Why do most people ignore the Church's teaching on contraception?

[PDXSeeker_1975]

I think a more interesting question is, why do people get so upset about the Church’s teaching when they’re going to do what they want anyway?

 

[Maximilan_Kolbe]

I think a more interesting question is, why do people get so upset about the Church’s teaching when they’re going to do what they want anyway?

Most people want to be justified in their disobedience. (Note I said most, not all). Adults are just older versions of children in many, many ways. They do not like being told what they can and cannot do.

 

[clem456]

I don’t understand how TOB, a theology developed by one of our most recent popes, offers much in support that the evil of contraception has been taught by the Church from the beginning.

Well, you’ll just have to read it to find out…

 

[Rau]

Both. The claim is always made that this teaching has in fact been the teaching of the Church form the beginning…if what you have provided is an accurate recap of the strongest points proving this teaching is constant from the beginning, than the argument is really weak.

I have no measure of its comprehensiveness and am not competent to judge that. But I also am clear the Church has taught the wrong of contraception from the start. The Church itself says that. And the Church itself has said it is unchangeable (ie. infallible).

 

[Rau]

I don’t understand how TOB, a theology developed by one of our most recent popes, offers much in support that the evil of contraception has been taught by the Church from the beginning.

I believe it was offered for another purpose - further explaining of the teaching.

 

[1990Domer]

We’ve had popes cover up the rape our children by men ordained in her churches. We’ve had popes father illegitimate children. We’ve had popes sanctify crusades. We’ve had popes condone inquisitions. We’ve had popes sell bishop appointments. We had popes turn a blind eye to the abuses and deaths of millions. And we can’t forget the pope who raped a virgin and the pope who poisoned his predecessor. We’ve even had popes peddle indulgences. Let’s just say, God gave us a brain, a conscience, a soul and the guidance of the Holy Spirit for a reason.

Without having read through the literally thousands of replies yet, this post stood out as an example of relativism, which is really a false God. No judgements, but I think many we some theologians have warned us about such.

 

[Thorolfr]

I have no measure of it’s comprehensiveness. But I also am clear the Church has taught the wrong of contraception from the start. The Church itself says that. And the Church itself has said it is unchangeable.

But isn’t it really someone in the Church who has said this or written this, not the Church itself as if it can speak without a human being speaking or writing for it. So someone can say, for example, “Clement of Alexandria wrote such and such against contraception in his book The Instructor of Children, and then Augustine wrote against contraception in his book Marriage and Concupiscence.” But do Clement and Augustine speak for the Church? And of course Augustine also wrote that it is acceptable sometimes to whip your slaves, but apparently he wasn’t speaking for the Church when he wrote that but only giving his own opinion.

 

[Rau]

But isn’t it really someone in the Church who has said this or written this, not the Church itself as if it can speak without a human being speaking or writing for it. So someone can say, for example, “Clement of Alexandria wrote such and such against contraception in his book The Instructor of Children, and then Augustine wrote against contraception in his book Marriage and Concupiscence.” But do Clement and Augustine speak for the Church? And of course Augustine also wrote that it is acceptable sometimes to whip your slaves, but apparently he wasn’t speaking for the Church when he wrote that but only giving his own opinion.

Thor - given your starting position is that the Catholic Church is in no (good) way special, that it was and remains capable of gross error in its teaching of faith and morals, that the Lutheran Church is a better reflection of what God intends…how would we likely come to the same view on the teaching authority of the Catholic Church?

 

[Thorolfr]

Thor - given your starting position is that the Catholic Church is in no (good) way special, that it was and remains capable of gross error in its teaching of faith and morals, that the Lutheran Church is a better reflection of what God intends…how would we likely come to the same view on the teaching authority of the Catholic Church?

I’m not willing to say that the Lutheran church is a better reflection of what God intends. I’ve only been a member of a Lutheran congregation for about 4 years and could just as easily attend an Episcopal church, or even a liberal Baptist church or a Presbyterian church (which I did for a while).

