SDG here (not Jimmy) with a (slanted) story from Scientific American that nevertheless offers some encouraging evidence regarding acceptance of the effectiveness of natural family planning among secular researchers.
Here’s their (slanted) headline:
Modified Rhythm Method Shown to Be as Effective as the Pill—But Who Has That Kind of Self-Control?
The slant is also evident through the story, from the "Vatican roulette" reference in the lede (opening paragraph) to one researcher’s disparaging remarks about the term "natural family planning":
"For many couples this is highly unnatural. ‘Natural’ is methods that you don’t have to think about, that allow you to be spontaneous…"
Sorry, but there’s nothing "natural" about latex barriers (which you certainly do "have to think about") or barrages of hormones specifically designed to short-circuit the natural functioning of a major bodily system (which you ought to be thinking about).
NFP, meanwhile, is entirely "natural" in the most meaningful and relevant sense: It accords with natural law, with the truth about human nature. It may or may not come “naturally” to couples raised in a sex-obsessed immediate-gratification contraceptive culture, but then neither do things like fidelity and lifelong commitment. Unsurprisingly, couples who do have "that kind of self-control" also turn out to be a lot better than their contracepting peers at the latter things too.
Many people who are in monogamous lifelong commitments use contraceptives too.
No doubt — but percentage-wise, divorce and infidelity occur much more frequently among users of contraception than among practitioners of NFP.
Many people who are in monogamous lifelong commitments use contraceptives too.
And I find that really sad and unfortunate.
IMO, using contraception in marriage is telling your spouse, “I want to withhold a vital part of myself from you. I give you all that I am except my fertility, because I don’t trust you enough to work with me to plan our family.”
I was on the Pill for the first two years of our (Lutheran) marriage. Once we started looking into Catholicism, I studied up on NFP and we decided to completely forgo contraceptives. Our sex life VASTLY improved and so did our marriage.
And now we have our daughter, who was conceived ten minutes after we decided to “try to whatever.” 😛 If I’d been on the Pill, her conception wouldn’t have been possible and we would have missed out on the biggest blessing of our lives.
No doubt — but percentage-wise, divorce and infidelity occur much more frequently among users of contraception than among practitioners of NFP.
It depends on which study you read.
I really don’t think that’s true. You can certainly debate correlation vs. causation — does contraception itself have a noxious effect on marital success, or is it rather that highly motivated couples willing to make the commitment to use NFP are also the same couples who are more likely to stay faithful and committed in the first place? AFAIK, though, the correlation itself is pretty well established.
It depends on which study you read.
Really? Which ones have YOU read that say otherwise?
From here:
M. Peter McCusker, 1977, “NFP and the marital relationship: the Catholic University of America Study” in the International Review of Natural Family Planning, (1:4) 331-40. McCusker surveyed 98 couples with a 41-item questionnaire including nine open-ended questions to permit maximum freedom for the respondents. He wrote, “The investigator concluded that fertility-awareness methods of natural family planning were perceived as contributing positively to the marital relationship by 98 married couples who had used natural methods for an average of 1.76 years at the time of the study” (334).
Joseph Tortorici, 1979, “Conception Regulation, self-esteem, and marital satisfaction among Catholic couples: Michigan State University study,” IRNFP, (III:3) 191-205. This researcher used standardized instruments to measure self-esteem and marital satisfaction among 45 Catholic couples using various methods of conceptionregulation. Tortorici concluded, “Catholic couples in this study who are at present using natural methods of conception regulation demonstrate higher levels of self- esteem than do couples, grouped as a whole, who are using other methods…. Catholic couples who use natural methods demonstrate higher levels of marital satisfaction than do couples who are using other methods of conception regulation” (197-198).
Thomasina Borkman, 1979, “A social-science perspective of research issues for natural family planning,” IRNFP, (III: 4) 331-355 including almost five pages of notes and references. Author states a subjective thesis and a related hypothesis “that in order to increase the acceptability of NFP an explicitly positive, value-oriented model of NFP needs to be taught to potential users” (341).
If you’ll follow the above link, you’ll also read the results of surveys CCLI has conducted among their teaching couples.
As of December 11, 1995, the League has certified 1098 Teaching Couples since its origin in 1971. Of these, we are aware of 15 who have divorced. That yields a divorce rate of 1.4% among this select group.
For example, Klann et al. 1988 found that couples with long NFP experience and NFP beginners have nearly the same degree of well-being between the partners, whereas couples who have just passed the learning phase show more ill-feeling between husband and wife.
And Bovens 2006 found “the rhythm method may well be responsible for a much higher number of embryonic deaths than some other contraceptive techniques.”
It’s worked so far for us since our 4th child was born in October of 2005 and no pregnancies since then.
No Slant,
Neither of those studies even comes close to backing up your implied claim that NFP does NOT lead to lower divorce rates.
Aside from not establishing what you promised it would, the first study you mentioned obviously suffers from a subjective measure of “well-being between husband and wife”. (Also: more ill-feeling than what? or whom?)
And the second study is just completely off topic. Additionally, “may well be” is not “is”. Lastly, how could NFP lead to more embryonic deaths in any other way than through just leading to more conceptions? Isn’t that just plainly obvious?
For example, Klann et al. 1988 found that couples with long NFP experience and NFP beginners have nearly the same degree of well-being between the partners, whereas couples who have just passed the learning phase show more ill-feeling between husband and wife.
And Bovens 2006 found “the rhythm method may well be responsible for a much higher number of embryonic deaths than some other contraceptive techniques.”
Please give full citations for your sources so I can view these claims in context.
With your first source, so what? We’re talking divorce rates here, not “ill feelings” toward one another. (I love my husband dearly, but I often have ill feelings toward him! :P)
As to your second source, NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING IS NOT THE RHYTHM METHOD so it has no relevance to the subject whatsoever.
Great Blog Entry!
The marriage act with NFP is a million times more exciting than with contraceptives — because you practice self control. You also think about what your doing — it isn’t mindless/meaningless. You also communicate more — what we hear most women complaining about is a lack of communication.
Chesterton said something like: practicing virtue these days has all the thrill that vice pretends to have.
No-Slant, I’m not sure I even understand the words that are coming out of your mouth.
As each other, or compared to some third group, such as contracepting partners?
Again, compared to whom? Granting for the sake of argument that couples who have just completed a course on NFP may be more stressed than couples who are just beginning or couples who are long-time practitioners, what on earth does that have to do with the much higher rates of divorce among contracepting couples?
As nearly as I can determine, that is crap.
As quoted, it would lead you to think that NFP is actually killing babies who would live if the couple were practicing contraception. What it really means, apparently, is that NFP could theoretically be allowing embryos to be conceived on the edges of the fertility cycle, when they are least likely to implant and survive, whereas other methods might prevent those embryos from being conceived in the first place.
There are at least three problems with this.
First, it is just speculation; there is no way to measure embryos that are conceived but don’t implant.
Second, I can’t see that anyone involved — mother, father, or embryo — is worse off for an embryo being conceived and failing to implant than if the embryo were never conceived in the first place.
Third, it is hormonal methods contraception, such as the Pill, that actually kill babies who managed to be conceived while the method is being practiced, by altering the uterine environment and making it more difficult for the embryo to implant. NFP does not alter the uterine environment, and does not kill any babies at all.
Neither of those studies even comes close to backing up your implied claim that NFP does NOT lead to lower divorce rates.
You confuse correlation with causation. The people who use NFP tend to be the ones who find it acceptable. It’s a self-selecting group.
the first study you mentioned obviously suffers from a subjective measure of “well-being between husband and wife”
All studies which measure marital fidelity are subjective measures.
And the second study is just completely off topic.
Using a method that may well lead to increased deaths is not off topic in connection to a topic dealing with openness to life.
Please give full citations for your sources so I can view these claims in context.
Try Google. It works.
We’re talking divorce rates here, not “ill feelings” toward one another.
We’re talking more than just divorce rates. It’s also about infidelity, matters of the heart and mind.
As to your second source, NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING IS NOT THE RHYTHM METHOD so it has no relevance to the subject whatsoever.
NFP is a set of methods which includes the rhythm method. The rhythm method is also mentioned in the linked article.
True. So is the group of faithful lifelong partners. And a disproportionate percentage of the one self-selecting group overlaps with the other self-selecting group.
what on earth does that have to do with the much higher rates of divorce among contracepting couples?
Your claim included issues of marital infidelity, and marital stress and unhappiness are oft cited factors in that regard.
First, it is just speculation; there is no way to measure embryos that are conceived but don’t implant.
Does God say it’s ok to disregard or downplay an avenue of investigation just because you don’t know for sure?
I can’t see that anyone involved — mother, father, or embryo — is worse off for an embryo being conceived and failing to implant than if the embryo were never conceived in the first place.
That’s the “My way is ok because only a few are killed” argument. Maybe you think it’s ok to kill babies.
Third, it is hormonal methods contraception, such as the Pill, that actually kill babies who managed to be conceived while the method is being practiced
I’m not advocating anyone do that either.
And a disproportionate percentage of the one self-selecting group overlaps with the other self-selecting group.
Unless there’s causation and not just correlation, your issue of no consequence.
No Slant,
Are you advocating no regulation of births whatsoever?
Or are you advocating artificial contraceptives such as barrier methods?
SDG,
I couldn’t help but fisk this article on my blog. In doing so, I noticed a few accurate paragraphs and I am thankful that they made it to press.
Praying for they day when the Truth of the Body is embraced by all.
Are you advocating no regulation of births whatsoever?
Some people do advocate that. But I’m not here to advocate one way or the other, or to say what’s natural and what isn’t. Some couples find abstaining from sex during the woman’s periods of peak sexual desire to be deeply frustrating for both partners, with resulting feelings of isolation, while others call that “natural.”
Since AFAICT you haven’t yet clarified who is being compared to whom, no meaningful conclusion can be drawn. All you’ve said so far, AFAICT, is that and new NFP students and longtime practitioners have less stress than those who’ve just completed training. I can’t see that you are even pretending to provide apples-to-apples data on NFP practitioners vs. contracepters.
