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Memaw
Guest
What do you mean by, “members of the Magisterium??” God Bless, Memaw
Why do most people ignore the Church's teaching on contraception?
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marymary1975
Guest
I actually belong to the st Vincent de Paul society in my church and that was where everybody thought I was crazy! In a nutshell no one agreed. I mentioned to our priest who thought it would.be good but he prefers to work.it with one groups if the church but no one else thinks is a good idea. That is why I say that it is not easy because the.people in the church don’t think is a good idea because they believe you don’t know.if there are just reasons, and what if used with contraceptive mentality, NFP.never fails, they should.talk to the instructors, we shouldn’t be taking care of that, etc.
As to the Doctor’s part is because I have never seen one. As I said every NAP instructor in my area are lay volunteers and they are the ones who.deal.with all the issues.
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anthrogirl
Guest
“By the Magisterium we mean the teaching office of the Church. It consists of the Pope and Bishops.” - Father Most, EWTN.
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Hoosier_Daddy
Guest
Yes. I have caught that several times in this thread. I don’t think that word is being used right…
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LongingSoul
Guest
Like your experience with your son, God rest his soul, what might seem pointless to some was immeasurably valuable to you. Its not just via obligation to Catholic law but completely in accordance with natural law which demands that some Truths be unconditionally respected by all. A parents natural response of love and protection towards their offspring has every capacity to show the way. Not just the Catholic way but the Divine way. And that’s true for everybody, only distorted by the effects of anti social philosophies or as we’d say, Original Sin.
It’s similar to how the pure and natural response of a man and a woman in marriage, is to accord with natural law in their conjugal life. In Theology of the Body StJPII says that the human desire for each other is a divine call to original union ie heaven. That call is satisfied by the reciprocal exchange of the gifts that are uniquely male and female. That’s what makes them holy by the act. When those gifts are withheld for the purposes of physical pleasure only, they present without these sacred gifts for each other and are just objects to each other. They make each other into a thing of utility only.
**Reciprocal acceptance
**
3. Interior innocence (that is, righteousness of intention) in the exchange of the gift consists in reciprocal “acceptance” of the other, such as to correspond to the essence of the gift. In this way, mutual donation creates the communion of persons. It is a question of “receiving” the other human being and “accepting” him. This is because in this mutual relationship, which Genesis 2:23-25 speaks of, the man and the woman become a gift for each other, through the whole truth and evidence of their own body in its masculinity and femininity. It is a question, then, of an “acceptance” or “welcome” that expresses and sustains, in mutual nakedness, the meaning of the gift. Therefore, it deepens the mutual dignity of it. This dignity corresponds profoundly to the fact that the Creator willed (and continually wills) man, male and female, “for his own sake.” The innocence “of the heart,” and consequently, the innocence of the experience, means a moral participation in the eternal and permanent act of God’s will.
The opposite of this “welcoming” or “acceptance” of the other human being as a gift would be a privation of the gift itself. Therefore, it would be a changing and even a reduction of the other to an “object for myself” (an object of lust, of misappropriation, etc.).
We will not deal in detail now with this multiform, presumable antithesis of the gift. However, in the context of Genesis 2:23-25, we can note that this extorting of the gift from the other human being (from the woman by the man and vice versa) and reducing him or her interiorly to a mere “object for me,” should mark the beginning of shame. The latter corresponds to a threat inflicted on the gift in its personal intimacy and bears witness to the interior collapse of innocence in the mutual experience.
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gardenswithkids
Guest
I agree that it indicates that something is wrong, but that doesn’t mean that what’s wrong is the Church teachings.
Our society has problems.
We live in a society where marriages frequently end in divorce. Don’t blame the Church or her teachings for all those divorces! Marriage of couples who use contraception fall apart every day. Studies have shown that divorce is “contagious”, meaning that being close to a couple who gets divorced increases other people’s statistical likelihood chance of divorcing. Marriage is already difficult–and it’s not made easier by “no fault divorce” laws.
Parents often feel isolated and ill-prepared for the demands of parenting. Many of us grew up in small families and didn’t really have much experience with children until we became parents. Today families have fewer relatives to help new mothers, and we often live far away from extended family members.
On top of that, the US economy hasn’t been good in recent years. Some people have been out of work or have taken cuts in their wages, while the price of housing still has yet to recover in many places. A lot of married couples raising young children bought their houses at the peak of the housing bubble. Someone on this thread ready to quit following Church teachings mentioned a large increase in her property taxes as contributing significantly to her stress. She’s a doctor. That reminds me–the so-called “affordable care act” drove up the price of health care insurance, but with higher insurance prices some of us have very high deductibles. When people sight their finances as the reasons for wanting to avoid children, their financial picture would likely improve under a better economy.
