Why is artificial birth control usage so wrong?

[edwest2]

JPII’s quote notwithstanding, the Church doesn’t really teach a doctrine of freedom of conscience. The applicable Church teaching is *primacy of conscience *and it presupposes a properly formed conscience using the Church and her teaching over the centuries as a guide for that formation.

Catholics who choose to use ABC are not legitimately exercising primacy of conscience. They may claim a freedom of conscience but by doing so they are declaring a freedom from the Church.

All of us must have a properly formed conscience. It consists of truths drawn from natural law, the deposit of Faith as held by the Catholic Church and tradition.

Today, some want to reinvent the wheel or they believe they live in “modern” times and that simply cancels out ‘old’ thinking. All of this is false. The nature of man and woman precludes all this freedom. The secular world, which worships the god Change, is constantly yelling freedom! You can have more sexual fun. Just take this Pill. Genital herpes? No problem. Just use this medicine.

The Church is the bride of Christ on earth. She is our teacher and our guide. She guards the truth from error and from ‘new ideas’ about sexual freedom that only helps to divorce true love from sex. That makes us slaves to the flesh.

God bless,
Ed

 

[Vezelay]

Today, some want to reinvent the wheel or they believe they live in “modern” times and that simply cancels out ‘old’ thinking. All of this is false. The nature of man and woman precludes all this freedom. The secular world, which worships the god Change, is constantly yelling freedom! You can have more sexual fun. Just take this Pill. Genital herpes? No problem. Just use this medicine.

It is not just SOME… 96% of Catholics use contraceptives, the same ones used by the rest of the population. This is the figure that the bishops’ own study came up with. Some earlier comments questioned the efficacy of contraceptives. I wonder how, then, families in the US and in other industrialized nations have become so much smaller??? Something is working. Isn’t it the contraceptives. They really work well in Italy which has the lowest birthrate in the world. This is the Catholic church of today… it has embraced the use of contraceptives. WE are the church and we receive the sacraments. Period. Get over it. Your view has failed.

 

[PassingThru]

#1: Couples who practice NFP do have a very low divorce rate. Nothing to “debunk” there. If the practice of NFP is so damaging and destructive, the divorce rate would be higher, no?

#2: The fruit of NFP (even without a spiritual life): mutual respect, self-control, generosity, patience, fidelity. There is a very strong correlation between NFP and strong marriages.

#3: “Huge cross”, “negative impact”, “unreasonable demands”… markxcool, from my personal life, there was more “cross”, negative impact, and unreasonable demands when I was living outside of the NFP mindset and outside of the moral teaching of the Church. What I know now is true love, deep respect, profound joy in truly sharing my life (all of me, fertility included) with my husband. It has a good impact on our marriage and on how our children treat each other and look at the world. The demands are not unreasonable, as there are consequences to our conjugal relationship, which makes everything “reasonable”. The periods of abstinence are periodic, and the whole lifestyle is virtue-building. I know many many couples who live their married lives with NFP and are thankful.

Just to be careful with statistics, I think it is important to look at the low NFP divorce rate with a grain of salt (or mathematical salt). When that divorce rate is quoted, it should be noted they are quoting those who “successfully” or “correctly” practice over a long period of time. The group they are measuring, by definition, are the ones who have a successful marriage. It is not unlike saying “gun ownership results in no addition chance of being shot” by measuring “responsible” gun owners, and limiting this group to those who keep all guns locked up, no ammo in the house, and hide all evidence of guns in the house. This, of course, limits the population in such a way that it is not reflective of reality. Similarly, with NFP we are avoiding all the people who practiced NFP and it fails (they give up), the couple relationship is falling apart (the practice of NFP would likely have fallen by the wayside long ago), etc. Seriously, think of who would be practicing NFP in the final years of a marriage that is hanging by a thread and about to fail? I would venture a guess to say nearly no one. So of course the population that fits this narrow definition has a near 0 divorce rate. You have already eliminated the 30-50% of the couple that will get a divorce!

This, of course, has nothing to do with any good that may come of NFP. This is a statistical discussion that has to do with what attributes you assign to a population.

 

[catholicgirl201]

The Catholic Church considers it wrong to use contraception as contraception prevents children from being born. The Bible tells us to " Be fruithful and multiply".