I am trying to engage your POV; comments like this suggest you may not be trying to engage mine.
I’m not “downplaying” anything. I’m pointing out that there is no “avenue of investigation.” If anyone proposes a method of actually investigating here, I’m all ears.
Can you or can’t you make your argument without smearing and distorting? Do you or do you not understand the difference between causing the death of a life that would otherwise survive (the Pill) and merely not preventing a life that might have a decreased chance of survival (as is argued in the case of NFP)? Is it your contention that the word “kill” applies equally in these two cases?
That depends on what you mean. If I were arguing “So therefore use NFP and save your marriage,” you might be correct, but I haven’t made that argument. I’m simply saying that NFP is disproporationately chosen by couples with healthy marriages.
That said, even correlation can be a cause of satisfaction and comfort to the one group, and discomfort and unease to the other. Couples who use NFP frequently take great satisfaction in not contracepting. Contracepting couples lack this benefit, and somehow I doubt contraception has corresponding benefits of its own.
No slant stated:
“Are you advocating no regulation of births whatsoever?
Some people do advocate that. But I’m not here to advocate one way or the other, or to say what’s natural and what isn’t. Some couples find abstaining from sex during the woman’s periods of peak sexual desire to be deeply frustrating for both partners, with resulting feelings of isolation, while others call that “natural.”
Well no slant, welcome (hopefully) to being a catholic, a faith where sacrifice today hopefully leads to salvation afterwards. If I read your post correct, for that matter, why not indulge oneself with all of the worlds goodies
Sexual relations between partners, married that is, if one took a good pre-cana class, is for the population of heaven and procreation, not pleasure, though we also get that as well
If you have any issues with that, blame Adam and Eve and with respect to birth control Sodom and Gommorah as the mans “seed” is not to be wasted, hence why pleasuring ones self is also a mortal sin, at least it was before the Catholic reformation of 1962-65.
“Modified Rhythm Method Shown to Be as Effective as the Pill—But Who Has That Kind of Self-Control?”
This is a frightenly similar argument to that of the Jihadist who insists that because men have little self-control a woman must be covered from head to toe.
“All studies which measure marital fidelity are subjective measures.”
Nonsense. “I had sex with someone other than my spouse x-number of times” is a measurable statement of fact; “well-being between husband and wife” is subjective.
“Try google; it works.”
Lazy cop-out. You made the claim. Back it up yourself or admit you can’t.
Actually, if you look at what I said, you’ll see that I did no such thing. You implicitly made the claim that NFP did not lead to fewer divorces and that there were studies to back up this assertion, but then presented arguments that did not support your claim. I never made a claim either way on the topic, I just stated the obvious, which is that your “sources” did not do what you claimed they did.
Furthermore, I agree that the issue of your second “source” is an important one, but again, it was out of the scope of the conversation at the time. You made a claim about available studies and then pointed to a study that, while interesting, did not back up your claim.
You must keep in mind that no one here is an idiot and everyone understands (and has heard repeatedly) the argument about selection bias. EVEN SO, most people familiar enough with NFP to support its use realize that the benefits that it reaps in terms of intimacy and communication strengthen probably-already-stronger marriages.
I have to admit that I’m a little confused about how anyone can argue against the use of the word “natural” in natural family planning. It involves observing and understanding natural phenomena that occur within our bodies. Nothing about it is artificial or man-made. How is it anything BUT natural?
Also, an embryo dying is remarkably different from an embryo being killed. If you don’t understand that difference, and you don’t understand logic well enough to know why those two “sources” you cited did not do what you claimed they did, then I’m afraid to say that you are not-well-enough-prepared to have this conversation.
No Slant, your continually shifting frames of reference suggest a kind of fevered effort at self justification.
Does natural mean “whatever FEELS natural to ME”?
If so, there is no sexual aberration that can’t be justified.
FWIW, bill912, I Googled No-Slant’s quotation and found the source. I also argued above that the article doesn’t support the claim the quotation seems to make (and that No-Slant explicitly extrapolates from it).
John,
Vatican II was not a “Catholic reformation,” and it did not change Catholic teaching re masturbation.
And pleasure is a natural part of the unitive nature of the sex act, which joins the procreative nature as co-equal purposes. This is Catholic teaching too. As noted in the Catechism, “The Creator himself . . . established that in the [generative] function, spouses should experience pleasure and enjoyment of body and spirit. Therefore, the spouses do nothing evil in seeking this pleasure and enjoyment. They accept what the Creator has intended for them.” Pius XII, Discourse, October 29,1951.
No Slant,
Your original post quite plainly stated that at least one study contradicted SDG’s statement that “percentage-wise, divorce and infidelity occur much more frequently among users of contraception than among practitioners of NFP.” As SDG then promptly pointed out, his statement did not prove distill the particulars of causation versus correlation, but he did stand by the association as expressed in his statement. You have since dissembled into an argument about causation and correlation, but have still not cited one study contradicting SDG’s statement.
“IMO, using contraception in marriage is telling your spouse, “I want to withhold a vital part of myself from you. I give you all that I am except my fertility, because I don’t trust you enough to work with me to plan our family.””
That makes just about no sense because couples that use NFP are also withholding part of their fertility because they are waiting until the woman is in an infertile part of her cycle.
That makes just about no sense because couples that use NFP are also withholding part of their fertility because they are waiting until the woman is in an infertile part of her cycle.
I disagree. With NFP, a husband and wife prayerfully and mutually consent to abstain from intercourse for a short period of time. One is not witholding anything from the other.
As St. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7:5, “Do not deprive each other, except perhaps by mutual consent for a time, to be free for prayer, but then return to one another, so that Satan may not tempt you through your lack of self-control.”
NFP works with God’s design for one’s body, not against it, as artificial birth control does.
No Slant – you quoted the studies. The burden of proof is on you to provide the source material. Try Google, I’ve heard it works.
John – you got it all right except for the last part of your post.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. “Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.” “The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose.” For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of “the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved.”
What this misses is that every conjugal act is a renewal of the marital covenant, and as such must be complete and total, holding nothing back. It’s one thing to decide to spend 10 evenings out of the month reading, watching television, gardening or whatever. It’s quite another to say “I want to be fully united with you tonight, except not really,” which is what contraception does.
I’m pointing out that there is no “avenue of investigation.” If anyone proposes a method of actually investigating here, I’m all ears.
If someone tells you your daughter “may well” be killed if you engage in a certain behavior, do you just flap your arms and say “Well, if someone else proposes a method of actually investigating that, I’m all ears, but otherwise I’m just going to do that behavior anyway” ?
Do you or do you not understand the difference between actively killing (the Pill) and allowing life that may not survive (as is argued in the case of NFP)?
The researcher’s point was that some forms of NFP may increase the number of embryonic deaths. No, he doesn’t know that for certain, but he thinks it’s not something to dismiss. Your choice to dismiss it is not passive. It’s active.
His point is also that forms of NFP will result in embryonic death if engaged in. You seem to suggest that some embryonic death is acceptable. It’s like saying, “It’s ok if my choice of birth control allows some of my children to die while I enjoy the carnival. After all, I’m not actively killing them face to face. Instead, I’m just allowing them to die as a result of my active choices.”
I’m simply saying that NFP is disproporationately chosen by couples with healthy marriages.
And I’m saying what of it? Correlation is not evidence of causation or effect.
even correlation can be a cause of satisfaction and comfort to the one group, and discomfort and unease to the other
Why should it be of any comfort or discomfort without evidence of consequence?
Couples who use NFP frequently take great satisfaction in not contracepting. Contracepting couples lack this benefit, and somehow I doubt contraception has corresponding benefits of its own.
You’re kidding yourself. Couples who don’t use NFP frequently express great satisfaction as well. And couples who use other forms of contraception have benefits that NFP users do not.
somehow I doubt contraception has corresponding benefits of its own.
Contraception allows people to have sex every day of the year. It’s not affected by cold medicines, irregular sleep, shift work, etc. It also can protect against certain diseases, whereas NFP is unprotected sex. That may not be important to you, but it is to millions of people.
John was wrong on his description of the purpose of the sex act, too.
The other day when John Billings who was the creator of the Billings Ovulation Method dies they ran the headline.
“Founder of contraceptive method dies”
And wouldn’t you know it they referred to it as “Vatican Roulette.”
Of course not mention is ever made that the method can be used to achieve pregnancy for those couples having a hard time conceiving.
MSNBC had an article from Reuters on the same study a while back which I found interesting. The link is http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17282285/
Most interesting to me was the fact that the unplanned pregnancy rate was lower in women who abstained from intercourse during the fertile period versus those who used a barrier method during the fertile period.
I think there are many benefits to NFP, including assisting in building a great relationship between spouses, as JoAnna pointed out. My husband and I have also found it very helpful in diagnosing infertility problems.
“Contraception allows people to have sex every day of the year. It’s not affected by cold medicines, irregular sleep, shift work, etc…”
Unless you count antibiotics.
“It also can protect against certain diseases, whereas NFP is unprotected sex.”
Lifelong monogamy is the only safe sex.
Contraception allows people to have sex every day of the year. It’s not affected by cold medicines, irregular sleep, shift work, etc. It also can protect against certain diseases, whereas NFP is unprotected sex. That may not be important to you, but it is to millions of people.
NFP certainly does help protect against diseases, because its very nature encourages serial monogomy, which cuts down on STDs.
Be that as it may, the other method of “birth control” that the Church approves is 100% effective against preventing STDs: abstinence. No other preventative STD method can claim that success rate!
Believe it or not, the Pill can be affected by certain medications, shift work, etc. When I took medication for a UTI back when I was on the Pill, I was warned that the meds I was taking would interefere with my BCPs and that we should use condoms for a while. That wouldn’t have been an issue with NFP. As to shift work, it could be easy to get your days/nights mixed up, say on the weekend, and accidentally skip a pill. With NFP, if you skip a temp it’s not necessarily a big deal; you just may need to wait an extra day or so to confirm ovulation.