But I have a difficult time figuring out what is considered a “teaching” of the Catholic Church and what is just the personal opinion of some pope or bishop but is not a “teaching” of the Church (especially in the past when there was no handy Catechism of the Catholic Church to refer to)? Take the issue of contraception. This issue, as far a I can tell, was not the subject of discussion at any early church council. Instead, it’s condemnation as a part of Church teaching is based on what various people in the Church wrote in a handful of works. But if you look at Kyle Harper’s recent book, Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275-425 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), I can find quite a few statements from early Christians including Augustine that condoned slavery. So why are these statements not considered to have been a teaching of the Church? I don’t understand the distinction.

 

[TMC]

I’m not willing to say that the Lutheran church is a better reflection of what God intends. I’ve only been a member of a Lutheran congregation for about 4 years and could just as easily attend an Episcopal church, or even a liberal Baptist church or a Presbyterian church (which I did for a while).

But I have a difficult time figuring out what is considered a “teaching” of the Catholic Church and what is just the personal opinion of some pope or bishop but is not a “teaching” of the Church? Take the issue of contraception. This issue, as far a I can tell, was not the subject of discussion at any early church council. Instead, it’s condemnation as a part of Church teaching is based on what various people in the Church wrote in a handful of works. But if you look at Kyle Harper’s recent book, Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275-425 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), I can find quite a few statements from early Christians including Augustine that condoned slavery. So why are these statement not considered to have been a teaching of the Church? I don’t understand the distinction.

The distinction is easy. If you agree with something an early Church Father said, its a long-standing teaching of the Church. If you disagree with it, its an anachronism from a distant time. That is the sole distinction, as best I can tell.

 

[Abu]

Quoting Rau #1143
But I also am clear the Church has taught the wrong of contraception from the start. The Church itself says that. And the Church itself has said it is unchangeable.

Thorolfr #1146 responds:
but isn’t it really someone in the Church who has said this or written this, not the Church itself

The incomprehension in Thorolfr shows an inclination to disbelieve Christ in His Church for he has been shown conclusively that in:
**Post #501:
**The Decretals of Pope Gregory IX (1148-1241) summarise the Church’s legislation:
The decree on contraception “unambiguously identifies it with any action to prevent generation, conception, or birth; it distinguishes between taking a drug out of lust (instead of abstaining from intercourse) and taking a drug from hostile motives; and it calls all of these actions homicidal, in the technical sense of intending to destroy life at any stage of the vital process.” (V, 12, 5).
[See *The Catholic Catechism, Fr John A Hardon, S.J., Doubleday, 1975, p 368-370].

In country after country and in every country, bishops and councils forbid ‘contraceptive portions,’ ‘herbs or other agents so you will not have children,’ ‘spilling the seed in coitus,’ ‘coitus interruptus,’ ‘poisons of sterility,’ ‘avoiding children by evil acts,’ ‘putting material things in the vagina,’ and ‘causing temporary or permanent sterility.’ These and similar statements occur in ecclesiastical documents before the end of the thirteenth century.” (The Catholic Catechism, Fr John A Hardon, S.J., Doubleday, 1975, p 370).

Post #344:
To Pope Pius XI’s Encyclical Casti Connubii, 1930, which teaches infallibly (#56) that **“any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin.” **[My emphases].

Pius XI in Casti Connubii, refers to the “doctrine handed down from the beginning without interruption” which fact alone makes it an infallible teaching according to the “universality of time” which argument was used also by Pius XII for the dogma of Our Lady’s Assumption (1950).

Furthermore, it is infallible because of the “universality of the present” — because Vatican II declared unequivocally that “In questions of birth regulation, the sons of the Church, faithful to these principles, are forbidden to use methods disapproved of by the teaching authority of the Church in its interpretation of the divine law.” Gaudium et Spes, 51; footnote 14 refers to “Casti Connubii” and further teaching by Pius XI and Paul VI]. So the bishops of the Church in Ecumenical Council, approved by the Pope, give this teaching.