 

[edwest2]

Today, some want to reinvent the wheel or they believe they live in “modern” times and that simply cancels out ‘old’ thinking. All of this is false. The nature of man and woman precludes all this freedom. The secular world, which worships the god Change, is constantly yelling freedom! You can have more sexual fun. Just take this Pill. Genital herpes? No problem. Just use this medicine.

It is not just SOME… 96% of Catholics use contraceptives, the same ones used by the rest of the population. This is the figure that the bishops’ own study came up with. Some earlier comments questioned the efficacy of contraceptives. I wonder how, then, families in the US and in other industrialized nations have become so much smaller??? Something is working. Isn’t it the contraceptives. They really work well in Italy which has the lowest birthrate in the world. This is the Catholic church of today… it has embraced the use of contraceptives. WE are the church and we receive the sacraments. Period. Get over it. Your view has failed.

No. The Church is the Church. Even though many Catholics disregard clear Church teaching that does not make Church teaching invalid.

I hope that sins are confessed prior to receiving the Eucharist.

It is a shame that the Modernists got their thinking into the seminaries in the 1970s. The thinking that caused priests to tell their parishioners that artificial contraception is a personal conscience issue. That was wrong and is in the process of being corrected.

I am not here to defend “my view,” just to repeat Church teaching. To encourage my fellow Catholics.

God bless,
Ed

 

[kozlosap]

No. The Church is the Church. Even though many Catholics disregard clear Church teaching that does not make Church teaching invalid.

I hope that sins are confessed prior to receiving the Eucharist.

It is a shame that the Modernists got their thinking into the seminaries in the 1970s. The thinking that caused priests to tell their parishioners that artificial contraception is a personal conscience issue. That was wrong and is in the process of being corrected.

I am not here to defend “my view,” just to repeat Church teaching. To encourage my fellow Catholics.

***Ed - you are always consistent in your beliefs, and I appreciate that even when we disagree! I wish I had your skills at doing research to back up your posts.

---

God bless,
Ed

 

[edwest2]

More about the negative effects of The Pill from the Catholic perspective:

cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=11004

God bless,
Ed

 

[edwest2]

To kozlosap -

kozlosap:
Thank you,

Ed

 

[casey_zia]

Just to be careful with statistics, I think it is important to look at the low NFP divorce rate with a grain of salt (or mathematical salt).

You are right, it would be hard to statistically prove the “success” of marriage and NFP usage. The studies that have been done are small and limited in their scope, though I do believe that marriages that live the NFP lifestyle are strong and healthy. Is it a strong marriage that can adopt the NFP teachings, or does living out the conjugal life with the assistance of NFP (fertility awareness) make a strong marriage?

There is a very very interesting article, written by Dr. E. Peters, an American canon lawyer working in a diocesan marriage tribunal. In his years of working with annulment cases, he has observed that “no single factor as directly and as gravely injurious to marriage as taught by Church occurs nearly as frequently in the histories of those who eventually divorce as does contraception”. Contraception doesn’t cause divorce, but is part of the detrimental mentality that may compromise the health of a marriage union. Please read the article and his concluding remarks.

Contraception and Divorce: Insights from American Annulment Cases
canonlaw.info/a_contraceptionanddivorce.htm

I can, in any event, support my assertion of a significant contraception-divorce link from yet another angle. After a decade of working on annulment cases, I have studied some 1,500 marriage and divorce histories, probably more. Yet, I can only recall only one, maybe two, cases where Natural Family Planning, as opposed to some form of artificial contraception, was seriously tried by the parties prior to their divorce, and at most one or two other cases where it was even considered. This kind of figure, of which I am very confident, should be read in light of numerous studies published by the Couple to Couple League and others which demonstrate that regular practitioners of NFP have remarkably, some might say astoundingly, low divorce rates…So, the Church, and a few other voices, are right about the bane of contraception. They are right about the beauty and soundness of Natural Family Planning.

This is a most interesting discussion. God bless you all!

 

[Abu]

Vezelay
This is the Catholic church of today… it has embraced the use of contraceptives. WE are the church and we receive the sacraments.

False – those who deny Christ throughout history indulge their own selfist prejudices. The same mantra ad nauseam, as though repetition can make truth! Those who have turned to contraception deny Christ.