If you read what the people lamenting the “difficulties of NFP” write, they are frequently lamenting the difficulties of things that really barely relate to the Church teachings on sexuality. They are complaining about life in our modern world during difficult economic times.
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Hoosier_Daddy
Guest
I want to respond to you and Philomed with my own personal story. In philomed’s posts I can almost feel the frustration an anger at the situation. It clouds logical and theological thought and it causes one to lash out at others and the CHurch and also atack from a position of defensiveness (like the post on large families earlier in the thread) The good thing is that one can see that it does come from a place of frustration and anger. So it need not be taken so seriously.
My wife and I engaged in premarital sex. A lot of it. And then we got married and like a lot of Catholic couples we used ABC. Specifically Norplant. Our sex life was adventurous to say the least. I always loved the idea of a big family I I planned 8. but she wanted 2. We planned to have kids later and decided we would decide the time and number. She finished school and we moved to our hometown.
Now, all this time, all this sin and I NEVER thought the Church was wrong or should change. I confessed but fell each time. I knew in my heart it was wrong but it was MY wrong, not the Church’s. So through many many fights about the time she would be due to get her shot I finally convinced her that NFP was the right thing to do. She agreed and we took classes. Well NFP coming off ABC like Norplant is even more unpredictable than PP cycles. So naturally we conceived our first. After that we became more involved in NFP and followed it closely. We used Ladycomp (Something I still recomend) and other forms of NFP methods. All on top of each other. We began to notice our relationship becoming strained with sex fights. I wanted another child, or at least was passive about it, she wanted to conceive at a planned time. WE wanted to control it ourselves. NFP was the hardest thing in our marriage. We used to to avoid many times and once we used it to conceive just to have the experience of “trying for a child” We even tried to influence the gender which may or may not have worked…Our second child had a genetic deletion and almost died from failure to thrive. She was on a G tube for several years. This of course piled onto our families and society asking us how many we would have and if we wanted more. We have 5 kids now. I stay at home with them and we homeschool. Our last child almost killed my wife. She had gestational diabetes and after birth had a pulmonary embolism that could have easily killed her. She was sick all the pregnancy, we lived in a far away place, she worked full time and was getting her graduate degree. We joke if only there were a pill, or something of a barrier we could use then we would be so happy… It is a joke because it is a lie. We both know it. My wife wants to have another child for reasons that belong in another post. But we know that it is up to God. And we also know that if we “planned” our life, we would never have the wonderful situation we have now. My wife once said that when she was on ABC she really had no problem rationalizing it. But once she became convicted of the Church’s view, she could never go back. I think many are scared of this reality. Perhaps it is because we are both converts and not culturally cradle Catholics but it boggles my mind how some people can convince themselves of Truths of the faith that they like or that are easy and then reject others that are hard. By using weak rationalizations. Why be Catholic at all!? Perhaps because we CHOSE this faith we realize that it is not the Church that needs to change but rather our own hearts. Obedience is something that the western way of life shuns. But it is what we are called to do. I will refrain from my criticism of NFP except to say that it is harder and tougher than people say. You have to have a strong marriage and strong faith to used it. And ABC is so convenient…like all sin. But we fool ourselves when we think the Church should be the one to change and bend, not ourselves, and when we take that position we make reconciliation impossible because we can not have real repentance when we fail… We think our selves to be right and God’s system to be wrong…
Apple anyone?
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SnoopSword
Guest
I’d recommend people stay FAR AWAY from birth control pills - regardless of ‘religious’ viewpoints.
My wife and i were ‘secular but good people’ and we met in our 20’s… we married in our ealry 30’s outside the Church and had a pretty wedding on a golf course. the United pastor we hired for the onsite ceremony was just another ‘vendor’ on our spreadsheet. My church rightly refused to marry us, but wrongly forgot Mark 1:16-18.
Anyhow, she was a virgin when we were married. Since we were married now and not ready for kids quite yet, she did what we were taught to do by school and society which was to take birth control when not trying to get pregnant.
To make a long story short, my wife developed uterin fibroids, had to have the ambulance called twice for blood loss, had a blood transfusion, sever anemia, and ultimatly a surgery that gave us a VASTLY reduced chance of conceiving.
3 years or darkness passed as we couldnt bear a child. The darkness stemmed from being lied to my whole life about how difficult it actually was to get pregnant and how dangerous birth control pills were. All the surgeons know how dangerous they are.