 

[PaulinVA]

I said:

Originally Posted by PaulinVA
I agree. So much of it is easily refutable by people who don’t believe the jumps of logic the Church makes.

Clem456 said:

Originally Posted by clem456 View Post
ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP2TBIND.HTM
esp starting at sec 118

I responded with:
"PaulinVA:

You’re going to have to be a little more specific than just read TOB.

Then, Rau said:

He gave you a pointer to key sections:

ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb117.htm
ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb118.htm
ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb119.htm
ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb120.htm

It’s quite short.

But, unfortunately, we are still where we started. Nothing refutes my original statement, “So much of it is easily refutable by people who don’t believe the jumps of logic the Church makes”. The quoted/linked passages do not refute my statement. They don’t even address my statement.

Lest someone want to condemn me as a dissenter or whatever, I am just saying this is a reason people don’t follow the Church’s teaching on contraception.

 

[Rau]

…But, unfortunately, we are still where we started. Nothing refutes my original statement, “So much of it is easily refutable by people who don’t believe the jumps of logic the Church makes”. The quoted/linked passages do not refute my statement. They don’t even address my statement.

Lest someone want to condemn me as a dissenter or whatever, I am just saying this is a reason people don’t follow the Church’s teaching on contraception.

What are you looking for? Proof? Incontestable logical reasoning from an irrefutable premise? Do you have that for the Real Presence? For the Assumption? For the teaching that the Church has no authority to appoint women priests? For the Virgin Birth? For the claim that the ends do not justify the means?

The “reason” you give could be given as a reason to reject a great deal of the faith.

 

[PaulinVA]

What are you looking for? Proof? Incontestable logical reasoning from an irrefutable premise? Do you have that for the Real Presence? For the Assumption? For the teaching that the Church has no authority to appoint women priests? For the Virgin Birth? For the claim that the ends do not justify the means?

The “reason” you give could be given as a reason to reject a great deal of the faith.

Yes, you are absolutely right.

Saying that teaching X is true because in another statement the Church says everything it teaches is true is circular and doesn’t convince anyone.

You have to take a lot of what the Church teaches “on faith”.

 

[Rau]

Yes, you are absolutely right.

Saying that teaching X is true because in another statement the Church says everything it teaches is true is circular and doesn’t convince anyone.

Your view would appear to be that the Church has no special grace to guide it in teaching of the faith and morals. In which case, I am unclear on what basis you would accept any teaching unless it also “suited” you in some sense.

You have to take a lot of what the Church teaches “on faith”.

Does that surprise you?

 

[PaulinVA]

Your view would appear to be that the Church has no special grace to guide it in teaching of the faith and morals. In which case, I am unclear on what basis you would accept any teaching unless it also “suited” you in some sense.

Not me. This thread is about why people don’t follow the Church’s teaching on contraception. You are correct. Many people don’t consider the Church has a special grace to guide it in teaching on faith and morals.

 

[Abu]

PaulinVA #1155
Many people don’t consider the Church has a special grace to guide it in teaching on faith and morals.

For those feeling thus – it cannot be real thought because Christ is very clear and historically real, as is the formation of His infallible teaching Church – they can easily come to know the reality of His truths, or remain in their self-satisfied state to be judged as only He can. Catholics here who dissent now know of the Church’s condemnation of such.

The real Catholic knows, believes and tries hard to live those truths gained through Christ’s Church.

Throughout much of his adult life Dr Alexis Carrel felt that Immanuel Kant had once and for all disposed of a rationally respectable belief in God, revelation, and – last but not least – miracles.