And No Slant, why is it a good thing “to have sex every day of the year”? (I would be EXHAUSTED!) Doesn’t that so-called “freedom” actually encourage infidelity? Doesn’t that so-called “freedom” actually encourage a husband to look at his wife solely as a means for pleasure instead of a partner in life? If you can have sex 24/7/365, what happens when one partner wants sex ALL THE TIME and the other doesn’t?
I highly recommend that you read Janet Smith’s ““Contraception: Why Not?” Here’s an excerpt:
The second reason that couples are afraid is the abstinence that is required. They think the abstinence will just be too hard. It’s mostly the women who are afraid of it and they’re afraid of it because of the males. They think, “My husband will get too irritable, he’ll get too grumpy. He’ll be removed and distant and won’t be affectionate and will stay away from me during that time. And, how will we make up our fights? And, how will we talk? And I’m nervous about what’s going to happen.” Men think they will feel greatly deprived. “Who can go that long; who can go seven to twelve days. It’s not right. That’s not what I got married for.” These fears are most common among those who have contracepted before marriage. Those who have used contraception before marriage and used contraception within marriage are very frightened of the abstinence because sex has become key to their relationship. They think that when you take the sex out of a relationship, where’s the love going to be? Where’s the intimacy going to be?
Couples who’ve abstained before marriage, have little or no problem with Natural Family Planning. Little or no problem. In fact, they think that abstinence is a way of expressing love. It’s not this huge deprivation. The reason that they abstained before marriage was not because they weren’t attracted to each other, not because the hormones weren’t raging, but because they loved each other. They said, “I’m not going to have sex with you before marriage because I love you. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to have a stronger commitment than I’ve made here. I don’t want to put us in danger of having a baby when we haven’t really prepared for that baby. Marriage is preparation for those bonds and marriage is preparation for that baby. And I love you and I can wait. That’s how much I love you.” Within marriage, abstinence has that same aspect. “It’s not a good idea for us to have a child right now. We can abstain. We did it before. We know how to show our affection at this time. We know how to be loving to each other at this time because we’ve done it before.” And they can do it.
The burden of proof is on you to provide the source material.
Author and year have already been provided, probably links too.
have still not cited one study contradicting SDG’s statement.
I said it depends on which study you read. SDG has shown no study that shows “infidelity occurs much more frequently among users of contraception than among practitioners of NFP.” And no study can legitimately demonstrate that. Infidelity is an affair, often completely private, that no study can genuinely measure.
NFP works with God’s design for one’s body, not against it, as artificial birth control does.
NFP can be misused like anything else.
Lifelong monogamy is the only safe sex.
You can practice lifelong monogamy all you want. But that doesn’t mean your partner can or does.
“You can practice lifelong monogamy all you want. But that doesn’t mean your partner can or does.”
What? So you’re saying what’s good for the goose isn’t good/possible for the gander?
What a twisted world we live in when checking the woman’s temperature is an integral part of the sex act. Maybe tonight I’ll do an unnatural thing and not involve a thermometer in foreplay.
If someone tells you your daughter “may well” be killed if you engage in a certain behavior, do you just flap your arms and say “Well, if someone else proposes a method of actually investigating that, I’m all ears, but otherwise I’m just going to do that behavior anyway” ?
My daughter ‘may well’ be killed by me driving her to the store. Does that mean that I need to never let her leave the house?
MZ – nobody has ever claimed that checking a woman’s temperature is “an intergral part of the sex act.”
Well Catholics use “artificial” birth control as much as anyone else. So who cares anyway?
“No Slant,” you’ve just officially lost the benefit of the doubt. I can talk to you, but I can’t stop you talking past me if that’s what you’re determined to do. You aren’t discursing, you’re trolling. If you can’t critique your own sentence above and ascertain why it’s irrelevant to what I said, after I and others have taken the trouble to point it out, you aren’t worth talking to.
That is not what I said. Does anyone feel closer or more intimate with his or her spouse because they use a condom? Because couples who practice NFP do find that it brings them closer together.
NFP certainly does help protect against diseases, because its very nature encourages serial monogomy, which cuts down on STDs.
Just because the wife (and/or husband) is practicing NFP doesn’t mean the husband isn’t having an affair. It might even drive some to have an affair.
the other method of “birth control” that the Church approves is 100% effective against preventing STDs: abstinence.
You can still get STDs even if you’re abstinent. It is though much less likely. Except when you read some of the studies of teens who pledge abstinence only to end up having all the more risky sex.
Believe it or not, the Pill can be affected by certain medications, shift work, etc.
That’s correct, but it doesn’t mean one would have to rely on the Pill alone. There are other forms of contraception which don’t care what medication you’re taking or what shift you work.
With NFP, if you skip a temp it’s not necessarily a big deal; you just may need to wait an extra day or so to confirm ovulation.
Or you just play Vatican roulette 😉 and take your chances.
why is it a good thing “to have sex every day of the year”?
It’s not that you have to, but that you could. Every day. Any day.
Doesn’t that so-called “freedom” actually encourage a husband to look at his wife solely as a means for pleasure instead of a partner in life?
I think “solely as a means for pleasure” is an extreme. It may be more apt to say “potentially as a co-participant for a variety of reasons,” of which pleasure is one.
Couples who’ve abstained before marriage, have little or no problem with Natural Family Planning.
Then the reality is most couples would have problems with NFP because most have not abstained before marriage. You might as well be talking a foreign language to them.
The reason that they abstained before marriage was not because they weren’t attracted to each other, not because the hormones weren’t raging, but because they loved each other.
That’s but one reason why some have abstained before marriage. Others may simply have been confused, afraid, mistreated, or it may not have been socially opportune, or whatever. People are alike and not alike. Trying to play up the former while ignoring the latter may be well intended but is not genuine.
What? So you’re saying what’s good for the goose isn’t good/possible for the gander?
STDs aren’t good for goose or gander. Whether monogamy is possible for the gander isn’t up to the goose.
My daughter ‘may well’ be killed by me driving her to the store. Does that mean that I need to never let her leave the house?
Is it necessary that you expose her to that risk? Is it just for pleasure? Did God command you to do it? Is there a less risky alternative?
If you can’t critique your own sentence above and ascertain why it’s irrelevant to what I said, after I and others have taken the trouble to point it out, you aren’t worth talking to.
It’s your opinion that it’s irrelevant. Opinions differ according to the nature of the individual and according to the surroundings.
Does anyone feel closer or more intimate with his or her spouse because they use a condom? Because couples who practice NFP do find that it brings them closer together.
They might feel closer having sex with a condom than watching TV, eating junk food or many other things. Or they might not.
“You can still get STDs even if you’re abstinent.”
LOL! You can get a *sexually* transmitted disease without having sex!
Atleast No Slant is amusing!
bill, he probably goes to my campus health centre which says the same thing. Of course, then I discovered that what they meant by abstinence was not engaging in complete sexual intercourse. They counted coitus interuptus, oral sex, anal sex, and mutual masturbation as abstinence.
That’s enough of the nasty stuff for me today. Now to have a family dinner to celebrate Holy Thursday and then to Mass.
Isn’t that like dieting by giving up cake and pigging out on ice cream?
“Just because the wife (and/or husband) is practicing NFP doesn’t mean the husband isn’t having an affair. It might even drive some to have an affair.”
Oooh, nothing like trust in a relationship, eh? Is that how users of artificial birth control relate to one another? No wonder they have a higher divorce rate!
“You can still get STDs even if you’re abstinent. It is though much less likely.”
Like astronomically less likely, and in the strict sense, it is impossible to get a “sexually transmitted” disease if you don’t have sex.
“Except when you read some of the studies of teens who pledge abstinence only to end up having all the more risky sex.”
Well, that depends on which study you read. 😉 And OF COURSE, the abstinence pledge must be CAUSING these kids to have sex. Lame.
“Or you just play Vatican roulette 😉 and take your chances.”
Or you could use NFP and have even odds with any artificial method.
“… but that you could (have sex) Every day. Any day.”
ALSO, I just discovered that I can EAT whatever I want, any time I want, as MUCH as I want and not gain weight! I just stick my finger down my throat and throw up. So much more natural than the periodic abstinence from food that these restrictive religions insist on!
“…most couples would have problems with NFP because most have not abstained before marriage. You might as well be talking a foreign language to them.”
Yeah. Might as well forget monogamous marriage, too… (whines)…it’s just too HARD! I’m not USED to it!
“Others may simply have been confused, afraid, mistreated, or it may not have been socially opportune, or whatever.”
Translation; If you don’t have sex before marriage, you are likely a weirdo and a misfit.
“STDs aren’t good for goose or gander. Whether monogamy is possible for the gander isn’t up to the goose.”
Translation; You can’t trust your spouse.
“Is it necessary that you expose her to that risk? Is it just for pleasure? Did God command you to do it? Is there a less risky alternative?”
Right, because everyone knows a trip to the store is as risky as a demolition derby. I mean, they both involve cars.
“NFP can be misused like anything else.”
You’re missing the point. I’s not that NFP can be used illegitimately, it’s that Artifical Birth Control can never be used legitimately.
No. It’s inexorable logic. The question you are asking is “What if action X might kill your actual daughter?” The real question is “What if action X might not prevent the conception of a daughter who wouldn’t survive beyond a few cells, whereas action Y might prevent her ever existing?” That those are two different questions is not a matter of opinion, and that you can’t or won’t see the difference is why you are failing to engage the subject at hand.
I wonder???
No Slant = Realist
SchuBob
bill:
Isn’t that like dieting by giving up cake and pigging out on ice cream?
A bit more like dieting by eating cake and then vomiting up, to be honest. 🙁
No, I don’t really think it’s Realist. Realist is too attached to this odd quasi-established relationship he has with all of us, plus he never comments without bringing the subject back to the historical Jesus.
My husband and I wrote an article a couple of years ago when we were engaged detailing our experience of learning the natural methods of family planning. We found that learning them was very beneficial for our relationship, and putting NFP into practice in our marriage has been even more so. If one uses NFP, it’s easy to understand why couples who use it have a much lower divorce rate. It’s pro-woman, pro-child, pro-husband and pro-family. Anyway, here’s the link to the article if you’re interested. http://spokanecatholic.com/article.asp?nArticleID=2
Mike Petrik posted:
John,
Vatican II was not a “Catholic reformation,” and it did not change Catholic teaching re masturbation.”