But we finally had a baby, and during that first year the darkness increased to its worse after her forced C Section complications resulting in very painful IBS style condition reguiring her to stay at a hospital during Christmas, and myself being punished at home with severe gout in my foot and a new baby. Thats when I realized it was almost like we were being punished supernaturally for all this to be coincidence.
But out of that came light and we ‘found God’ becoming 100% full ‘creationist, shroud, Mary aparition’ type believers. Then amazingly she concieved again (despite our ‘seldomness’) and despite an even greater risk from the C section complications. Now we have 2 baptised little girls. But the internal scarring tissue from this whole mess might come back later in life. We dont fear this anymore, but others can carry this lifelong worry on their shoulders.
-A friend of ours had a blood clot in her thigh from her complications and had to take a year of weekly regular shots and living knowing that she could pass away suddenly at a moments notice.
-My managers wife had her problems when she STOPPED taking birth control pills after many years. she started to develop extrem pains and irregular flows during her monthly. It was so bad she had to have a small surgery where they can look around with a camera. This creates scarring, and scarring in that tissue isnt good.
-A co-worker of my wife came close to death. Luckily the found the issues in time and her uterous was completely removed never to bear children again ad a young wiman. Yes common STD’s can end a womans life quickly and they never teach this. But one never questions the role of birth control COMBINED with STD’s that can claim a womans life very quickly.
Regardless of your religious views, STAY AWAY from birthcontrol. Instead, find out how difficult it is to actually get pregnant. Satan on earth runs abotion and birthcontrol so any information on these topics will come from Satans children who only lie because they have NO TRUTH in them. (John 8:44).
My wife and i were ‘secular but good people’ and we met in our 20’s… we married in our ealry 30’s outside the Church and had a pretty wedding on a golf course. the United pastor we hired for the onsite ceremony was just another ‘vendor’ on our spreadsheet. My church rightly refused to marry us, but wrongly forgot Mark 1:16-18.
Anyhow, she was a virgin when we were married. Since we were married now and not ready for kids quite yet, she did what we were taught to do by school and society which was to take birth control when not trying to get pregnant.
To make a long story short, my wife developed uterin fibroids, had to have the ambulance called twice for blood loss, had a blood transfusion, sever anemia, and ultimatly a surgery that gave us a VASTLY reduced chance of conceiving.
3 years or darkness passed as we couldnt bear a child. The darkness stemmed from being lied to my whole life about how difficult it actually was to get pregnant and how dangerous birth control pills were. All the surgeons know how dangerous they are.
But we finally had a baby, and during that first year the darkness increased to its worse after her forced C Section complications resulting in very painful IBS style condition reguiring her to stay at a hospital during Christmas, and myself being punished at home with severe gout in my foot and a new baby. Thats when I realized it was almost like we were being punished supernaturally for all this to be coincidence.
But out of that came light and we ‘found God’ becoming 100% full ‘creationist, shroud, Mary aparition’ type believers. Then amazingly she concieved again (despite our ‘seldomness’) and despite an even greater risk from the C section complications. Now we have 2 baptised little girls. But the internal scarring tissue from this whole mess might come back later in life. We dont fear this anymore, but others can carry this lifelong worry on their shoulders.
-A friend of ours had a blood clot in her thigh from her complications and had to take a year of weekly regular shots and living knowing that she could pass away suddenly at a moments notice.
-My managers wife had her problems when she STOPPED taking birth control pills after many years. she started to develop extrem pains and irregular flows during her monthly. It was so bad she had to have a small surgery where they can look around with a camera. This creates scarring, and scarring in that tissue isnt good.
-A co-worker of my wife came close to death. Luckily the found the issues in time and her uterous was completely removed never to bear children again ad a young wiman. Yes common STD’s can end a womans life quickly and they never teach this. But one never questions the role of birth control COMBINED with STD’s that can claim a womans life very quickly.
Regardless of your religious views, STAY AWAY from birthcontrol. Instead, find out how difficult it is to actually get pregnant. Satan on earth runs abotion and birthcontrol so any information on these topics will come from Satans children who only lie because they have NO TRUTH in them. (John 8:44).
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loumeland
Guest
But you’re still Orthodox?
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Abu
Guest
Therein lies the root of the problem this poster has concocted for herself, and typical of cafeteria Catholics – the refusal to assent to Christ in creating His infallible teaching Church of fallible human beings, as though the Christ, God the Son, was just as fallible!
It is not any poster here who concocted these words but Christ Himself:
“if he refuses to hear even the Church let him be like the heathen and a publican.” (Mt 18:17).
