were no just reasons to prevent childbirth. He never even touched on whether there were any moral ways to prevent childbirth because he saw the intent itself as immoral. Can you show any official Church teaching that says the intent itself is immoral or do you just have your one or two Church Fathers? No one denies some Early Church Fathers went astray at times lol.

Can you provide a source that shows the Church ever regarded periodic continence to be intrinsically evil?

Actually, his entire ethical system and natural law is different. He does not recognize the term “open to life” since intention is all what it counts in his world.

Haha his failures would have to do with not understanding this:

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a4.htm

not natural law lol. I think the claim that Augustine only believed intent mattered and did not understand morality is a highly suspect claim though. Do you have any scholarly articles to back that claim?

And actually yes, I think he did recognize “open to life” which as an intention could also be described as “ambivalence” which he did talk about and considered venially sinful when a couple had sex in pursuit of the unitive aspect of sex. “Open to life” can also be used to describe how the act itself is carried out - pieces put together in the right places and nothing done to inhibit the natural fertility inherent to the act at that time.

It seems however that we can equate the entirety of St. Augustine’s failures in this matter to his assertion that the intent to prevent pregnancy was wrong in and itself. If you can’t provide proof that the Church ever adopted this logic, I find it incredibly absurd that you would claim the Church’s teaching on contraception is tied to this. Especially considering there is plenty of evidence the Church taught contraception was wrong from day one.

Lactantius’ words here show that he did not consider abstinence to prevent pregnancy to be wrong. Not the best choice in his opinion, but permissible. This at least disproves your notion that opposition to it was based solely in the fact they believed intent to prevent pregnancy was wrong no matter what. This is incredibly close to Church teaching today.

“[Some] complain of the scantiness of their means, and allege that they have not enough for bringing up more children, as though, in truth, their means were in [their] power . . . or God did not daily make the rich poor and the poor rich. Wherefore, if any one on any account of poverty shall be unable to bring up children, it is better to abstain from relations with his wife” (Divine Institutes6:20 [A.D. 307]).

 

[Chrono13]

I believe I can only conclude your calling Pope Pius XI and probably JPII as well a liar.

Not really. I simply stick to the factual state of affairs. Are these people teaching the same sexual ethics as Early Christians? No, they are not. At least not to the extent one would want them to teach. This is as far as I will go.

He didn’t believe Augustine’s words contradicted what he was teaching so why do you?

Since I have read Augustine, and concluded differences are of *objective *nature, not * my subjective *belief. When I say Church Fathers knew about NFP and forbid it, I do not express belief in heretical statement, but proclaim concrete fact of Church History.

 

[Nate13]

Not really. I simply stick to the factual state of affairs. Are these people teaching the same sexual ethics as Early Christians? No, they are not. At least not to the extent one would want them to teach. This is as far as I will go.

Actually I would argue most of the Early Church Fathers would agree with Church teaching today. See below.

Since I have read Augustine, and concluded differences are of *objective *nature, not * my subjective *belief. When I say Church Fathers knew about NFP and forbid it, I do not express belief in heretical statement, but proclaim concrete fact of Church History.

I can provide a variety of quotes from Church Fathers that are heretical. Many of them went astray at times. None of that really matters though in terms of what the Church has infallibly taught consistently.

You don’t disagree with this though. I believe you only bring these things to up to make the point that you believe Church doctrine on contraception was based in flawed arguments from the beginning. I can point to multiple sources though that did not consider the intent to prevent pregnancy to be intrinsically evil but rather consider the object of the act of contraception to be what was evil. Thus you cannot conclude the Church was against contraception in the beginning because it believed the intent to prevent pregnancy was wrong in and of itself.

You can argue however that the Church downplayed or ignored the unitive purpose of sex.

Lactantius tells us exactly why he believes contraception is wrong here:

“God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure, but to see acts to be performed for the needs of life; so too, the genital ’generating’] part of the body, as the name itself teaches, has been received by us for no other purpose than the generation of offspring” (ibid., 6:23:18).

He was using textbook natural law and said if you have sex where the object of your action is not the generation of offspring (procreation) the act is wrong. This is exactly right, and is still Church teaching today. Any act not ordered towards procreation is intrinsically evil.

It appears we see an example of ignoring the unitive aspect here though which is where the Theology of the Body comes in more recently.

I however would argue that he is not ignoring it all. Rather I would argue that he includes the unitive aspect of sex in the procreative purpose. The unitive purpose of sex only has meaning because of the procreative part of sex. The whole purpose of the unitive aspect is to bring spouses together as one for the benefit of the “potential” children their union will create. The unitive purpose of sex only exists because the procreative purpose exists in other words. Both are important but it is technically correct to say the sole purpose of sex is the unitive purpose.