No you are correct, but the sacrament of marriage, along with all other sacraments were changed after Vatican II
The second Vatican council changed the theology of Marriage as it pertains to the two ends of Marriage.
The church before Vatican II (traditional Church) taught de fide that: ‘The primary end of Marriage is the procreation and education of offspring, while its secondary purposes are mutual help and the allaying (also translated ‘as a remedy for’) concupiscence. The latter are entirely subordinate to the former.’
When the church teaches something is de fide, then all Catholics must believe this to be true. Vatican II however then taught that the two ends of Marriage are equal, and further states the secondary end before the primary one.
With the traditional teaching married couples whose love for any reason had grown cold, still stayed together for the sake of the children. Now, should the first listed reason for Marriage no longer persist, divorce or separation is justified. No longer does the procreation and education of children come first. Additionaly, to add to this, the possibility of divorce, one of the new and post-Conciliar indications allowed by the Rota (Marriage court) is psychological immaturity. This is now actually a grounds for divorce and annulment!!
So with divorce and annulment so readily available to the Vatican II Catholic, why even worry about using birth control!
LOL! You can get a *sexually* transmitted disease without having sex!
But many people have. From blood exposure, for example. Even newborns. “STD” is simply the name of a class of diseases. It doesn’t necessitate that it must be transmitted sexually when there are other vectors.
And OF COURSE, the abstinence pledge must be CAUSING these kids to have sex. Lame.
Some people find it to be a factor. Or it could be whatever caused them to make the pledge to begin with is also involved. Many people box themselves in, or feel boxed in, and then act contrarily in response to that condition.
ALSO, I just discovered that I can EAT whatever I want, any time I want, as MUCH as I want and not gain weight! I just stick my finger down my throat and throw up. So much more natural than the periodic abstinence from food that these restrictive religions insist on!
Many people do fail on diets because in part they end up feeling deprived. Deprivation often leads to the reverse.
Yeah. Might as well forget monogamous marriage, too… (whines)…it’s just too HARD! I’m not USED to it!
Some people quit smoking just like that. Others taper off. Some use patches and gums. Some sign up for classes. Some have friends to help them. Some don’t. Some just can’t seem to quit no matter what they try.
Translation; If you don’t have sex before marriage, you are likely a weirdo and a misfit.
Many people are not conditioned to handle that.
Translation; You can’t trust your spouse.
Do you trust a spouse who lacks control?
Right, because everyone knows a trip to the store is as risky as a demolition derby. I mean, they both involve cars.
No, it’s because risk varies and in most cases, it’s not someone else who is going to decide for you. Some people think nothing of taking a drive. And then there are people who minimize driving to minimize risk.
I’s not that NFP can be used illegitimately, it’s that Artifical Birth Control can never be used legitimately.
Someone who is married to a spouse with AIDS might think otherwise. Many Christians also think otherwise. It won’t be you deciding what they’ll do.
The question you are asking is “What if action X might kill your actual daughter?” The real question is “What if action X might not prevent the conception of a daughter who wouldn’t survive beyond a few cells, whereas action Y might prevent her ever existing?”
If I’m asking a question, why don’t you answer it instead of trying to tell me what my question should be?
If you don’t like that question, how about telling me what is your rationale for thinking it’s ok to have sex while a distinct possibility exists, and with NFP, a greater than otherwise possibility exists that you may conceive a child who would likely die soon thereafter (because you chose to have sex at a time you know would likely be deadly for the child)? In the case of NFP, is it because you value your own pleasure more than the life of a potential child?
We found that learning them was very beneficial for our relationship, and putting NFP into practice in our marriage has been even more so.
Do you think God’s grace has anything to do with you finding what you found compared to what most other people find?
NFP encourages the couple to actually talk to each other.
NFP encourages the couple to actually talk to each other.
Deciding who’s turn it is to take out the trash also encourages people to talk to one another.
I wonder what the divorce rate for contracepting Orthodox Christians is.
That might settle things.
I wonder what the divorce rate for contracepting Orthodox Christians is.
Well, atheists reportedly have a lower divorce rate than Christians at large. So your question would be interesting.
We’re all deep in the weeds here. Let’s pull back to 30,000 feet for a second for a big picture reality check. No Slant, are you Catholic? If so, why? You don’t seem to have any respect for the Church’s teaching here. If you disagree with a particular Church teaching, on sex or any other issue, it’s your responsibility as a Catholic to educate yourself, pray, and try to think with the Church. This responsibility would also entail you approaching the Church’s teaching with some sort of maturity, reverence and good will, none of which you seem to be exhibiting.
It’s called reverence for life. If you want to ignore the dead babies that come with choosing NFP, go ahead.
No Slant,
There are dead babies if you choose no contraception/family planning; most likely the same percentage. Your dead baby argument is a red herring.
Are you Catholic, yes or no?
Real “reverence for life” means being open even to life that may not last.
When you say “the dead babies that come with choosing NFP,” you might as well say “the dead babies that come with fertility and openness to life,” because the fact of reproductive life is that the reproductive process does not bring to term every zygote conceived.
To be open to life in any way, shape or form means that sometimes you will procreate life that will last only a few days. How often that happens no one knows, because there is no way to measure it. NFP does not increase the odds against any particular zygote, so there is no causality of periodic abstinence to dead babies. Your argument could not be more bogus.
The only way to prevent the “dead babies” you’re speculating about would be to close the door to life by waging war against fertility in some way. In order to absolutely prevent all possibility of embryonic death, it would be necessary to sterilize everyone.
Short of sterilizing everyone, there is going to be at least some openness to life, and therefore some openness to the possibility of embryonic death that is part of reproductive life.
So, what you call “reverence for life” leads to sterility, and what you call “ignoring dead babies” is simply opennness to life. I choose life. I will not be deterred by the possibility that it may not last.
I’m not advocating either one.
Are you Catholic, yes or no?
Is the Pope Catholic?
Well, No Slant, any sex act could result in a miscarriage, so better for all of us to be celibate, eh? How could we risk ONE CHILD???
Yes. Celibacy is the only sane lifestyle. After all, you can’t trust a spouse to be faithful, and you can’t trust God to come up with a sensible method of procreation that doesn’t result in millions of spontaneous miscarriages every year.
WHY IS IT that I have such a hard time believing that this line of reasoning (in support of introducing latex and chemicals into the sex act) does not genuinely spring from a burning concern for the unborn?
If you’re not a Catholic and don’t believe any of this, why does it irritate you so mightily for others to practice it?
If (as I think more likely) you are a nominal Catholic seeking to salve your conscience, you really need to stop being a hypocrite. If you think that Church authority is a load of hooey, have the stones to stop pretending to be a Catholic.
OR, open your mind a bit and leave a little room for the possibility that you’re wrong, and that the Truth does not revolve around your felt needs at the moment. Discipline and self-denial are GOOD for you.
But as G.K. Chesterton said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried.”.
the fact of reproductive life is that the reproductive process does not bring to term every zygote conceived.
People who practice NFP to limit births are not seeking reproduction.
NFP does not increase the odds against any particular zygote, so there is no causality of periodic abstinence to dead babies.
NFP increases the risk with respect to zygotes on multiple grounds. One, there is zero risk to a zygote with abstinence, but the risk is not zero with NFP. And two, when NFP is practiced to limit births, sexual activity which is deliberately placed to reduce births may, according to some, increase the risk due to reduced zygote viability.
The only way to prevent the “dead babies” you’re speculating about would be to close the door to life by waging war against fertility in some way
You’ve now begun building your strawman.
In order to absolutely prevent all possibility of embryonic death, it would be necessary to sterilize everyone.
Who is calling for extremism? You are the only one who’s mentioned that. It’s your strawman.
what you call “reverence for life” leads to sterility, and what you call “ignoring dead babies” is simply opennness to life.
There you go wailing against your strawman. You present me as the extremist when that is what you are doing. I haven’t called for mass sterilization. I haven’t advocated anyone give up NFP. Those are your bogus claims that you try to pretend like I’m making. I already told you before, I’m not advocating and I’m not buying your bull.
I will not be deterred by the possibility that it may not last.
Nope, just the unborn will be deterred.
so better for all of us to be celibate, eh?
Paul did say it’s better not to marry. But I don’t say it’s better for you or anyone.
WHY IS IT that I have such a hard time believing that this line of reasoning
Because it’s your nature to be as you are.
why does it irritate you so mightily for others to practice it?
I’m not the least, itty bitty bit irritated. Perhaps you are expressing how YOU feel, like the other poster who builds strawmen.
I think more likely) you are a nominal Catholic seeking to salve your conscience, you really need to stop being a hypocrite.
See, you’re just guessing. It’s quite cute.
Discipline and self-denial are GOOD for you.
“I will not be deterred by the possibility that it may not last.” LOL.
“Because it’s your nature to be as you are.”
I expect his next response to be: “I am rubber, you are glue; what bounces off me sticks to you.”
I leave him the last word(and he won’t be able to resist it).
I expect his next response to be: “I am rubber, you are glue; what bounces off me sticks to you.”
I enjoy that! Along with “I know you are, But what am I?”
I leave him the last word(and he won’t be able to resist it).
Why resist? “I will not be deterred by the possibility that it may not last.”
Have a Blessedly Good Friday!
“NFP works with God’s design for one’s body, not against it, as artificial birth control does.”
It may depend on the couple. For many women, sexual interest is lower during the infertile periods, so restricting intercourse to those periods is working against God’s design for the body in a similiar way to artificial birth control.
“I disagree. With NFP, a husband and wife prayerfully and mutually consent to abstain from intercourse for a short period of time. One is not witholding anything from the other.”
It depends on what is meant by “witholding”. Abstaining is withholding intercourse and it may be witholding fertility as well, depending on whether any form of birth control, natural or unnatural is used.