He went from being a skeptic of the visions and miracles reported at Lourdes to being a believer after experiencing a healing he could not explain. Alexis Carrel refused to discount a supernatural explanation and steadfastly reiterated his beliefs, For such an attitude toward Lourdes, Carrel was declared unwelcome in the medical establishment in free-thinking and anti-clerical Lyons. Their leaders had to eat humble pie upon Carrel’s return for a brief visit to France in 1912 with the halo of a Nobel Prize around his head. In a new edition by Real-View-Books, of *The Voyage to Lourdes *(1939) this realization is explained, with an introduction by Fr Stanley Jaki, winner of the Templeton Prize for 1987 for his work on science and religion, an honorary member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
ewtn.com/library/MARY/VOYLOUR.HTM

Answer by Fr. John Echert (EWTN) on 07-19-2003:
“I highly recommend the book Pope Fiction by a convert to Catholicism, Steve Madrid, which addresses every imaginable attempt to discredit the papacy.”

 

[Rau]

Not me. This thread is about why people don’t follow the Church’s teaching on contraception. You are correct. Many people don’t consider the Church has a special grace to guide it in teaching on faith and morals.

I think the reference to “most people” is to be understood to be a reference to Catholics (on the presumption that non-Catholics would have no motivation to follow, given their own Church tells them otherwise, or they have no (name removed by moderator)ut on the subject at all beyond ‘what works for them’).

 

[PaulinVA]

I think the reference to “most people” is to be understood to be a reference to Catholics (on the presumption that non-Catholics would have no motivation to follow, given their own Church tells them otherwise, or they have no (name removed by moderator)ut on the subject at all beyond ‘what works for them’).

That’s a short sighted view. All people should follow the Church’s teaching. They should find it attractive and want to convert. If they are Catholic they should want to follow it.

Unfortunately, the teachings frequently require that you accept certain underpinnings that don’t make sense. People can’t buy the Church’s teaching on contraception unless they buy a whole lot of other Church concepts about sex. When you add to that the fact that the Church’s actions in the past four decades have removed it world-wide from having any credibility to talk about sexual morality, you find yourself where we are now.

 

[clem456]

That’s a short sighted view. All people should follow the Church’s teaching. They should find it attractive and want to convert. If they are Catholic they should want to follow it.

Unfortunately, the teachings frequently require that you accept certain underpinnings that don’t make sense. People can’t buy the Church’s teaching on contraception unless they buy a whole lot of other Church concepts about sex.

If I could just point something out…
The Church’s teaching on sexuality is very reasonable.
Which is not the same thing as “worldly”. Christ’s view of sexuality is not compatible with the world’s view.

So if we think as the world thinks, the teaching will not make sense. The eyes and ears of faith are required, as with anything else. If we are not docile to the teaching, how can it enter our hearts and minds?

By analogy:
The world teaches us to turn away from the bloated stomachs of the hungry because we must protect our own interests, making sure our needs and wants are met first. But through the eyes of Christian faith we see that the welfare of another person is our Christian call. We are not fully human until we give ourselves fully and completely for the benefit of another person. This means recognizing the reality that a person is hungry, and has a right to the same resources we have access to. The bloated stomach of another person is a reality that should be recognized as a priority. Our desire to have pizza every day is subject to the call to give, for the good of another person.

The teaching on sexuality has this same element of complete self giving.

As far as TOB goes, JP2 is a world class philosopher in addition to being a saint. Many people might not agree with his conclusions on sexuality, but you won’t find many people who say he doesn’t make sense.

When you add to that the fact that the Church’s actions in the past four decades have removed it world-wide from having any credibility to talk about sexual morality, you find yourself where we are now.

The Church’s moral credibility is not based on the merit, talents, and relative virtues of Christians, it is based on Christ himself.
To the extent we refuse to listen, to learn, to act accordingly, we have our own in-credibility as individual Christians.
Using the failings of others as an excuse for not proclaiming the Church’s gospel on human dignity is one such refusal.

But: Christ is able to stand on his own I think, as the personification of morality.