Thus its perfectly acceptable to argue most Early Church Fathers would completely agree with Church teaching today. I think its actually crazy to infer they disregarded the unitive aspect of sex considering I’m sure they were incredibly intimate with the language Paul used to describe what marriage was supposed to look like in Ephesians. You basically have to say the Early Church Fathers were stupid. Some of them were probably married as well, so you can’t argue they were celibate old men making the rules either

 

[Abu]

Chrono13 #69
By denying the person’s right to ask questions, you deny the mission of evangelization and apostolic quest of spreading the gospel.

Besmirchers are not interested in truth, the truth which Christ’s Church teaches infallibly, but only in their own petty prejudices. Questions look for answers which Christ’s Church has in the fullness of truth – the habitual denial and attempts to smear that truth demeans and denies apostolicity and evangelisation.

Onan was obligated to give a child to Tamar and did not want to give his deceased brother a child, so he used coitus interruptus contraception. Not giving his deceased brother a child was not a capital offense! The Church has explained his objective behavior of masturbation and coitus interruptus as sinful, which is Her teaching.
Pope Pius XI has interpreted that Onan was killed by God for contraception, well established from St Augustine, and the CCC refers us to that. Neither Tom, Dick, Harry, nor besmirchers, can change that.

tinyurl.com/3b4z4d5
Fr John Echert is an authority on Sacred Scripture
Onan’s sin
Answer by Fr. John Echert (EWTN)on May-14-2006:
“The penalty imposed by Mosaic Law was not a death sentence upon the guilty brother but public humiliation–a far cry from execution. This leads us to conclude that the death punishment upon Onan was not for his failure to raise up posterity for his deceased brother, but for the crime of wasting the seed upon the ground–a primitive and vulgar form of contraception. Incidentally, with regards to contraception, many people today are ignorant of the fact that many forms of contraception actually act as an abortifacient–they kill the newly conceived child in some manner.”

Real Catholics use faith and reason and assent to the teaching of Christ’s Church.

“We shall give the last word here to Pope Pius XI, who, in quoting the greatest of the Church Fathers, summed up and reaffirmed this unbroken tradition in his Encyclical on Christian Marriage, *Casti Connubii *(31 December 1930). After roundly condemning as intrinsically contrary to the natural moral law all practices which intend to deprive the conjugal act of its procreative power, the Pontiff gave an authoritative interpretation of this biblical text which not only confirms the tradition, but is itself confirmed by impartial and historically well-informed exegesis:
“ ‘Wherefore it is not surprising that the Sacred Scriptures themselves also bear witness to the fact that the divine Majesty attends this unspeakable depravity with the utmost detestation, sometimes having punished it with death, as St. Augustine recalls: “For it is illicit and shameful for a man to lie with even his lawful wife in such a way as to prevent the conception of offspring. This is what Onan, son of Judah, used to do; and for that God slew him” ’(cf. Gen. 38: 8-10).”
rtforum.org/lt/lt67.html

Further, from early in the tradition, a secondary purpose of marriage was recognized. St Augustine put it this way:
“Husband and wife owe one another not only the faithful association of sexual union for the sake of getting children—which makes the first society of the human race in this our mortality—but more than that a kind of mutual service of bearing the burden of one another’s weakness, so as to prevent unlawful intercourse. (12)
(12) Quoted in Elizabeth Anscombe, Contraception and Chastity”

why Church Fathers claimed NFP is against nature, while Humanae Vitae claims it is natural.
Just the fact that Church leaders themselves can’t decide what is natural and what is not makes things much more spicy.

False – confusion worse confounded.

**INTENT
Answer by Fr. Stephen F. Torraco on June-16-2006: **
“First of fall, it should be pointed out that the prevention of conception is NOT the primary purpose of natural family planning. The primary purpose of NFP is to enable husband and wife to cooperate with God as co-creators as knowingly and as willingly as possible. In so doing, husband and wife deepen their marital bond and their exclusively marital spirituality.
“Secondly, NFP is morally legitimate as a means of prevention of conception for serious reasons and contraception is not because NFP respects and does not violate the intimate link between the unitive and procreative meanings of the marital act in God’s created design. Contraception violates that link. Taking insulin and high blood pressure medicine has as its aim assisting God’s created design in the human body. Contraception has no such aim. It aims at violating that design.”
tinyurl.com/cgr8x5c

 

[Chrono13]

@Chronos13
Calling something venially sinful that isn’t sinful seems pretty minor to me

Tell that to people who had to feel remorse after each sexual act (since even venial sins require acknowldgement of preforming the evil deed )

St. Augustine’s words aren’t infallible Church teaching either.

They are used to justify “constant teaching” theory.

My point earlier was that St. Augustine talks about intent so much because in his mind there were no just reasons to prevent childbirth. He never even touched on whether there were any moral ways to prevent childbirth because he saw the intent itself as immoral.

He does not see intent of begetting as optional, but required in order for act to be moral. Just reasons for avoiding begetting do not exist, since every such act is against the sole excuse of sexual intimacy.