“What this misses is that every conjugal act is a renewal of the marital covenant, and as such must be complete and total, holding nothing back. It’s one thing to decide to spend 10 evenings out of the month reading, watching television, gardening or whatever. It’s quite another to say “I want to be fully united with you tonight, except not really,” which is what contraception does.”
It depends on what is meant by “fully united”. If fully united means the possibility of becoming pregnant, then NFP is no better than artificial birth control because they both make the marriage act infertile.
Sorry, gotta jump back to this amazing statement:
“It also can protect against certain diseases, whereas NFP is unprotected sex.”
The Pill (in all of its forms, the Shot, etc.) is technically “unprotected sex”, so it does open someone to STDs, and also breast cancer, stroke, heart attack…read the literature if there is any doubt. More risk than I’m willing to take on so that I can have sex “every day, any day”. And boo on my husband if this is what he would expect of me so that I can be “available”. What a utilitarian relationship we would have. Yuk.
And, no slant, what happens when these folk who rely on condoms, for example, experience a “failure”? Abortion? It seems that some (most?) would abort, rather than go through the self-denial that would be required from an “unplanned pregnancy”. (“but we have a trip for the Bahamas planned!”) The same self-denial that the NFP folks have been practicing, and are prepared to engage should God bless them unexpectedly.
There are THREE groups of Catholics on this issue….not TWO….comments on divorce never ackowledge that at all and would have to follow that third group to be valid inter alia.
There are those who follow NFP.
Those who rashly disobey.
Those who dissent after study, prayer and counsel to which Lumen Gentium 25’s “religious submission of mind and will” is susceptible as to the ordinary not ordinary universal magisterium (HV was introduced twice at its press conference as non infallible..the Monseignor was later reproved apparently for saying it in public but not for his content).
______________________________________________________
Indeed, had there been far more sincere dissent in the past of the ordinary magisterium, Calvin would not have had our 19th century answer on usury in 1545 A.D.(three hundred years ahead of us) and the Quakers would not have led us on the slavery issue (wherein we were against native slavery not that of Africans which our religious orders had into the 19th century).
Ergo any studies on divorce amongst Catholics around this issue is invalid if it treats only two groups…not three….and gives sample amounts that are minuscule…and does not follow the group until death when the children have long left the home.
NFP is wonderful but the original sincere dissenters were the thousands from the Family Life Movement who wrote the Birth Control Commission because they were fed up with the rythmn method which NFP people do not have to deal with. Suddenly after 1970 years we have an accurate NFP and its practioners talk as though all previous Catholics had the same reality. Until modern times, the role of the sperm and ovum were unknown and natural methods were such guesswork that Augustine became a father following the prevailing method at his time (he was later to denounce the natural methods because he and Jerome accepted the Stoic belief that pure goodness only obtained during intercourse when children were the explicit not simply allowed goal…a position rejected by the modern Popes when they accepted the natural methods in answers to dubia throughout the 19th century and in the several encyclicals of our time). Hundreds of Popes said not a thing about the issue but simply carried out the decretals of Raymond of Pennafort and others which cited fragments from the past not whole treatises. In some centuries, the Biblical word “seed” implied that the whole future person was within the male (which would make coitus interruptus graver than normal) until the Septuagint version of Exodus 21:22-27 made both Jerome and Augustine retract on the contraception as murder theme which now recurs as to the pill but not in Papal documents of highest level like section 62 of Evangelium Vitae on abortion. Those clergy and Bishops who read Theological Studies periodical know that Bernard Haring cited studies in the mid 70’s allegeding that imprecise timing during the natural method’s ovulation window could result in non implantation just like the pill could…a point repeated by Luc Bovens in 2006 in the Journal of Medical Ethics and disputed by some not by all….( in short, that aspect is still influx…as is the natural and high embryonic loss rates prior to implantation….Is Limbo bigger than Heaven and Hell combined?…or does the 14 days til identical twinning raise delayed ensoulement problems that discount such problems). Haring’s concern was perhaps the new zeal in judging that was beginning then and had not come from the rhythm people a decade earlier.
As to constant tradition, where were the constant tradition defenders when the last Pope tried his best to undo capital punishment and husband headship…each with clearer lineages (see on husband headship…Dignitatem Mulieris, sect.24, par.3&4 and and the Theology of the Body section 89.3-4) (absent in the Catechism now, though 6 times in the NT unlike birth control). Not a well placed person seems to have said boo.
Onan? Onan was about something much more important than a sexual sin or Judah and Tamar would also have been killed (fornication and incest respectively..both condemned in the “Law” later unlike coitus interruptus which is unmentioned at all in the Law). Even if Onan had used NFP, he would have been killed: he risked the non appearance of the Messiah who had to come through one of 4 men in that family. Were he left alive by God, Tamar could have reached barrenness while he ruled out all children since some present translations follow the Septuagint ” whenever Onan went in to Tamar” he wasted his seed…not once….”whenever”. He intended never to have any children which invalidates a marriage in present Church law. Obviously Jewish commentators would never notice the deeper problem to Onan’s sin and they would go back ond forth between levirate and coitus interruptus…. but our genealogy of Christ has Pharez as the product of Judah’s and Tamar’s sin and as Christ’s ancestor…. given that Er, Onan and Shelah would not provide one.
People in Scripture are killed by God for sacrilege not sex….Uzzah (inadvertent sacrilege in that he tried to save the ark from damage and in touching it was killed by God); the sons of Aaron; the sons of Eli for eating the choice sacrifices; the children who taunted Elisha are killed by bears; the 70 descendants of Jechoniah; Herod in Acts 12; Ananias in Acts 5 and wife.
Momof6 makes a good point — with hormonal birth control, the WOMAN assumes all the physical risk of heart disease, stroke, thrombosis, cancer, liver disease, generally lower libido, etc. How does a loving husband justify putting his wife’s life on the line just so he can have sex any time he wants to without fathering a child? A Real Man would get to know his wife’s body, see the risks of hormonal birth control, and reasonably choose to abstain from sex for a few days each month over risking his wife’s health, well-being and sexual pleasure.
When I was looking up Janet Smith’s work (previously mentioned), I was completely shocked at how the first studies on hormonal birth control were done on men and women. Some of the men had testicals that shrunk while on hormonal birth control, so that part of the study was immediately ended. Can’t risk a man’s virility, now can we? On the female side of the study, six women actually DIED, but all they did was tweak the amount of hormones they were giving the women and carry on.
That shows you how anti-female the creators of modern birth control are. Even with FDA warnings that the birth control patch increases the risk of death, the mnfctr is still making that product and, apparently, giggling all the way to the bank. Never mind the beautiful 18-year-old girl who now lies in a coffin…Never mind the young mother who never will see her kids grow up…
I thank God that my husband cares enough about my long-term health that he doesn’t want me on any form of hormonal birth control. And NFP is so easy, convenient, cheap and inspiring, there simply isn’t a need for barriers between us. Why would I want to be seperated from my husband during an act that is supposed to be the ultimate unity?
Why be seperated period? The peoples of the world were able to progogate and even have “happy marriages” before NFP was “95%+ effective against children”, so why bother with it? At one time I had a far more permissive view of NFP. The more I hear people discuss it, the more I’m convinced its spiritual poison.
Bill,
Thanks for the detailed post, above. It’s loaded with excellent topics for further study!
Bill Bannon raises many good points. I will address one.
The Fathers were UNANIMOUS in their condemnation of any sexual act that did not result in pregnancy. This means that even sex during pregnancy, after menopause, or NFP. These practices were condemned by them all.
It wasn’t until St. John Chrysostom that sex during pregnancy and after menopause were allowed.
How do we reconcile this? How do the Orthodox?
Development of Doctrine….. even the Orthodox admit DoD on this one.
The peoples of the world were able to progogate and even have “happy marriages” before NFP was “95%+ effective against children”, so why bother with it?
Back in the good old days, people had more disease and more infant death. A modern couple could wind up with twenty children where they would only have had four or five living past infancy had they lived six hundred years ago given the same number of randomly-spaced sexual acts.
Sorry, bold off!
The above comment was not mine at 7:03:05 am.
Bill Bannon —
Regardless of your personal views on contraception, the Catholic Church has authortatively stated that contraception is intrinsically evil, and that Catholics who have just reasons may use NFP to space their families.
If you disagree, then you need to engage in research, prayer, study, and reflection about the matter while still submitting to the Church’s authority.
Since I wrote the article, I’d like to address the charge that the article was slanted: as a journalist, it’s my job to report the opinions of qualified experts on contraversial issues.
The headline was written to reflect the doubts about NFP that were expressed by some of the experts I consulted, which included a well known and well respected Ob/Gyn and a representative of a well known and well respectid NGO that deals with birth control in the developing world.
It was pretty clear to me that just about everyone I talked to (besides the Ob/Gyn) had an agenda, and so I tried to balance their claims in both the headline and the article. Hence the positive opening of the headline – “NFP as effective as the pill” and the caveat that was brought up by folks who weren’t already advocates for NFP “–but who has that kind of self control?”
I tried to make the second half of the headline a little cheeky so as to blunt the criticism. And, frankly, I think I did a pretty good job of letting the experts speak for themselves–those are their opinions, not mine.
If you’d like some completely uncritical coverage of this finding, there was plenty of it–and in my opinion, none of the authors of these rather superficial, often single-source stories did a very thorough job of covering the phenomenon:
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1418&id=277082007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6375261.stm
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=63567
JoAnna
What you are trying to say is that one must follow sincere conscience (ccc #1790) but one’s studying and prayerful conscience must conform to Rome or be non Catholic. That is only true of the abortion issue which alone is infallibly defined clearly in Evangelium Vitae sect.62..so as to pass muster under Canon Laws 751 and 749-3:
Can. 751 Heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith.
Canon 749-3. “No doctrine is understood as defined infallibly unless this is manifestly evident.”