The Christ then emphasises: “Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Mt 18:18).
In First Things (November 1997), Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon answered precisely this monumental error when she wrote that** “the Pope himself has acknowledged the mistakes and sins of Christians **in connection with, among other things, the Crusades, the Inquisition, persecution of the Jews, religious wars, Galileo, and the treatment of women. Thus, though the Pope himself is careful to speak of sin or error on the part of the Church’s members or representatives, rather than the Church in its fullness, that important theological distinction is almost always lost in the transmission.”[My emphasis].
So it is vital to understand that the Pope never apologises for the Church which is “held, as a matter of faith, to be unfailingly holy.” [Vatican II, *Lumen Gentium, art 39].
Not understanding or accepting the real teaching of the Church established by Christ, and thus not really accepting Christ, is the petard on which so many are hoist.
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PaulinVA
Guest
The passage you quoted does not mean what you are trying to make it mean. Bolding mine.
Here is what the USCCB says about this passage:
- [18:17] The church: the second of the only two instances of this word in the gospels; see note on Mt 16:18. Here it refers not to the entire church of Jesus, as in Mt 16:18, but to the local congregation. Treat him…a Gentile or a tax collector: just as the observant Jew avoided the company of Gentiles and tax collectors, so must the congregation of Christian disciples separate itself from the arrogantly sinful member who refuses to repent even when convicted of his sin by the whole church. Such a one is to be set outside the fellowship of the community. The harsh language about Gentile and tax collector probably reflects a stage of the Matthean church when it was principally composed of Jewish Christians. That time had long since passed, but the principle of exclusion for such a sinner remained. Paul makes a similar demand for excommunication in 1 Cor 5:1–13.
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alphawoman
Guest
I strongly disagree, and so does Humanae Vitae. It includes various calls to action for the supporting communities of NFP practitioners. How is the Church, the ultimate representation of Christ on Earth, somehow recused of that responsibility?
The Church isn’t some amorphous, external body, it’s US. We fund the Church. Due to its scale and moral legitimacy, it could direct financial resources to preferentially fund NFP clinical trials to improve the reliability of the methods, particularly for “special” subgroups at highest risk for method failure (breastfeeding, perimenopause, etc). Other than a few niche grants, NFP researchers have access to zero funding. There is no financial incentive for pharma firms to sink hundreds of millions of dollars into clinical trials for methods they can’t monetize, and which would cannibalize their existing high margin products. Catholics shouldn’t have to make do with methods whose development and refinement spanned the 1950s to 1970s due to market failure on the provision of current research! Medical and computing technology has advanced in the interim; Catholics and doctors should be able to refer to clinical trials conducted this side of the millennium for the major methods, as is the case for all other medical care. In this special and sensitive area, why should the Church not support developing the best, most modern, reliable, credible NFP methods possible?!
Abstinence is fine, but the salutary spiritual effects on a marriage are cool
comfort in the trenches. I did the almost total abstinence schtick for 4 (!) years in direct consultation with the medical director of my method. I charted meticulously for that timeframe, and the medical director agreed I had only a handful of method safe days. It turns out the root problem was severe PCOS, for which I am now taking hormonal contraceptives as medical treatment. (For the scrupulous among you, I did this in consultation i the a priest and Catholic bioethicist. Further, in an abundance of caution, I’m abstaining for the first 6 months of treatment to ensure that this treatment is necessary. After 5 months, medical testing suggests yes.) I was working with the MEDICAL DIRECTOR of my method, an author of many of the only published articles on the method, and she never once suggested am endocrine disorder. PCOS is estimated to affect 1 in 10 women of reproductive age. I wonder how many undiagnosed PCOSers using NFP exist who stick out years of abstinence not knowing that the reason NFP doesn’t work for them is medical, for which therapeutic use of hormones is permitted by the Church. My hunch is many turn to ABC or sterilization not knowing their underlying health status, or the licit options they face. That whole cadre of NFP abandoners could be averted with better research and knowledge of the medical needs of sub-populations of NFP users!
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loumeland
Guest
We would be responsible of great evil if we choose to silence the voice of dissent, especially when it comes from an overwhelming majority of the Church.
uscatholic.org/church/2008/07/catholic-dissent-when-wrong-turns-out-be-right
uscatholic.org/church/2008/07/catholic-dissent-when-wrong-turns-out-be-right
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Thorolfr
Guest
Is Quanta Cura also considered infallible and if not, why not?
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1ke
Guest
Dioceses have family life offices. Lay ministries abound, both within parishes, dioceses, and independently. I think “the Church” (meaning the people in the Church) have done exactly what HV called for.