Can you show any official Church teaching that says the intent itself is immoral or do you just have your one or two Church Fathers? No one denies some Early Church Fathers went astray at times lol.

The most used argument is “Regula Pastoralis” of Pope Gregory the Great who claims sex only for procreation is the ideal every couple needs to strife for.

But you also have to understand that this teaching was usually considered part of magisterial inheritance. It was simply taken as granted, and nobody saw need to put it on the paper since canons already claimed everything Church Fathers agree upon is seatled.

Can you provide a source that shows the Church ever regarded periodic continence to be intrinsically evil?

No, but that doesn’t change a lot since continence was never an issue. It is sexual activity on infertile days what counted as problematic.

Haha his failures would have to do with not understanding this:

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a4.htm

Probably.

I think the claim that Augustine only believed intent mattered and did not understand morality is a highly suspect claim though. Do you have any scholarly articles to back that claim?

Oh, come on I never said that. For Augustine, morality was founded on intent, it was not separate thing.

And actually yes, I think he did recognize “open to life” which as an intention could also be described as “ambivalence” which he did talk about and considered venially sinful when a couple had sex in pursuit of the unitive aspect of sex. “Open to life” can also be used to describe how the act itself is carried out - pieces put together in the right places and nothing done to inhibit the natural fertility inherent to the act at that time.

Even if I agree, you won’t go far. If pair wants child to be begotten, they have to put things in right places. But what is so problematic to Augustine is that even if pair is open to life, sexuality is still amoral if they do not intend life to be begotten.

It seems however that we can equate the entirety of St. Augustine’s failures in this matter to his assertion that the intent to prevent pregnancy was wrong in and itself. If you can’t provide proof that the Church ever adopted this logic, I find it incredibly absurd that you would claim the Church’s teaching on contraception is tied to this. Especially considering there is plenty of evidence the Church taught contraception was wrong from day one.

I mean, how are we to explain untold years of sexual repression in Catholic Church? Why people waged theological wars whether husband can take his wife before going on a trip to relieve tension? Such things do matter, and show that clergy indeed adopted certain approaches of Augustinian premise.

Lactantius’ words here show that he did not consider abstinence to prevent pregnancy to be wrong. Not the best choice in his opinion, but permissible. This at least disproves your notion that opposition to it was based solely in the fact they believed intent to prevent pregnancy was wrong no matter what. This is incredibly close to Church teaching today.

If I remember correctly, he talks about permanent abstinence, not periodical. He is one of the biggest promoters of “procreation only” theory.

“God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure, but to see acts to be performed for the needs of life; so too, the genital ’generating’] part of the body, as the name itself teaches, has been received by us for** no other purpose** than the generation of offspring”

However, he will trip himself a few times

 

[joclucsylv]

Yes, but some people think your judging them if you even try to inform them of the teaching. I think most people know the Church teaches contraception is wrong but they just see it as advice, not something that is a binding teaching. There are still plenty of people who will claim you don’t have to follow it to be in communion with the Church.

No…most people think your judgmental if one uses the term “cafeteria Catholic.”
The Church has not been forthcoming on their teaching of bc. Never have I heard a homily on contraception or NFP.
Have people ever heard a priest say that if you use ABC you are not in full communion with Rome. No. Our leaders are to blame for the state of the Church today.

I do like Cardinal Timothy Dolan though. He is a strong leader and perhaps with him our priests will learn to be more forthcoming on what the Church holds as truth!

 

[Nate13]

Originally Posted by Nate13 View Post
@Chronos13
Calling something venially sinful that isn’t sinful seems pretty minor to me

Your assuming people considered Augustine’s words the law on this point. I was saying it was minor from an intellectual failing standpoint.

They are used to justify “constant teaching” theory.

All you have shown is that he wrongly considered any intent to prevent pregnancy as immoral. If you didn’t believe there were any moral means to prevent pregnancy though that would be the logical conclusion to make. If you believed the act was always going to produce children if done naturally then it would only makes sense to draw the logical conclusion that sex with an intent not to procreate would be nonsensical.

The Church still teaches every act must be ordered towards procreation though and I believe Augustine’s logic was sound it was just his premises that were off.

He does not see intent of begetting as optional, but required in order for act to be moral. Just reasons for avoiding begetting do not exist, since every such act is against the sole excuse of sexual intimacy.

Yes, but the question is on what false premises did he reach that conclusion. If the false premise was his understanding of the body and how it works, then all of his logic was sound and only his premise was flawed.

The most used argument is “Regula Pastoralis” of Pope Gregory the Great who claims sex only for procreation is the ideal every couple needs to strife for.

This point is answered in my last post. The Church does not need to pull out the unitive purpose of sex and separately mention it when talks about the purposes of sex. By saying “procreative” it is already included.

But you also have to understand that this teaching was usually considered part of magisterial inheritance. It was simply taken as granted, and nobody saw need to put it on the paper since canons already claimed everything Church Fathers agree upon is seatled.