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will know them” (Mt 7:15, 16).
“Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them.” (Mt 7:19-20).

So who are the Church? Jesus, Son of God, and those who are in union and communion with Him through the profession of faith, the sacraments and ecclesiastical governance (Canons 204, 205).

As the Bishops taught (courtesy Corki, post #60):
catholicnews.com/data/sto…ns/0606495.htm
the document says that a Catholic who “knowingly and obstinately” rejects “the defined doctrines of the church” or repudiates “definitive teaching on moral issues” would not be in communion with the church and therefore should not receive Communion. (See Can 916).

 

[markxcool]

More about the negative effects of The Pill from the Catholic perspective:

cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=11004

God bless,
Ed

Dear Ed, you and most people who speak of the health and environmental ills of the PILL should come to realize that this is a mute point. You can go on until the cows come home about the perils of the Pill to our bodies and others risks… but this amounts to nothing.

Why? Because the Vatican says so.

Fact: even if there existed a Pill with ZERO negative health side effects and ZERO negative environmental impact - it would still be forbidden by the Church.

The essence of the Church’s Ban on contraception is rooted in highly symbolic, metaphysical and theological considerations - nothing to do with health or environment - so its neither here nor there if the PILL has shortcomings in so many areas. Its not about this, since even the PERFECT pill would still be a no-no.

God bless you and all of us!

 

[markxcool]

#1: Couples who practice NFP do have a very low divorce rate. Nothing to “debunk” there. If the practice of NFP is so damaging and destructive, the divorce rate would be higher, no?

I tried to explain that the divorce rate would NOT be higher for NFP practicing couples not because of the pill or lack of the pill, but because the type of couples who resort to NFP are much more religious, virtuous and conservative to begin with. Couples who are not equally religious, virtuous and conservative would not practice NFP to begin with and,* as a result of being (comparatively) less religious, virtuous and conservative they would natural have a higher divorce rate. *Again: the use or non use of the Pill is not really a factor in divorce, but an expression of previously established values or lack thereof; divorce rates are affected by these previously established values, not the birth control method couples choose.

#2: The fruit of NFP (even without a spiritual life): mutual respect, self-control, generosity, patience, fidelity. There is a very strong correlation between NFP and strong marriages.

Wrong. There is a strong correlation between virtuous, religious and conservative couples and strong marriages; incidentally, such couples may also opt for NFP. This is how the cookie crumbles.

Time to end the pipe dream; its time for a reality check. The assertion that NFP by default brings about “mutual respect, self-control, generosity, patience, fidelity” is grossly misleading, dishonest and false - especially when generalized. If it were this blissful, trust me, a lot more than 5% of Catholics would be practicing NFP. Lets not kid ourselves, NFP is a cross that is carried out of love of God… any benefits, such as the ones you mention, are fruit of the spirit of sacrifice employed in the practice of NFP, not because of magical NFP working wonders on its own. An intimate knowledge, understanding and communication about a spouses body and how it works in areas like sleep preferences or diabetes or other human functions is no different than that of what NFP would be, yet in an effort to sell this demanding practice the NFP marketing makes these misleading promises… what a dishonest shame!

#3: “Huge cross”, “negative impact”, “unreasonable demands”… markxcool, from my personal life, there was more “cross”, negative impact, and unreasonable demands when I was living outside of the NFP mindset and outside of the moral teaching of the Church. What I know now is true love, deep respect, profound joy in truly sharing my life (all of me, fertility included) with my husband. It has a good impact on our marriage and on how our children treat each other and look at the world. The demands are not unreasonable, as there are consequences to our conjugal relationship, which makes everything “reasonable”. The periods of abstinence are periodic, and the whole lifestyle is virtue-building. I know many many couples who live their married lives with NFP and are thankful.

Thank you for sharing your personal experience with us (and for the mention of others like you). Our minds respond stronger to anecdotal evidence such as your beautiful story than to scientific fact and hard data… the later can be found in the fact that essentially Catholics do not (sorry, but 5% so low it practically doesn’t count) practice NFP and there is a reason for this…perhaps we can stop judging, take of our blinders and charitably take a close look at why were are in this mess.