Right, because the Church is just loaded with extra money.
Marquette University, a Catholic University, did just that.
Dr Hilgers created NaPro and Fertility Care while at Creighton University, a Catholic University.
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1ke
Guest
We are not free to dissent from the moral law.
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Hoosier_Daddy
Guest
Great evil? Ha that’s a new one! It is a great evil to go against people who go against God?
Nice try.
Still waiting for how abc is holy and Gods will.
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Abu
Guest
The Council of Constance (1414-18), in its fourth and fifth sessions, declared for the superiority of council over Pope. However, these decisions never received papal approbation.
The doctrine of Papal infallibility is found in Scripture (Mt 16:17-19; Jn 21: 15-17; Mt 28:19-20; 1 Tim 3:15), and for the final proposed definition of Vatican I there were 471 bishops for and 130 against; more than two-thirds bishops for. Sixty-six bishops then returned to their dioceses before the Public Session, but all eventually declared full acceptance of the defined doctrine. [See Dr Leslie Rumble, *Questions People Ask, Chevalier, 1975, p 159].
As in the dogma of the Assumption, dogmas and doctrines are defined when the Church sees that the time has come.
The understanding of papal infallibility was stated as a dogma when challenged by Gallicanism – the conciliarist theory lived on for hundreds of years. Conciliarism was formally condemned by the First Vatican Council (1869-70), which defined papal primacy, declaring that the Pope had "full and supreme jurisdiction over the universal Church, not only in things which belong to faith and morals, but also in those which relate to the discipline and government of the Church spread throughout the world.”
With regard to both Popes and Councils it is the infallibility of the Church which is actually the decisive factor, the definition of Vatican I is very precise on this point and it uses very tightly constructed language. The doctrine must be of faith or morals and must be proposed as divinely revealed and to be held as such by all the faithful.
In more recent times, Conciliarism has been renewed by those who appeal to a “magisterium of theologians” or “consensus of the people of God” against ordinary or even solemn teachings of the popes. (Etym. Latin concilium, council, assembly for consultation.)
Modern Catholic Dictionary by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
therealpresence.org/cgi-bin/getdefinition.pl
Gallicanism became Conciliarism after the Great Western Schism, claiming the superiority of council over the Pope, and promoted by John Gerson (1363-1429) and Peter d’Ailly (1350-1420). The French Revolution drove the bishops into the arms of the Pope and dealt a mortal blow to Gallicanism, but the basic idea was still alive until the First Vatican Council formally condemned it in 1870.
Also:catholicculture.org/cult…x.cfm?id=33692
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LongingSoul
Guest
We have to distinguish between dissent and disobedience though. Dissent from the Latin translates as differing in sentiment. Sentiment translating as sensation based in considering the merits of something. That would be like an conscientious objector.
Disobedience comes from a primary objection to the authority claimed to teach. Someone who might claim their right over any other authority. You can’t tell me what to do! It’s my right!
The Church respects dissension as part of the search for truth. An example of that would be prior to HV being written, dissension contributed to the deeper explication of the goods of NFP when some were saying that it had the same quality as contraception.
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Abu
Guest
Instead, it is good to get the facts. Infallibility was not involved:
Answer by Matthew Bunson (EWTN) on Oct-01-2002:
“Following the deaths of Constantius II and the pro-Arian Emperor Valens, a new era began under Emperor Theodosius who, in 381, gave his blessing to the First Council of Constantinople (the second Ecumenical Council in Church history). The 150 bishops in attendance, with representation from Rome, confirmed the Nicene Creed and condemned several forms of Arianism as heretical. As for Pope Liberius, he was exiled by Emperor Constantius in 355 and replaced by an antipope, Felix (II). In exile, Liberius was still recognized by the orthodox bishops and faithful, although he was powerless to oppose the heresy owing to his relative isolation. His return in 357 was achieved apparently after he gave assent to some kind of heretical formula under pain of death. In exile, Liberius was still recognized by the orthodox bishops and faithful, although he was powerless to oppose the heresy owing to his relative isolation. Both Athanasius and St. Jerome supported the claim, however, that he had done so under duress, and Liberius himself annulled all Arian decrees passed by various heretical councils. Greater leadership was provided by his successor, Damasus I (r. 366-84), the pontiff who did so much to encourage Emperor Theodosius to help stamp out Arianism in the empire.”
Pope Liberius didn’t teach OR define a doctrine on faith and morals to be held by the whole Church
That monumental error that has so distorted so many statements has been exposed clearly in post #273.
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