Yes and the Church taught the Truth based on the knowledge of the time. It would be similar to Church teaching throughout the past. Its application of the teaching changed as our understanding of the body changed, but the fundamental principles never changed.

Can you provide a source that shows the Church ever regarded periodic continence to be intrinsically evil?

No, but that doesn’t change a lot since continence was never an issue. It is sexual activity on infertile days what counted as problematic.

Oh, come on I never said that. For Augustine, morality was founded on intent, it was not separate thing.

That’s not what the Church teaches though lol. The Church teaches morality is founded in the object of the action and the intent/ends desired with the circumstances surrounding the act serving as a secondary concern. I’m not sure you can even ever say an intent in and of itself is intrinsically evil. I believe only the object of an action can ever be considered intrinsically evil.

Even if I agree, you won’t go far. If pair wants child to be begotten, they have to put things in right places. But what is so problematic to Augustine is that even if pair is open to life, sexuality is still amoral if they do not intend life to be begotten.

The problem is your entire claim that Augustine opposed periodic abstinence is based in the fact that he believed the intent to prevent pregnancy itself was immoral. Thus his problem is not with periodic abstinence but with “the intent to prevent pregnancy”. In other words Augustine never argues periodic abstinence in and of itself is intrinsically evil and does not contradict current teaching on this point.

Augustine’s failed conclusion can entirely be brought back to his false premise which was a matter of scientific concern, not a moral concern.

I mean, how are we to explain untold years of sexual repression in Catholic Church? Why people waged theological wars whether husband can take his wife before going on a trip to relieve tension? Such things do matter, and show that clergy indeed adopted certain approaches of Augustinian premise.

That was based in how people viewed the idea of conjugal rights and had little to do with Church teaching on contraception. The problem is you look back in the past with a holier than thou art view. Are you incapable of putting things in perspective? They did the best they could with the knowledge they had. You are essentially doing the equivalent of blaming a government for not stopping a nuclear weapon (they didn’t know existed) from destroying a city.

Unless you provide reasoning as to why they should have known about it I don’t see any reason to hate on Augustine.

If I remember correctly, he talks about permanent abstinence, not periodical. He is one of the biggest promoters of “procreation only” theory.

“God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure, but to see acts to be performed for the needs of life; so too, the genital ’generating’] part of the body, as the name itself teaches, has been received by us for** no other purpose** than the generation of offspring”

However, he will trip himself a few times

Actually I already addressed this in my last post. I actually see this as only supporting the Church view.

 

[Nate13]

No…most people think your judgmental if one uses the term “cafeteria Catholic.”
The Church has not been forthcoming on their teaching of bc. Never have I heard a homily on contraception or NFP.
Have people ever heard a priest say that if you use ABC you are not in full communion with Rome. No. Our leaders are to blame for the state of the Church today.

I do like Cardinal Timothy Dolan though. He is a strong leader and perhaps with him our priests will learn to be more forthcoming on what the Church holds as truth!

I don’t use that term and I’m only relating what I have found in my experience. I have actually heard multiple homilies on contraception/sexual issues in my lifetime so I think its presumptuous to assume no one does give them. Considering a vast majority of Catholics don’t show up to Church every Sunday it wouldn’t matter even if the priests were giving homilies on contraception 3 or 4 times a year. They could probably catch a lot of people if they made the Christmas homily about contraception but I doubt that would go over well

 

[Abu]

Chrono13 #86
how are we to explain untold years of sexual repression in Catholic Church?

False. Yet another figment of the imagination, another smear, which cannot be proved.

The DIDACHE, one of the earliest written disciplinary documents from the infant Church (100-150 A.D.) condemned both abortion and contraception, as in the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX (1148-1241), as did Pope Sixtus and Blessed Pope Innocent XI in the 16th century, and the Council of Trent. During the reign of Pius IX (1846-78), at least 5 decisions were handed down by the Holy See with regard to contraception. One of these specifically mentions that the practice is opposed to natural law, and authorizes confessors to question penitents if they have reason to suppose that contraception is being practiced. Thus the infallible doctrine in *Casti Connubii *of Pius XI and in Humanae Vitae of Paul VI is consistent and from the earliest times.

Only besmirchers could fail to acknowledge the truth.

The first time Rome spoke on NBR was as long ago as 1853, Pope Pius IX, when the Sacred Penitentiary answered a dubium (a formal request for an official clarification) submitted by the Bishop of Amiens, France. He asked, “Should those spouses be reprehended who make use of marriage only on those days when (in the opinion of some doctors) conception is impossible?”
The reply was, “After mature examination, we have decided that such spouses should not be disturbed [or disquieted], provided they do nothing that impedes generation.” (Non esse inquietandos illos de quibus in precibus, dummodo nihil agant per quod conceptio impediatur”).
cmri.org/03-nfp.htm

churchinhistory.org/pages/booklets/augustine.htm
**SAINT AUGUSTINE AND CONJUGAL SEXUALITY
By Monsignor Cormac Burke **a priest of the Opus Del Prelature, was a judge of the Roman Rota (the High Court of the Church), and taught at the Roman University of the Holy Cross.