Birth control does not pass muster under canon 749-3 and abortion passes both canons…birth control doesn’t since hundreds of theologians dissented from Humanae Vitae and went unprosecuted for same; Humanae Vitae’s own press conference twice stated it’s non infallibility; few well known theologians supported Humanae Vitae…Germain Grisez seems to have been the most famous one and he debated the issue in Theological Studies against others and Rome knew it and Rome said nothing regarding the debate. Further one must watch Rome. It is said that 95% is the dissent rate against Rome’s position. If the Pope thought that 95% of Catholics were sinning mortally every week and then he still went about attending concerts, having dinners for guests, traveling 17% of his time, never skipping vacations…..and all that time, he did not call a special synod in Rome of the world’s Bishops to fight a 95% mortal sin rate, then he would not only not be a saint….but he would be grossly negligent.
You should be able to follow NFP without the add on of needing to know or ponder what others are doing.
NFP is wonderful, accurate and may undo the logic of Humanae Vitae as one gets to know with increasing precision which days are not open to the transmission of life. The male is always open to the transmission of life…the act and woman are not.
A person sins mortally if they dissent from Rome without prayer, study and counsel. I suspect that the group who sincerely dissents has similar divorce rates to the NFP group but no one has ever studied that…or even thought to….because judging others seems to be a bonus given to the NFP people by some of their group like a priest using “Hannitization” as a sarcastic description of a mindset. What if the priest’s name was deformed for humors sake….would that be a virtuous moment also?
“A person sins mortally if they(sic) dissent from Rome without prayer, study and counsel.”
Incorrect. Mortal sin has 3 requirements:
1) Serious matter
2) Knowledge of same
3) Full consent of the will
Remove any of the 3, and there is no mortal sin.
First off, this idea that NFP results in as many miscarriages as the Pill is a mirage. There is absolutely ZERO data to back it up. It is pure, ungrounded specualtion.
And, MZ, REALLY… spiritual poison? The Church obviously disagrees. OF COURSE, being completely open to pregnancy and taking no thought to fertile or infertile times would be the ideal, but don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good.
Sparki,
Thank you for your beautiful post. Sadly too, many young women who have been indulging in a “hook-up” culture, thanks to contraceptives, are discovering they are now infertile as a consequence. Sadly, the public school health teachers who eagerly demonstrate the “condom on a banana” trick are not quite so informative when the converstation turns to STDs and their consequences …
bill bannon-
Non-infallible does not mean non-authoritative.
JPII’s Theology of the Body along with other subsequent Catholic thought has only solidified the teaching of Humanae Vitae.
I think recognize No Slant’s style of writing… I just can’t remember who he/she is. But I seem to recall that he/she expressed dissenting opinions before.
Sadly too, many young women who have been indulging in a “hook-up” culture, thanks to contraceptives
In high school, the people that slept around just slept around. No problems. STD by and large had not entered the general demographic at that point.
Now that I’m older, I don’t know a single person who’s college age or better that had more than a small handful of partners (3-4 or more) who didn’t get an STD of some sort.
I’m sure there are a few out there without an STD. But out of everybody who I know whether they have an STD or not and are active, NONE are lacking in some disease (many of them have some pretty bad ones.) I’m not talking about only 2 or 3 people either. Every relative, close and distant, every friend that I confide with and that my wife confides with, lots of people..
Until someone can prove to me otherwise, not debate but prove, I treat it as a fact that a sexually active person with more than 3-4 parters out of high school most likely has several STDs.
Wow, talk about affirming the consequent. Who cares if a million studies say “married people who practice NFP get divorced less than those who don’t?” You have no evidence that shows NFP is the reason these people get divorced less. Maybe they’re just better at time management, and thus have better relationships, or maybe they’re just stubborn about *everything* and don’t get divorced even in cases where they really should be.
And the study you cite is an apples-and-oranges comparison. The intercourse on NFP is scheduled and thus effective only in very narrow time periods, while horomonal birth control is effective at any time during the month. Try comparing them both using a realistic schedule where intercourse occurs throughout the month and NFP’s effectiveness is far lower.
Tim J
You stated “non infallible does not mean non authoritative”…a tautology….read my post again and it implicitly declares that very same thing. Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium’s 25 declared that too which I cite.
That it permits of exceptions to the sincere, studying and counseled conscience is even within Germain Grisez’s tomes though he does his best to hide it as he almost hid epikeia totally ( a separate issue not applicable here…but one that also implies that man is more than a robot in the face of the non infallible or in epikeia’s case…in the face of a law which could not foresee every situation ie Christ’s disciples and the picking of grain).
As cited by me in my first post, Theology of the Body (see cites above) did tremendous damage to marriage on an entirely different issue: husband headship which is unmentioned in the Catechism as a result (partially…it was unmentioned in Vatican II also due to the same modern biblical scholarship problems…the tendency to deduct what one does not veer toward by nature) despite Pius XI’s 1930 Casti Cannubii’s section 74 condemning any lessening of same jurisdictional headship as the work of false prophets (which see…all cites are online). That a saint can do such damage is known to anyone who reads the anti semitical sermons of Chrysostom or the letters of Jerome in which he talks casually of a torture incident, or any of the late 15th century Popes who moved imperialism with slavery forward in such bulls as Inter Caetera. As Vatican II said: “conscience frequently errs without losing its dignity”.
That TOB should be similar to HV is natural. John Paul as Karol Wotyla was made a cardinal by Paul VI and appointed to the judging committee of the birth control commission and did not show up due to applying for his visa late (according to Weigel….I think it’s because he may not have wanted to debate John Noonan :))….Be that as it may, John Paul stayed in Poland and conducted his own study and sent his ideas privately to Paul VI. John Paul’s assistant at that time maintains that many of John Paul’s ideas were put in Humanae Vitae….so some of us never saw it as being so separate from John Paul from the get go. I have never seen anything in print that notes that then Karol Wotyla took the trouble to read the many letters from Family Life Couples to the commission and who were obeying rythmn…and yet seeking a change. Yet I read John Paul once speaking about dialogue as though it was wonderful. James’ epistle: “in many things we all offend.”…including Popes and saints since it was said by a saint.
“Maybe they’re just better at time management, and thus have better relationships,or maybe they’re just stubborn about *everything* and don’t get divorced even in cases where they really should be.”
Or maybe they realize that God is the third partner in their marriage and are faithful and obedient.
No, BW, you are comparing NFP used improperly with the Pill used properly. I could just as easily say “Well, if a woman forgets to take her pill, then that method is not very effective AT ALL!”
You can hardly complain that “periodic abstinence” requires abstaining periodically, any more validly than I can complain that The Pill requires a woman to remember to take a pill.
NFP works, and I know from experience. It also totally ROCKS if you are TRYING to get pregnant.
In addition, I wonder about the pervasive use of hormone therapy in otherwise healthy women and things like the disturbing rise in the incidence of autism, for instance. Is there a connection? I don’t know. But we have a bunch of healthy women altering their body chemistry with hormones, who are in fact treating fertility as a disease, and I wonder about the consequences to public health. Heck, people get all upset about hormones in our meat!
Amen, Tim. The purpose of medicine is supposed to be to correct an imbalance in the body, not to cause one.
Bw:
The intercourse on NFP is scheduled and thus effective only in very narrow time periods, while horomonal birth control is effective at any time during the month.
Wow, you show a drastic ignorance about NFP! NFP is reading the signs of ovulation that a woman’s body naturally produces. This information allows the couple to choose to proceed with intercourse or abstain on any given day. If they are TRYING to have a baby, they can use NFP data to abstain a day or two before ovulation and the proceed with intercourse on the day of ovulation in order to give them the best chance of pregnancy. If they are in a situation where they must delay pregnancy (i.e., health problems, financial constraints, etc.), then they can use NFP data to abstain from sex when the woman is most fertile.
So you see, NFP is ALWAY effective. Every day. Whether you are using it to conceive or using it to delay pregnancy, it’s always providing the data a couple needs to make their choices. There is no “very narrow time periods.”
Also, BW, in case you didn’t know it, women are only fertile for a handful of days each month. There isn’t a woman on this planet who is fertile 24/7 all month long. So the idea that any form of contraception NEEDS to be in effect all month long is just looney. Hormonal birth control works by making women infertile all the time. Infertility is not a state of health. Artificially induced infertility is worse because it can cause long-term health problems including DEADLY conditions like embolism, stroke, heart attacks, liver disease and cancer. This is a medically proven FACT and if you read the insert on any hormonal birth control package, they’ll spell it all out for you.
Try comparing them both using a realistic schedule where intercourse occurs throughout the month and NFP’s effectiveness is far lower.
This doesn’t make any sense. NFP is a system of collecting data, and that is ALL it is. Data doesn’t prevent pregnancy. NFP data is used by couples to either ACHIEVE or DELAY pregnancy. Couples can use NFP and have sex all month long, and it’s going to be completely effective, because all NFP does is say when ovulation is occurring. If the couple has sex on the fertile days, they can expect a baby to be conceived. If they abstain on those days, they probably won’t conceive a baby. Either way, the NFP data is not reduced in “effectiveness.”
“…it permits of exceptions to the sincere, studying and counseled conscience”
But not for disobedience. You are permitted to have reservations of conscience, as are we all, but you are not permitted to countermand the teaching of the Church in response to those reservations.
Does it give you pause at all to note that your conscience is telling you to go ahead and do what you want, rather than convicting you against your natural desires?
In other words, I find that when my conscience tells me to avoid something I desire, or to do something hard that I want to avoid, that I can follow it with great confidence. On the other hand, if my conscience is quiet or falls into line with something I already strongly desire, it is often suspect and needs forming.
Our consciences do not come to us fully grown and healthy, but must be formed by means of Church teaching, along with prayer, study, discipline, self-sacrifice and other things.
Catholics may not dissent from this teaching on the basis of “following their conscience”. Doubts and difficulties are natural, but they are not a license to do as you please in the face of clear Church teaching to the contrary.
“I wonder???
No Slant = Realist”
and,
“I think recognize No Slant’s style of writing… I just can’t remember who he/she is. But I seem to recall that he/she expressed dissenting opinions before.”