 

[Abu]

Vezelay
The church has been in error many times and has eventually apologized and changed its teachings.

False – never any error in doctrine and never any contradiction in development of doctrine.
The repetitive emptiness of selfist braggadocio to try to justify prejudices to promote contraception by denying Christ .

 

[murphjos]

Dear Ed, you and most people who speak of the health and environmental ills of the PILL should come to realize that this is a mute point. You can go on until the cows come home about the perils of the Pill to our bodies and others risks… but this amounts to nothing.

Why? Because the Vatican says so.

Fact: even if there existed a Pill with ZERO negative health side effects and ZERO negative environmental impact - it would still be forbidden by the Church.

The essence of the Church’s Ban on contraception is rooted in highly symbolic, metaphysical and theological considerations - nothing to do with health or environment - so its neither here nor there if the PILL has shortcomings in so many areas. Its not about this, since even the PERFECT pill would still be a no-no.

God bless you and all of us!

I think you miss point. What is being said is that there are reasons in addition to fidelity to the church to avoid the pill. If we were discussing gluttony we would point out that it is sinful in it’s own right but also describe how it is damaging to health. It is interesting to note that there are couples who are using NFP strictly because of their concern for their health and for the environment (they call it FA-Fertility Awareness). So the argument is in’t that the pill is bad for you so the church bans it. The argument is that the Church bans the pill AND it is bad for you.

That is not to say that the ban arbitrary or even, “rooted in highly symbolic, metaphysical and theological considerations”. The Churches prohibition against ABC is rooted in the understanding of the purpose of our fertility as created by God. As I understand, it the idea can be summarized as;

God clearly created sex for procreation, a gift that allows us to participate in creation. Denying a gift from God or sabotaging his design is sinful. So ABC is sinful.

The negative corporeal consequences of ABC use are evidence of the fact that the behavior is disordered, just like there are worldly consequences for almost all sinful behavior. So pointing those consequences out is very germane when attempting to convince someone to examine their opinion of the behaviors.

 

[Vezelay]

False – never any error in doctrine and never any contradiction in development of doctrine.
The repetitive emptiness of selfist braggadocio to try to justify prejudices to promote contraception by denying Christ .

NEVER ANY ERROR??? over the centuries the church taught a number of revolting positions: the right to depose and assassinate non-Catholic rulers, to suppress religions, the horrible treatment and attitude toward Jews, calling them “dogs” (1871, Pius IX’s emphasis) for not converting to Catholicism, the right to banish infidels, to murder heretics, to condemn freedom of conscience and of the press, the condemnation of democracy, the condemnation of Galileo and Copernicus. The church changed its teachings on all of these issues. Of course Catholics chose to oppose such doctrines, just as Catholics today oppose the teaching that there is something wrong with contraception. Few British Catholics believed it was desirable and justified to overthrow Elizabeth I, despite Pius V’s authorization for doing it. The “sense of the faithful” did not endorse the pope on that action. The “sense of the faithful” has often led them to oppose the pope and that sense will keep the people of God on the right track. The only justification that Paul VI could come up with for not accepting the papal commission’s finding that there was no theological or doctrinal basis for not lifting the ban was that the church had said birth control was wrong for so long that he was afraid the people would lose faith in the church if it changed. The opposite was true. The people embraced the bishops (appointed by the pope; two years of study) and ignored Humanae Vitae. Did he think so many “sinners” had been sent to hell (as if the Lord would do such a thing) that church doctrine must continue to send them to hell just to be fair???
In the other direction, the church changed its teaching on married priests. For the first half of the history of the church, priests were married. Suddenly they were forced to abandon their wives and children and turn their land over to the church or else leave the priesthood, inventing some reason for celibate priests (although as it has turned out, priests may remain unmarried but hardly celibate 80% of them not celibate in a recent survey). The church seems to have changed its teaching on divorce as well. Do you know any couple seeking an annulment that has been refused? Parishes are full of remarried Catholics as is ours. One couple, both readers and Eucharistic servers and participants in our missions to our sister parish in Arkansas, pillars of the church, were married by a priest who told them not to bother seeking an annulment for his first marriage because it would certainly be granted and they could save the $10,000-15,000. They have had only one child so I imagine that they use contraception. Oh, the church is changing all the time, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill, but the people of God carry on despite the failing of its leader. Read church history which I did at the Catholic college I graduated from.