"Augustine’s doctrine of the triple bona of marriage—proles, fides, sacramentum [14] — should be read not merely in an institutional context (as is normally done), but also precisely in personalist terms. The penetrating analysis of the three-fold matrimonial bona has never lost relevance over 1500 years.

"Within the dominant concept that marriage is meant for procreation, we find further clear notes of what may be termed conjugal personalism. Augustine argues explicitly that there are other ends to marriage, besides procreation, which also make it good. Observing that “it is proper to inquire for what reason marriage be good,” he goes on, “And this seems to me not merely to be on account of the begetting of children, but also on account of the natural association between the two sexes,” whose mutual faith he describes as "the first fellowship of humankind in this mortal state.”

"It is interesting to recall how Augustine had first to defend marriage and sexuality against the Manichean tendency to treat them with contempt or hatred, and later had to continue to defend them against the Pelagian tendency to treat them as if there were nothing delicate or problematic about them.

"Insofar as Puritanism or Jansenism contained some semi-Manichean elements, we have moved away from them. Augustine’s firmly held, middle-of-the-road position [74] can warn us of the dangers coming from a neo-Pelagianism, with its false suggestion that nothing is wrong with sex, that there is nothing needing control in sex.

**"Augustine makes it clear that what he regards as the disorder of concupiscence is not synonymous with sexual pleasure either.

"This point needs to be specially stressed since, given the vigor with which Augustine criticizes the yielding to concupiscence, a superficial reader might easily be led to conclude that he is criticizing the actual seeking of pleasure itself in marital intercourse. A proper reading shows that this is not so.

“Already in De bono coniugali, in a passage where he compares nourishment and generation, he had insisted that sexual pleasure, sought temperately and rationally, is not and cannot be termed concupiscence. Elsewhere he contrasts the lawful pleasure of the conjugal embrace with the unlawful pleasure of fornication.”**

 

[diggit03]

It’s nice to have such young and devoted reader. I wish you God’s blessings in your life and marriage. A word of advice- try to communicate NFP with fiance before the wedding. It is fair to both of you.

already have! you’re right, it is only fair I meant communicate to him more effectively, explain why better etc. thanks

 

[Chrono13]

I can provide a variety of quotes from Church Fathers that are heretical. Many of them went astray at times. None of that really matters though in terms of what the Church has infallibly taught consistently.

I mean, you can’t call them astray, and then conclude their proclamations are part of constant teaching. If they are wrong, their teaching is not valid and can not be used to proclaim consistance of the age.

I can point to multiple sources though that did not consider the intent to prevent pregnancy to be intrinsically evil but rather consider the object of the act of contraception to be what was evil.

T

I’m skeptical you can provide that in satisfactionary manner. At least if we are talking to older documents.

You can argue however that the Church downplayed or ignored the unitive purpose of sex.

Even Pius XII denied that unitive purpose of marriage is equall to procreational.

He was using textbook natural law and said if you have sex where the object of your action is not the generation of offspring (procreation) the act is wrong. This is exactly right, and is still Church teaching today. Any act not ordered towards procreation is intrinsically evil.

With all due respect, but this is not what Lactanicus is claiming. He argues very strongly that there is no other purpose of generating parts apart from procreation. He simply follows Augustine in this, and would- without question- reject current teaching.

It appears we see an example of ignoring the unitive aspect here though which is where the Theology of the Body comes in more recently.

I however would argue that he is not ignoring it all. Rather I would argue that he includes the unitive aspect of sex in the procreative purpose. The unitive purpose of sex only has meaning because of the procreative part of sex. The whole purpose of the unitive aspect is to bring spouses together as one for the benefit of the “potential” children their union will create. The unitive purpose of sex only exists because the procreative purpose exists in other words. Both are important but it is technically correct to say the sole purpose of sex is the unitive purpose.

This would be considered heretical by majority of Church Fathers, especially the likes of Lactantius. They repeated numerous times that the sole purpose of intercourse is procreation, and anything done to prevent it (no matter how natural or unnatural it seems) is morally wrong.

Thus its perfectly acceptable to argue most Early Church Fathers would completely agree with Church teaching today.

Nope. Sorry, their writings are pretty clear on the subject.

I think its actually crazy to infer they disregarded the unitive aspect of sex considering I’m sure they were incredibly intimate with the language Paul used to describe what marriage was supposed to look like in Ephesians.

They claimed Paul meant something completely different on the subject when he charished marriage. The idea was that marriage is great despite sex in it.

You basically have to say the Early Church Fathers were stupid. Some of them were probably married as well, so you can’t argue they were celibate old men making the rules either

Church Fathers had their thoughts, and we should not judge them, but accept them as such. Whether idea that sex is only for generation is wrong, stupid, correct or heretical is not as important as the fact that certain people try hard to deny those ideas even existed in Church.

