Why do most people ignore the Church's teaching on contraception?
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loumeland
Guest
Pope Francis, I love him. When someone asked him if it was ok for people with AIDS to use condoms, he said, “That is a small question.” He cannot help but see the big picture in everything.
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Xantippe
Guest
Right.
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ThePCWife
Guest
It’s not either/or. Raising children can be harrowing and difficult and leave you on the floor weeping and wondering if your kids will grow up to disown their upbringing and hate you. It can also be filled with joy and surprises of happiness far beyond anything you expected out of having and raising kids. Sometimes in the same day or week or year.
But at the same time, a lot of people see suffering and just withdraw from the idea of having children instead of lending support to the suffering parents and coming to a deeper understanding of what it means to be a community of faithful believers.
Many Protestants and cultural Catholics I grew up with used ABC or got tied/snipped to have fewer kids because they saw how bad/hard it was for the people with a lot of kids and chose that route instead of helping them out.
Conversely, in my husband’s culture, people helped each other out with kids up to about half a dozen, so people knew they could “go there” and be more free about family size without their relatives, neighbors and fellow church goers soft-ostracizing them.
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Xantippe
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I’m not saying that you are less-than (in fact, I was pointing out that I myself am a much more refreshed and competent parent when I don’t have to parent all the time), but it is genuinely different.
Your wife is the stay-at-home mother of BIG kids. That’s different than being the stay-at-home mother of little itty bitty kids.
I’m not saying that any of these things are worse than the other, but they aren’t the same thing.
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Xantippe
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In fact, one way of doing that is simply denying that other people struggle with parenting.
Because if they’re not actually struggling, we don’t need to help them, right?
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Xantippe
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I don’t know that giving our kids “the best” has ever been a realistic option, even when we had just one (actually, especially then).
It wasn’t true when we had two little kids and lived in a very expensive city.
Now that we’ve moved to a less expensive area, I think we do actually send them to the academically, spiritually and socially best school in town for them, but it’s not the best in every single possible parameter (there are larger public schools with nicer facilities, better PE, better sports, better extracurriculars and more AP classes).
I look around, and even with just our three, there are so many compromises that we make, so many things that could be better if we had more resources–we could see more of our far-away extended family, we could actually hope to send our kids to the best-fit colleges for them, rather than giving them a short list of what we can afford, I could sign the 3-year-old up for a preschool music class, etc.
But those things, while very nice, aren’t our basic financial priorities, which are a good K-12 education and college savings. And many families less fortunate than ourselves are doing very well to secure their children a decent K-12 education. We all know how bad bad public schools are.
I feel like that in these discussions, a lot of large family CAFers grossly overestimate the affluence of the average American family with two children. Yes, there is conspicuous consumption in the US, but it isn’t necessarily being done out of income–a lot of it is fueled by debt and lots of it. Some people look at their neighbor’s SUV and think–if he can afford that SUV, he could afford another kid–but the truth is, he probably can’t afford the SUV.
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Abu
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What a shame that the “big picture” is so distorted at times that so many cannot see the wood for the trees. The quick simplistic retort is often smeared with distortion.
The great Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has covered this:
The Pope Said WHAT about Condoms???
ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/the-pope-said-what-about-condoms#When:22:09:44Z
Note that the Pope’s overall argument is that condoms will not solve the problem of AIDS. In support of this, he makes several arguments:
“1) People can already get condoms, yet it clearly hasn’t solved the problem.
“2) The secular realm has proposed the ABC program, where a condom is used only if the first two, truly effective procedures (abstinence and fidelity) have been rejected. Thus even the secular ABC proposal recognizes that condoms are not the unique solution. They don’t work as well as abstinence and fidelity. The first two are better.
“3) The fixation on condom use represents a banalization (trivialization) of sexuality that turns the act from being one of love to one of selfishness. For sex to have the positive role it is meant to play, this trivialization of sex—and thus the fixation on condoms—needs to be resisted.”
In other words, as Janet Smith puts it,
“The Holy Father is simply observing that for some homosexual prostitutes the use of a condom may indicate an awakening of a moral sense; an awakening that sexual pleasure is not the highest value, but that we must take care that we harm no one with our choices. He is not speaking to the morality of the use of a condom, but to something that may be true about the psychological state of those who use them. If such individuals are using condoms to avoid harming another, they may eventually realize that sexual acts between members of the same sex are inherently harmful since they are not in accord with human nature.”
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Convert_in_99
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I don’t agree in the use of condoms for any reason. But you should know that sometimes people are born with AIDS and some people end up getting married with AIDS. Some cases are even still contacted medically due to inferior health care in impoverished countries. Not all is a result of homosexuality. Get your facts straight it helps make for a better argument.