I really find this sort of conjecture about people who express dissenting opinions distasteful. First, are we such a mob that we can’t gracefully deal with a dissenter or two? It seems to me that debate is a healthy thing (the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Acquinas often used his opponents arguments as a starting point and usually stated their positions more effecively than they themseves did). It’s true that No Slant is trolling and in many cases arguing disingenuously; also, John has not had an original thought since he began spamming us whenever but hey, if you only want to hear the great Amen sung in unison then go join the Church choir …
Tim J
No actually human beings do have a right to conscience after they have read the non infallible and still think it is incorrect and seek strenously on the issue. At Vatican II several Bishops objected to Lumen Gentium 25’s brevity on the matter of “religious submission of mind and will” to the Pope’s position even when he is speaking non infallibly. They submitted a query and request for an emendation to the text to that effect to the Theological Commission at the Council stating that how otherwise would mistakes like the one against freedom of religion (in three encyclicals at least) be overturned ever if no one dissented at all…which Theological Commission answered that they did not want to lengthen LG 25 but referred the Bishops to the “manuals” by which they meant the moral theology manuals which speak of dissent and its requirements.
That means that even the Theological Commission agreed in principle with what the Bishops were asking but did not want it in the Council which was unforetunate but the too brief paragraph in the Council of Florence on the non salvation of non Catholics was also another moment of too little effort in a lasting document….and that one was all but reversed deliberately by language in Vatican II except for its core truth that anyone who is saved…is saved through the Catholic Church whether they know it or not.
Yves Congar had noted that Councils are not inspired by the Holy Spirit but are guided by Him and thus could have said more….and could have said things better.
You’ll note in the catechism that 1791 gives the example of the person who has no right to dissent:
“This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man “takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin.”
The catechism never deals with the person who takes a lot of trouble and still disagrees because like Germain Grisez…it’s hoping that everyone will agree.
This approach has not gotten more obedience but less as soon as someone sees the History station on cable and sees that Saint Bernadino in his time held virtually all Catholics in Siena to be in mortal sin because they were either taking interest or were indirectly part of the interest situation in that very commercial city. Or they see another night that Jacques Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux defended slavery against a Calvinist theologian by referring to that which “…has been believed everywhere and always and by everyone” (most of the Fathers believed in slavery’s non sinfulness).
The Church no where takes a position against dissenters on non infallible matters who take pains to arrive at their position. She doesn’t speak about it except in small venues like the periodicals or hidden in tomes like Grisez’ that few choose to afford.
If one sincerely dissents on infallibly defined matters like euthanasia… Evangelium Vitae…sect.65, then one must still follow conscience and follow the logic of CCC. 1790 which in their case leads outside the visible Catholic Church ( euthanasia seems exotic but it is very tempting to medical people who can access drugs and whose relatives like mine has been turning into a statue for 10 years with end stage Parkinson’s…it…the illness…. has overthrown a relative on mine spiritually…no question but we’re here for her til the end….life can present fierce demons in the last third of life).
“if you only want to hear the great Amen sung in unison then go join the Church choir … ”
Good and charitable point, Mark!
And the Lord was the same. He was very patient, accomodating and merciful to many different types and class of person in His ‘day’, be they pagans, sinner’s, prostitutes, etc..
Furthermore, He was harshest on those who criticised and ‘judged’ others the most, ie. the Pharisees!
I think it’s best to put into practice the virtues and maxims that Christ taught us, so that we not only KNOW the Faith, but live and practice it in our daily lives as well. And this most especially regards both patience and charity!
Moreover, since this is an ‘apologetics’ site, opposition and differing theological opinions are only to be expected.
As you said, it’s not exactly like singing the “Great Amen” with all of your spiritual buddies!
Somebody said: “Or maybe they realize that God is the third partner in their marriage and are faithful and obedient.”
Thanks for providing yet another example. Like I said, there is no direct correlation between NFP and divorce rate, and implying that use of NFP lowers a couple’s chances of divorce is intentionally misleading and totally illogical. It’s not the NFP, it’s religion, or personality, or financial situation, or potentially many other causes that make NFP users less likely to get divorced.
What I am saying boils down to “Not many people would cite NFP as the only reason they’ve stayed with their spouse.”
Then somebody else said: “So you see, NFP is ALWAY effective.”
That’s not the way “effective” was defined by the study. “Effective” means “prevents undesired pregancy”, here, don’t change it in the middle of the discussion just to suit your bias. How effective is NFP at preventing pregnancy on the day of ovulation? As I said, the answer is zero.
And then they said “Hormonal birth control works by making women infertile all the time. Infertility is not a state of health. Artificially induced infertility is worse because it can cause long-term health problems including DEADLY conditions like embolism, stroke, heart attacks, liver disease and cancer.”
Totally irrelevant. We aren’t discussing health, we’re discussing the effectiveness of NFP versus horomonal birth control at preventing pregnancy.
Since you brought the issue up though, I believe that it’s a couple’s choice whether they take the risk of side effects from hormonal birth control, or if they risk an unintended pregnancy from unreliable NFP. Sex always has potential risks regardless of how or when it occurs, and NFP may be a perfectly good solution for Catholic families, but not everyone is Catholic, nor is everyone Christian, so it is not an acceptable general solution. Saying that NFP and the pill have equal effectiveness is dishonest, especially considering how *when* each is effective is knowingly being ignored because of personal bias, and in so doing your own “first do no harm” doctrine is being violated. You’re intentionally misleading people into thinking that NFP will prevent pregancy as well as the pill when it categorically will *not*.
“…[S]ons of the Church may not undertake methods of birth control which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of the Church in its unfolding of the divine law.”–Gaudium et Spes, #51
You’re intentionally misleading people
Are you one of those nuts who thinks he knows the intentions of others?
it can cause long-term health problems including DEADLY conditions like embolism, stroke, heart attacks, liver disease and cancer
That’s what my husband says about my cooking.
BW, I am NOT intentionally misleading anybody. You totally missed my point on NFP. So let me try again.
NFP is DATA COLLECTION. It is not contraception. Data cannot in any way prevent pregnancy. It just gives you information. The couple using NFP acts on that information however they feel like acting on it.
So a couple can use the DATA provided through NFP to choose to have sex during ovulation or to choose to avoid sex during ovulation. It’s not NFP that CAUSES pregnancy — sex causes pregnancy. And it’s not NFP that prevents pregnancy — it’s abstinence from sex that prevents pregnancy.
This is not the same as artificial birth control, which allows couples to do the thing that makes babies (intercourse during ovulation) without making babies. The ABC-using couple really depends on the contraception to DO something to prevent pregnancy.
Which basically means that ANY study that attempts to compare the “effectiveness” of NFP with the effectiveness of artificial birth control is an apples-to-oranges comparison.
Clear on that now?
it’s not NFP that prevents pregnancy — it’s abstinence
Planning (the “P”) is part of your program of abstinence.
Oh, and BW, if you think it’s “totally irrelevant” that only WOMEN bear the risks of hormonal birth control, you leave me wondering if you are a man. If you are, your wife has my sympathy for being married to a guy who thinks her long-term health is “totally irrelevant” when compared to his sexual desires.
If you are a woman, I urge you to get educated because you are probably risking your life in ways that are completley unnecessary.
Yes, Mark, planning is part of the abstinence. And NFP provides the DATA to do that, not the abstinence itself, and not anything contraceptive.
NFP provides the DATA to do that, not the abstinence itself, and not anything contraceptive.
Well, according to the dictionary, contraception is “deliberate prevention of conception or impregnation”. You can dance all you want, but you can’t change the dictionary.
but you can’t change the dictionary
Unless you work for Merriam-Webster, Inc.
Abstinence is non-conceptive; it is not contra(contrary to)-conceptive. Contraception is doing something; abstinence is not doing something.
I can even check another dictionary. It says contraception is “Intentional prevention of conception or impregnation through the use of various devices, agents, drugs, sexual practices, or surgical procedures.”
If you practice NFP, you’re practicing contraception, and the practice itself is contraceptive.
Yes, which is precisely why NFP is not contraception. There is a difference between preventing and avoiding. Bingeing and purging prevents weight gain; limiting one’s intake avoids weight gain. Similarly, contraception prevents conception, whereas NFP can be used to avoid conceiving, but cannot prevent anything.
Yes, e.g., coitus interruptus. Choosing to spend 10 days engaged in activities other than sexual intercourse is not a “sexual practice” that constitutes contraception.
Dance all you want, but you’re still dancing. If you intentionally adjust your sexual activities to prevent pregnancy, you are seeking to intentionally prevent pregnancy by your sexual practices. It’s contraceptive.
“Sexual practice” is, by definition, any practice “of, relating to, or associated with sex.” The practice of NFP is clearly “of, relating to, or associated with sex.”
I don’t think the “dissenters” are being given enough credit on this one, at least on a few points. If we Catholics want to be credible we have to suck it up and admit that NFP is not always a bed of roses.
I know. My wife and I have been married five years and have never used artificial contraceptives. We have two small children, one of whom was conceived using NFP to shoot for the most manageable time, successfully. We plan to have at least two more. It definitely works, we can attest to that.
But we have to admit that it’s not fun either. My wife and I are very busy; we’re both still in graduate/medical school and trying to provide for our family. The fact is that with NFP and work and school schedules there really are only a few “available” days for the marital act per month when we’re hoping not to have another baby for a little while, such as now (our younger daughter is eight months old). If these days don’t happen to be at a convenient time, too bad. In this situation marriage just isn’t much of a remedy for concupiscence.
I’ve never considered questioning or ignoring the Church’s teaching. But the fact is that it’s not satisfying, gratifying, lovingly blissful, or any of the rest of it. It’s hard, frustrating, painful, and difficult. It’s a lot of sacrifice and self-denial. Maybe if I were a better Christian I wouldn’t feel that way. If my family were in a different position–if one of us (preferably her) could stay home full time, if people had more time or energy, if certain chemicals didn’t work the way they did, if we were older, if we could afford to feed and raise and educate an unlimited number of children–the difficulty might be eased, but this is our situation, and most people considering NFP will probably think of similar factors in their own lives. If we tell them, just try it, it’s a walk in the park and a bed of roses, they won’t believe us, and rightly so.