 

[joclucsylv]

I don’t use that term and I’m only relating what I have found in my experience. I have actually heard multiple homilies on contraception/sexual issues in my lifetime so I think its presumptuous to assume no one does give them. Considering a vast majority of Catholics don’t show up to Church every Sunday it wouldn’t matter even if the priests were giving homilies on contraception 3 or 4 times a year. They could probably catch a lot of people if they made the Christmas homily about contraception but I doubt that would go over well

I am happy you don’t use that term. Perhaps others on this board could learn from you. There is a mentality among many that the traditional Catholics are “better” than the Vatican II Catholic, and that the ones who are well read on all the rules of the Church are “better” than those who aren’t. Even the “Christmas” Catholic is on a journey in this life. We are all on a journey trying to do the best we can. Many could take the advice from my mother who is full of humility that there is no one on this earth who is better than another.

I guess you are one of the lucky ones who has heard homilies on contraception.

I have rarely missed mass throughout my lifetime and I have never heard it.

Likewise is is presumptuous to assume that a lifetime Catholic who has attended mass their whole life has heard homilies on contraception.

The so called “Christmas Catholic” needs to be given lots of credit in todays world of Catholic bashing seen on the internet and heard on TV. Though they don’t know every single teaching of the Church and attend mass irregularly, they love their faith and have Catholicism at the core of their being.

 

[Chrono13]

Besmirchers are not interested in truth, the truth which Christ’s Church teaches infallibly, but only in their own petty prejudices. Questions look for answers which Christ’s Church has in the fullness of truth – the habitual denial and attempts to smear that truth demeans and denies apostolicity and evangelisation.

Catholic Tradition and writings of the saints are not prejudice, and can not be denied by either side in this discussion. Speak wise, for we talk about sacred things.

Onan was obligated to give a child to Tamar and did not want to give his deceased brother a child, so he used coitus interruptus contraception. Not giving his deceased brother a child was not a capital offense!

As we have already mentioned, Tamar had duty to report Onan’s deed to elders. This was not done, and the most evident explanation is that she did not see contraception as sinful. Even after Onan died, she did not connect his fate with coitus interruptus he ALWAYS preformed with her.

This fact requires further study, which was never made in Catholic Church.

Fr John Echert is an authority on Sacred Scripture
Onan’s sin
Answer by Fr. John Echert (EWTN)on May-14-2006:
“The penalty imposed by Mosaic Law was not a death sentence upon the guilty brother but public humiliation–a far cry from execution. This leads us to conclude that the death punishment upon Onan was not for his failure to raise up posterity for his deceased brother, but for the crime of wasting the seed upon the ground–a primitive and vulgar form of contraception.

This interpretation suffers when we know Tamar did not see contraceptive act as sinful, and did not preform her duty according to Mosaic Law.

Echert is a wise man. But we are not talking about his wisdom, but Tamar.

“We shall give the last word here to Pope Pius XI, who, in quoting the greatest of the Church Fathers, summed up and reaffirmed this unbroken tradition in his Encyclical on Christian Marriage, *Casti Connubii *(31 December 1930)

.

And this also blows up once we know Augustine claimed NFP is form of Onan’s sin.

Further, from early in the tradition, a secondary purpose of marriage was recognized. St Augustine put it this way:
“Husband and wife owe one another not only the faithful association of sexual union for the sake of getting children—which makes the first society of the human race in this our mortality—but more than that a kind of mutual service of bearing the burden of one another’s weakness, so as to prevent unlawful intercourse.Quoted in Elizabeth Anscombe, Contraception and Chastity” (12)

Negative.

We can see from Augustinian quote that he sees sexual intercourse as “burden” to couple, their desire for marital embrace “weakness”. This comes from his belief sex is sinful in marriage, but tolerated on account of marriage.

You have already been warned about Anscombe’s errors in the past. Pasting her texts again will always result in the same outcome- swift and concrete strike of Holy Mother Church History.

**INTENT
Answer by Fr. Stephen F. Torraco on June-16-2006: **
“First of fall, it should be pointed out that the prevention of conception is NOT the primary purpose of natural family planning. The primary purpose of NFP is to enable husband and wife to cooperate with God as co-creators as knowingly and as willingly as possible.

Speaking about propaganda.

Taking insulin and high blood pressure medicine has as its aim assisting God’s created design in the human body. Contraception has no such aim. It aims at violating that design.”
tinyurl.com/cgr8x5c

This argument is corrupted. Since God has created woman’s infertility (in regular cycle) contraception is simply artificial means to achieve one of her natural states.

 

[Chrono13]

False. Yet another figment of the imagination, another smear, which cannot be proved.

Pick your era of Church History and read what was written on the subject.