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MarkInOregon
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Have you followed all the posts? I don’t know that I’d call it anger–more like exasperation. Indeed our experiences are different but much of what I have said on this thread has been misrepresented or ignored or dismissed by a couple of posters–I have acknowledged that my experience and that of my extended family is different than Xantippe’s and some other posters and I do not discount or dismiss hers or anyone else’s experience but they dismiss mine as not relevant, as somehow invalid and are all indignant that I hold it to the point of my having been called self-righteous (not by Xantippe). Everything I say seems to be viewed as personal attack. It’s been like they go out of their way to misunderstand what I am saying, tell me I am wrong and such a self-righteous person who thinks I’ve done so much better than everyone else–when all I am doing is asking how we should live, suggesting that we all examine our consciences and relating my experience and view of parenthood. Yet for that – I get the feeling they’d take me out and tar and feather me if they could. It’s not anger it’s just that I’m too tired go on with people who won’t actually try to listen and understand a different point of view but who would rather just dismiss it and tell you you and your experience isn’t valid. It’s been like being at a rally and having protesters try to shout you down. It hasn’t felt like a serious exchange of idea’s or experiences. That can leave one exasperated and no longer willing to engage. I would have hoped the post sounded sarcastic rather than angry.
Thank you for pointing out that you saw it as an angry post–I should do better.
The peace of Christ,
Mark
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Rico_S
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Not that we should trainwreck this thread any further, but what?I don’t agree in the use of condoms for any reason. But you should know that sometimes people are born with AIDS and some people end up getting married with AIDS. Some cases are even still contacted medically due to inferior health care in impoverished countries. Not all is a result of homosexuality. Get your facts straight it helps make for a better argument.
What facts did I not have straight in my 2 sentence post?
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Abu
Guest
No.
The statement refers to the fixation on condoms in sexual intercourse generally, which trivialises sex.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has taught clearly and faithfully.
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Rico_S
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I thought the explanation quoted was of the context of the comments the pope made years ago that caused such an uproar
"“There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.”
He offered a specific example of male prostitution and condom use.
Oh well, let’s not derail. I shouldn’t have commented at all.
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Sarcelle
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Thank you for your response.
It’s kind of hard to hear or rather read tone in the written word.
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LongingSoul
Guest
People shouldn’t have to defend their natural family planning decisions to other random Catholics on an internet forum. There are clear teachings with regard to the use of contraception so it is reasonable to suggest that Catholics should examine their conscience with that clear Church teaching in mind. However, to keep insisting that people doing NFP should examine their conscience not according to Church teaching but with regard to someones personal interpretation of ‘just reasons’ is not reasonable. When the Church clearly acknowledges and approves a range of factors that go into such a decision and specifically says these factors are ‘not rare’… it is unacceptable to call into question their decision. If you say that you weren’t specifically talking about Xantippes post that you quoted, but were talking about yourself as well… why then are you so incenses that we called you to account also? You can’t have it both ways. If you want to quote a persons post about themselves to make a general point… you must accept that others can quote a post about your own situation to make a general point also.
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Abu
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Rico S, in #796
You are absolutely correct, and the Pope’s statements recognise that, as Janet Smith observes “they may eventually realize that sexual acts between members of the same sex are inherently harmful since they are not in accord with human nature.”
You are absolutely correct, and the Pope’s statements recognise that, as Janet Smith observes “they may eventually realize that sexual acts between members of the same sex are inherently harmful since they are not in accord with human nature.”
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Xantippe
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I also think that there could be a lot of imprudence in indiscriminately addressing a call for unlimited generosity with regard to family size when we do not know who is in the audience.
There may be a woman who is being abused.
There may be a mother who has had repeatedly had postpartum depression.
There may be a woman who is this close to abusing her children.
There may be a father who is mentally ill.
There may be a mother who has already had several c-sections.
There may be a couple that has a history of marital trouble when they have small children at home.
Etc.
Without knowing each family’s particular circumstances and individual weaknesses, it could be very harmful to do an unqualified recommendation of having a larger family. In an audience as large as CAF’s , there will be many people listening who cannot prudently continue to expand their family.
So I see there being a great deal of potential harm in general exhortations for everybody to do something that is only feasible for a minority.
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LongingSoul
Guest
I would add to that list the one that’s always at the forefront of my mind when I respond… young women at the edge of marriageability forming a mature understanding of Catholic teaching that’s free of false ideology. They deserve that from us. Especially from their mothers.
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Xantippe
Guest
Yes.
I always remember the Torodes in this context. That was a young Protestant couple who married in 2000, had a honeymoon baby, wrote a pro-NFP anti-contraception book that came out in 2002, recanted their views in 2006, and divorced in 2009, having had four little ones within 9 years of marriage.
““I was 19 when we got married,” Ms. Patchin said by telephone from Nashville, where she and her former husband live and share custody of their four children. “And I was 20 when we had Gideon.”
“The book she and Mr. Torode wrote two years into their marriage is quite short and quite sweet, an earnest work whose hopefulness one badly wants to share.”
“Among other challenges, Ms. Patchin, now 30, had unplanned pregnancies. “I got pregnant nursing twice,” she told me. “So my first two kids are 15 months apart, then there is a three-year break, then the younger two are a year and a half apart. That was intense. Beyond hormonally intense, it was relationally intense. It was nothing I would ever want anyone else to have to experience.””
nytimes.com/2011/07/09/us/09beliefs.html?_r=2
Now, there’s a couple that went outside their “comfort zone.”
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