 

[Corki]

The only justification that Paul VI could come up with for not accepting the papal commission’s finding that there was no theological or doctrinal basis for not lifting the ban was that the church had said birth control was wrong for so long that he was afraid the people would lose faith in the church if it changed. The opposite was true. The people embraced the bishops (appointed by the pope; two years of study) and ignored Humanae Vitae.

While most of your most recent post was hard to follow, I think it is important to address this section. You have brought up the topic of the papal commission on several occasions and equated it with a consensus of Bishops’ opinions. The papal commission was not a Bishops’ committee. The original group was non-theologians; the expanded group included priests, women, doctors and others. There were some Bishops on the committee but it did not come close to being a majority of Bishops.

The commission issued two reports - a majority report advocating a limited permission to use artificial birth control and a minority report advocating no change to the consistent teaching of the Church. Both report contained theological and doctrinal arguments, in fact the minority report was backed by theologians and clergy. The commission was charged to research and present the options to the Pope who, obviously, found the minority report’s conclusions more compelling.

To say the Pope ignored the Bishops is very misleading and bordering on outright falsehood and slander of Pope Paul VI.

 

[Corki]

While most of your most recent post was hard to follow, I think it is important to address this section. You have brought up the topic of the papal commission on several occasions and equated it with a consensus of Bishops’ opinions. The papal commission was not a Bishops’ committee. The original group was non-theologians; the expanded group included priests, women, doctors and others. There were some Bishops on the committee but it did not come close to being a majority of Bishops.

The commission issued two reports - a majority report advocating a limited permission to use artificial birth control and a minority report advocating no change to the consistent teaching of the Church. Both report contained theological and doctrinal arguments, in fact the minority report was backed by theologians and clergy. The commission was charged to research and present the options to the Pope who, obviously, found the minority report’s conclusions more compelling.

To say the Pope ignored the Bishops is very misleading and bordering on outright falsehood and slander of Pope Paul VI.

My time limit to edit expired but I wanted to add:

For a first hand account of what was happening with the American clergy at the time, I recommend the following account by, now Cardinal James Stafford

catholicnewsagency.com/resource.php?n=675

What is often portrayed as an almost “universal” public disagreement with HV, was actually a letter written by Charles Curan (who is not even allowed to teach in a Catholic University anymore) and signed by a whopping 40 clergymen. It was published in the Washington Post. There were a few bishops in the bunch but nowhere near a majority. Since then, the bishops have had the chance to speak out about contraception over and over again. They always affirm the Church’s teaching.

The fact that many if not most Catholics choose to follow a handful of dissident priests instead of the constant teaching of the Bishops and the Church is a sadness but proves nothing against the teaching.

 

[Vezelay]

While most of your most recent post was hard to follow, I think it is important to address this section. You have brought up the topic of the papal commission on several occasions and equated it with a consensus of Bishops’ opinions. The papal commission was not a Bishops’ committee. The original group was non-theologians; the expanded group included priests, women, doctors and others. There were some Bishops on the committee but it did not come close to being a majority of Bishops.

The commission issued two reports - a majority report advocating a limited permission to use artificial birth control and a minority report advocating no change to the consistent teaching of the Church. Both report contained theological and doctrinal arguments, in fact the minority report was backed by theologians and clergy. The commission was charged to research and present the options to the Pope who, obviously, found the minority report’s conclusions more compelling.

To say the Pope ignored the Bishops is very misleading and bordering on outright falsehood and slander of Pope Paul VI.