The DIDACHE, one of the earliest written disciplinary documents from the infant Church (100-150 A.D.) condemned both abortion and contraception,

Negative, at least in case of contraception. Didahe forbids drinking magical potions, and they were not used -only- for contraception.

as in the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX (1148-1241)

Who used his papal authority to fight shape-shifting sect of Mainz. Probable reason why Humanae Vitae decided to skip him as a source.

as did Pope Sixtus and Blessed Pope Innocent XI in the 16th century, and the Council of Trent.

And you can’t prove that these sources viewed NFP differently, or at least that they did not support the system of Augustinian values in sexual intercourse.

During the reign of Pius IX (1846-78), at least 5 decisions were handed down by the Holy See with regard to contraception. One of these specifically mentions that the practice is opposed to natural law, and authorizes confessors to question penitents if they have reason to suppose that contraception is being practiced. Thus the infallible doctrine in *Casti Connubii *of Pius XI and in Humanae Vitae of Paul VI is consistent and from the earliest times.

As we have seen in writings of the Church Fathers, since earliest days, Church was basing arguments on stoic natural law, which is utterly different then the one proposed by his holiness Pius IX.

The first time Rome spoke on NBR was as long ago as 1853, Pope Pius IX, when the Sacred Penitentiary answered a dubium (a formal request for an official clarification) submitted by the Bishop of Amiens, France. He asked, “Should those spouses be reprehended who make use of marriage only on those days when (in the opinion of some doctors) conception is impossible?”
The reply was, “After mature examination, we have decided that such spouses should not be disturbed [or disquieted], provided they do nothing that impedes generation.” (Non esse inquietandos illos de quibus in precibus, dummodo nihil agant per quod conceptio impediatur”).
cmri.org/03-nfp.htm

Yes. This is the first time Church made a shift in doctrine. If you ask me, they probably thought NFP was novelty, and clean sheet of theological ground.

Even if we are to take this decision as valid, there is no denying that original stance was different.

churchinhistory.org/pages/booklets/augustine.htm
**SAINT AUGUSTINE AND CONJUGAL SEXUALITY
By Monsignor Cormac Burke **a priest of the Opus Del Prelature, was a judge of the Roman Rota (the High Court of the Church), and taught at the Roman University of the Holy Cross.

"Augustine’s doctrine of the triple bona of marriage—proles, fides, sacramentum [14] — should be read not merely in an institutional context (as is normally done), but also precisely in personalist terms. The penetrating analysis of the three-fold matrimonial bona has never lost relevance over 1500 years.
"Within the dominant concept that marriage is meant for procreation, we find further clear notes of what may be termed conjugal personalism. Augustine argues explicitly that there are other ends to marriage, besides procreation, which also make it good. Observing that “it is proper to inquire for what reason marriage be good,” he goes on, “And this seems to me not merely to be on account of the begetting of children, but also on account of the natural association between the two sexes,” whose mutual faith he describes as "the first fellowship of humankind in this mortal state.”

As already mentioned in one other post, Burke fails to recognize that marriage and marital sexuality are two different things in Augustinian thought. Marriage is proles, fides, sacramentum, while sex in marriage is “burden” and “weakness” of the spouses.

"This point needs to be specially stressed since, given the vigor with which Augustine criticizes the yielding to concupiscence, a superficial reader might easily be led to conclude that he is criticizing the actual seeking of pleasure itself in marital intercourse. A proper reading shows that this is not so.“Already in De bono coniugali, in a passage where he compares nourishment and generation, he had insisted that sexual pleasure, sought temperately and rationally, is not and cannot be termed concupiscence. Elsewhere he contrasts the lawful pleasure of the conjugal embrace with the unlawful pleasure of fornication.”

This is misleading. It is true that Augustine claimed pleasure has to be sought rationally, but he insisted that only rational position of pleasure is in service of begetting children. One can easily see that what is rational to Augustine, is not rational to us. Nature is following that line. What is natural and allowed by natural law to Augustine, differs from our understanding.

 

[Nate13]

Oops! Let me fix part of my last post.

Quote:
I however would argue that he is not ignoring it all. Rather I would argue that he includes the unitive aspect of sex in the procreative purpose. The unitive purpose of sex only has meaning because of the procreative part of sex. The whole purpose of the unitive aspect is to bring spouses together as one for the benefit of the “potential” children their union will create. The unitive purpose of sex only exists because the procreative purpose exists in other words. Both are important but it is technically correct to say the sole purpose of sex is the procreative purpose because the unitive purpose is a part of fulfilling that meaning.

Lacantius definitely would have agreed with what I posted above with the word fixed. I put the complete opposite of what I meant lol. Would you not agree that the unitive purpose of sex would be nonsensical if the act had also not been designed by God to be procreative as well? Do you know of any creatures on Earth who’s sexual organs by design only cause pleasure but have nothing to do with procreation?

I mean, you can’t call them astray, and then conclude their proclamations are part of constant teaching. If they are wrong, their teaching is not valid and can not be used to proclaim consistance of the age.

Yeah actually I can… Constant teaching that contracepting is a sin. You can only claim some may have been against periodic abstinence in a round about way. Can you even give one quote of an Early Church Father condemning periodic abstinence directly and saying that it in and of itself is against natural law? No, you can’t.

 

[HOLY_POOH_FAN]

Anyone who quotes any scholar, medical or otherwise about female fertility before the 1850’s is not wise. That is when the female’s contribution to conception. .That is when the ovum was discovered and since then, the reverence for human life has gradually helped a slow-learning men’s world see women and married women marriage as more than providers of babies, alongside mistresses, and women slowly were less seen as the property of men. St Augustine’s old Manicheeism overwhelmed his understanding of sexuality and he found n excuse for that in his total mis-reading of Genesis, original sin and St Paul, and his Platonic view of the mind/soul being good and trapped in a sensual lust-depraved body. The Catholic Church has come a long way, more miles to go before it fully arises from sleep to twist the famous phrase of Robert Frost.

 

[jimcintosh]

I mean, how are we to explain untold years of sexual repression in Catholic Church?

Let’s be fair. For all of human history, up until the 1960s, sexual intimacy was directly linked to procreation.

One problem that the Church encounters when saying that she has to be consistent and unchanging throughout all history is that she is then unable to respond to new advances in the sciences.

Remember, the Inquisition condemned Galileo in the 1633 for saying that the earth was not the center of the universe (heliocentrism). In 1758, the Church dropped the general prohibition of books advocating heliocentrism from the Index of Forbidden Books but continued to prohibit Copernicus’s and Galileo’s books. In 1835, she dropped Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus and Galileo’s Dialogue from the Index and indicated that heliocentrism could be taught as a fact – although she refused even then to admit that Galileo’s condemnation by the Inquisition court was an error. (It wasn’t until 2000 that Pope John Paul II issued a formal apology for all the mistakes committed by some Catholics in the last 2,000 years of the Catholic Church’s history, including the trial of Galileo among others.)

It took the Church, 200 years to accept a simple physical fact: that the earth is not the center of the universe.

Now, we are just 50 years since the discovery of medicine and plastics which allow for the physical separation of sexual intimacy from procreation. We are just 150 years from the first appearance of the word homosexual in print and only 40 years from the time that the American Psychiatric Association removed its classification as a disorder. (There are other challenging scientific inventions such as human cloning and even the creation of new life in the laboratory which are sure to also challenge the Church in the near future.)

So, I think it is unfair to ask that the Church change quickly. She is simply incapable of doing so.

But, individual Catholics can and do respond to change quicker. Faced with the reality that sexual intimacy can be separated from procreation, they have chosen to make use of the news things made available by science to do so. Faced with a new understanding of the homosexual person and of homosexual affection, a majority of Catholics in the U.S. now approve of marriage equality.

Is this a matter of incomplete catechesis? I don’t think so. As I wrote in my previous post, I think that it is not a matter of ignorance, but rather that most Catholics know what the pope wrote in his encyclical and have prayerfully considered it and rejected it as not consistent with their lived experience.

So, where does that leave us? I cannot predict the future. Will some future pope acknowledge that sex in a loving relationship can be separated from being a purely procreative act and therefore act in all of its beauty to strengthen the love between the couple? Will some future pope bow to the understanding that love between persons of the same gender is no different than love within a sterile or elderly couple where procreation is impossible? Some here will say no; some will say, “God, I hope so.” None of us knows, and I predict that none of us will live long enough to find out.

 

[aragonjohn1]

I don’t I is beautiful and prophetic. :facepunch:

 

[Abu]

Chrono13 #94
Tamar had duty to report Onan’s deed to elders. This was not done, and the most evident explanation is that she did not see contraception as sinful.

Pure supposition as usual, and irrelevant – God killed Onan for his contraceptive action. Your fantasies are all irrelevant.

This argument is corrupted. Since God has created woman’s infertility (in regular cycle) contraception is simply artificial means to achieve one of her natural states.

False.
As God has given us the natural moral law, and His Catholic Church with His Supreme Vicars endowed with infallibility in doctrine against contraception, such dissent has no sway with the faithful.

churchinhistory.org/pages/booklets/augustine.htm
**SAINT AUGUSTINE AND CONJUGAL SEXUALITY
By Monsignor Cormac Burke **a priest of the Opus Del Prelature, was a judge of the Roman Rota (the High Court of the Church), and taught at the Roman University of the Holy Cross.

On St Augustine – “the Manicheism of his early days remained for him a darkness from which he had emerged, and not a source of recurrent pessimism. [2] Once he began to walk in the light of the faith, his vision of sexuality and marriage became more and more sharpened and refined by his efforts, in controversy, to keep a Catholic balance between the extremes of Manicheism, on the one hand, and Pelagianism, on the other.

Augustine’s writings on sex and marriage aimed to combat not only the negative views of the Manicheans, but also the over-optimistic views of the Pelagians.