Paul VI expanded the all-male and all-clerical committee John had set up to reconsider the teaching on contraception. By 1965 Paul had included 34 lay members (in a group of fifty-eight), including 5 women. When the early votes in the commission considering birth control revealed a majority for lifting the ban on artificial contraceptives, Card. Ottaviani stepped in and stacked the commission, demoting its lay consultants and placing 16 bishops on it as the only voting members. To Ottaviani’ s horror, 9 of his picked 16 bishops voted to change the Vatican’s position, only 3 opposing, 4 abstained. Now Ottaviani, who had arranged that only 1 report be submitted to the pope, had a second (“minority”) report added, this one taking the position he had expected to be the majority report. The Vatican therefore panicked when a leaked copy of the majority report that favored lifting the ban was published in the Nat’l Cath Reporter. Now it would be known that Paul was acting against the vote of his own bishops. The bishops who voted for the change realized it was not lifting the ban, as the pope held, that would call the church’s authority into question, but the stubborn clinging to a discredited position which would damage the authority of the pope, which is what happened. National conferences of bishops let their people know that the Hum Vitae ban could, after proper reflection, be rejected. By ranking the affected dioceses according to the number of their inhabitants, the Benedictine Philip Kaufman calculated that only 17% of Catholics worldwide were told by their bishops that they must submit to the encyclical unequivocally. Nothing like this had happened since the Syllabus of Errors appeared in 1854. The size of Catholic families began getting smaller. The people of the church went with the bishops, not with the pope. 96% of them in the US and higher percentages in other countries are still with those bishops who studied the issue thoroughly and carefully. In all good conscience we receive the Eucharist with no need for reconciliation. Peace.

 

[choose_to_love]

Vezelay,

I don’t mean to be a pest, and certainly you can respond to what you want to respond to, but will you address my queries in post #62? How far do “we are church” get to go in defining doctrine? Where does the authority to do that come from?

 

[Abu]

Vezelay
One couple, both readers and Eucharistic servers and participants in our missions to our sister parish in Arkansas, pillars of the church, were married by a priest who told them not to bother seeking an annulment for his first marriage because it would certainly be granted and they could save the $10,000-15,000.
The people embraced the bishops (appointed by the pope; two years of study) and ignored Humanae Vitae. The only justification that Paul VI could come up with for not accepting the papal commission’s finding that there was no theological or doctrinal basis for not lifting the ban was that the church had said birth control was wrong for so long that he was afraid the people would lose faith in the church if it changed.
the people of God carry on despite the failing of its leader

1. The rantings about assumed doctrinal errors of Christ’s Church shows that you have no idea whatsoever of the meaning of what is dogma and what is doctrine, and what is in the domain of governance. You have no idea of the difference between impeccability and infallibility, and therefore no idea of the history of the Catholic Church.
   For such lack of knowledge a one volume panorama, TRUMPH, The power and the Glory of the Catholic Church, by convert H.W. Crocker III, Proma Publishing, Forum, 2001, can be most helpful.
   For a detailed history, the prodigious work of Dr Warren Carroll, now up to five volumes with two more to come, A History of Christendom, is well worthwhile for the serious student or researcher, with an extensive bibliography. (Chistendom Publications, 1985 onwards).
2. The chaos over annulments among some priests illustrates graphically the dissent so prevalent after Vatican II and exemplified by the dissent over contraception to which you have fallen prey.
3. Glaring examples in your war against Christ are:

a) To deny Christ who gave us His divine assurance that His Peter and successors could not teach error in faith and morals – the Keys of the kingdom of heaven (Mt 16:18).

b) To deny Christ who gave His Peter and his successors His authority to bind and loose (Mt 16:19).

c) To deny Christ who proclaimed that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church headed by His popes (Mt 16:18)

d) To deny Christ through His Pope who confirmed Vatican II:
Vatican II: “By this appreciation, of the faith, aroused and sustained by the spirit of truth, the People of God, guided by the sacred teaching authority (Magisterium), and obeying it, receive not the mere word of men, but truly the word of God (cf. 1 Th 2:13), the faith delivered once for all to the saints (cf. Jude 3).” Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 12, Lumen Gentium, Vatican II, my emphasis]

As Fr John A Hardon, S.J., writes: The universitas fidelium (the university of the faithful) referred to in LG art 12 [Fr John A Hardon, *The Catholic Catechism, Doubleday, 1975, p 225-227] constitutes those who are agreed on the truth - what God has revealed, under the guidance of the sacred Magisterium. This is what gives them universality - spiritual unity. “the truth interiorly possessed gives them consensus, and not the other way around, as though their consensus on some doctrine made it true.” (Fr Hardon). Those dissenting are outside of the sensus fidelium.

Those who deny Christ through disobedience to Christ’s Magisterium are not in communion with the People of God who do obey by assent to the doctrines and dogmas.

We would welcome you to rejoin us.