We should do, and try to convince other to do, what’s right because it’s right. We shouldn’t try to ease the way by acting as though it’s easier or more pleasant than it is. The world will see through that quick.
Pope SDG, in his Good Friday address, explains virgin birth. Proclaims abstinence and NFP do not prevent pregnancy or disease. Says previous Popes had it wrong. Takes on medical profession as well, saying dieting cannot prevent weight gain, but vomiting will.
“Periodic abstinence is a way that sexually active women prevent pregnancy.”
— Planned Parenthood
“Abstinence is the most effective means of preventing out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion.”
— The White House
“It is necessary above all to combat this disease in a responsible way by increasing prevention, notably through education about respect of the sacred value of life, and formation about the correct practice of sexuality, which presupposes chastity and fidelity.”
— Pope John Paul II
“The traditional teaching of the Church has proven to be the only fail-safe way to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.”
— Pope Benedict XVI
PREVENT ≠ AVOID. I’m sorry, but you can’t flatten out that distinction without gutting all Catholic moral theology, which you certainly aren’t going to do here.
P.S. Grace and peace to you, Sarah.
Bill posted:
“At Vatican II several Bishops objected to Lumen Gentium 25’s brevity on the matter of “religious submission of mind and will” to the Pope’s position even when he is speaking non infallibly. They submitted a query and request for an emendation to the text to that effect to the Theological Commission at the Council stating that how otherwise would mistakes like the one against freedom of religion (in three encyclicals at least) be overturned ever if no one dissented at all…which Theological Commission answered that they did not want to lengthen LG 25 but referred the Bishops to the “manuals” by which they meant the moral theology manuals which speak of dissent and its requirements.
That means that even the Theological Commission agreed in principle with what the Bishops were asking but did not want it in the Council which was unforetunate but the too brief paragraph in the Council of Florence on the non salvation of non Catholics was also another moment of too little effort in a lasting document….and that one was all but reversed deliberately by language in Vatican II except for its core truth that anyone who is saved…is saved through the Catholic Church whether they know it or not.
Yves Congar had noted that Councils are not inspired by the Holy Spirit but are guided by Him and thus could have said more….and could have said things better.”
YES BILL YOU HAVE SAID IT TOTALLY CORRECT, VATICAN II CLEARLY CONTRADICTED THE COUNCIL OF FLORENCE AND THOSE PERITI AND THOSE THEOLOGIANS WHO ARE ALLOWED TO TEACH OUR SEMINARIANS SUCH AS CONGER AND RAHNER WHO ARE HERETICS ARE NOW ACCEPTED AS MAINSTREAM! HOW CAN VATICAN II ACTUALLY SAY THAT SOMEONE CAN BE A PROTESTANT OR WHATEVER CAN BE SAVED, BUT IT IS THROUGH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH THAT THEY ARE SAVED, WHETHER THEY KNOW IT OR NOT, EVER BAPTISED, ETC . SO LAME
Contraception is doing something; abstinence is not doing something.
Straight from the dictionary:
Abstinence: The act or practice of refraining from indulging an appetite
Abstinence is “doing something,” even if it’s only making a choice.
SDG, when the Popes say “correct practice of sexuality, which presupposes chastity and fidelity” is prevention, you certainly aren’t going to prove them wrong here.
Mark,
” “I think recognize No Slant’s style of writing… I just can’t remember who he/she is. But I seem to recall that he/she expressed dissenting opinions before.”
I really find this sort of conjecture about people who express dissenting opinions distasteful. First, are we such a mob that we can’t gracefully deal with a dissenter or two? It seems to me that debate is a healthy thing (the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Acquinas often used his opponents arguments as a starting point and usually stated their positions more effecively than they themseves did). It’s true that No Slant is trolling and in many cases arguing disingenuously; also, John has not had an original thought since he began spamming us whenever but hey, if you only want to hear the great Amen sung in unison then go join the Church ”
How so? I was not trying to dismiss No Slant by my wondering. I was merely innocently asking if No Slant had ever posted previously on Jimmy’s blog. If you don’t like, I won’t do it anymore. choir …
Mark,
Check out this site: http://www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/nfp/cathteach.shtml
Check this out too.
” “If there are serious reasons to space out births, reasons which derive
from the physical or psychological conditions of husband and wife, or from
external conditions, the Church teaches that it is morally permissible to
take into account the natural rhythms of human fertility and to have
coitus only during the infertile times in order to regulate conception
without offending the moral principles which have been recalled earlier”
(Humanae Vitae, 16). ”
All right, Sarah, I grant that when you’re talking in general terms about things like “the spread of AIDS,” it seems natural to speak of “prevention.” Ordinary speech doesn’t always permit the precision of moral theology. Even so, in concrete moral-theology terms, this specific couple on this specific night who decide to refrain from sex are not thereby “preventing” or “contracepting” a child, as they would be with a condom or a pill.
The language of the Church backs me up here. From “Humanae Vitae” to the Catechism, “contraception” always means methods of rendering intercourse infertile, as opposed to methods of having recourse to naturally occurring infertile periods, which does not positively work against conception.
Any effort to spin NFP as a subset of or equivalent to “contraception” is contrary to the Church’s language and does violence to the moral principles undergirding the Church’s teaching here.
Ordinary speech doesn’t always permit the precision of moral theology.
Bingo. That’s one reason why many people don’t “get” Church teaching.
Mark, the dictionary is of little help in cutting the distinctions necessary to Catholic moral theology. Catholic moral theology makes a fundamental distinction between direct action and its effects versus deliberate inaction and its consequences; the principle of double effect depends on it, among other things. Waving dictionaries around isn’t going to change that.
BAM! And Emril Lagasse (aka SDG) serve up another fine dish!
“Any effort to spin NFP as a subset of or equivalent to “contraception” is contrary to the Church’s language and does violence to the moral principles undergirding the Church’s teaching here.”
Exactly, and thanks, SDG. Contraception is the act of rendering the sex act infertile.
Any effort to spin NFP as a subset of or equivalent to “contraception” is contrary to the Church’s language and does violence to the moral principles undergirding the Church’s teaching here.
That’s your spin SDG. There is no violence when the English language is used as it is defined. There are plenty of words in the English language that you can use to get most any point across.
According to the English language, NFP sexual abstinence is a form of contraception. People do it to keep from getting pregnant, which is a form of prevention. No matter how much you might dance an angry dance, when I open up the dictionary, I still find that prevention means “to keep from happening”.
Contraception is the act of rendering the sex act infertile.
In the English language, contraception is “deliberate prevention of conception or impregnation.” SDG has already admitted abstinence in NFP is deliberate; the English language states it is an act, which indeed it is; and to prevent is “to keep from happening”, which it does with respect to conception or impregnation. It is therefore a form of contraception.
You may not like that, but that’s just the way it is.
Well said, SDG. Like you, I’ll stick with the Church.
The Church disagrees with you, Mark.
You may not like that, but that’s just the way it is.
I’m not so sure about that. I know a Jesuit, Catholic institution that “aims to educate students in the Catholic tradition”. They say,
“Abstinence– the only method that when used 100% correctly can prevent pregnancy and STIs… Technically, abstinence is a form of contraception.”
http://cms.scu.edu/wellness/contraception.cfm
Technically, abstinence is a form of contraception.
Why am I not surprised that that comes from a Jesuit school?
No Slant and Newt have both mentioned that a woman’s fertile period is also her most desirous period. I’m not for hormones, chemicals, or barriers, but this bugs me intensely. What does anyone have to say about this (esp., but not exclusively, women)?
Also, MS wrote a good post expressing his experience with NFP. I’d like to see someone who is better at encouragement or has some good advice to offer respond to it.
If abstinence is contraception then I guess I practiced contraception for all the years before I got married.
No Slant and Newt have both mentioned that a woman’s fertile period is also her most desirous period. I’m not for hormones, chemicals, or barriers, but this bugs me intensely. What does anyone have to say about this (esp., but not exclusively, women)?
There is a large bounty of research supporting changes in women’s sexual interests in connection with their fertility cycle. Just a few examples of research findings over the years…
In a 2004 study of 173 women in the Los Angeles area who were not taking oral contraceptives, correlation was found between sexual desire and both ovulation and conception probability among women in long-term committed relationships. Conception probability and relationship length also interacted significantly to predict extra-pair desires, such that women in longer relationships were more likely to experience desire for extra-pair partners during periods of high conception probability.
In another 2004 study, in Chicago, women were found to be more sexually active, have stronger sexual desire and more sexual fantasies on days prior to and including the preovulatory surge. The findings were among women avoiding pregnancy, who were kept blind to the hypotheses, preventing expectation bias.
(Both the above studies were published in the Journal of Sex Research, February 2004.)
A study of 38 normally cycling women in LA published in the April 2006 issue of Hormones and Behavior found that, near ovulation, pair-bonded women reported feeling more physically attractive, having greater interest in attending social gatherings where they might meet men, and greater extra-pair flirtation. This was most profound among women who rated their partners low on the beauty scale.
Another 2005 study of 54 couples in New Mexico found that women whose partners were rather imperfect looking had greater attraction to men other than their partners, and less attraction to their own partners, when fertile.
Again in New Mexico, a 2002 study by the same researchers found women reported greater sexual interest in, and fantasy about, non-primary partners near ovulation than during the luteal phase; but women did not report significantly greater sexual interest in, and fantasy about, primary partners near ovulation.
The January 2007 issue of Hormones and Behavior published a study in which 30 partnered women were photographed at high and low fertility cycle phases. It was found that readily-observable behaviors – self-grooming and ornamentation through attractive choice of dress – increase during the fertile phase of the ovulatory cycle.
In a smaller study, in the Netherlands, published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior (December 1991), only 1 of 12 women tested during their luteal phase indicated an increase in desire to make love, while 6 of 12 women tested during their follicular phase indicated an increase. The researchers performed a followup study in 1996 which confirmed their previous findings.
Vasectomies to the rescue? Would a self-installation kit, re-installion kit be considered natural? i.e. Mom Nature diverts flow on occasion. Biodegradable condoms OK? Would married couple masturbation be natural i.e. natural wet dreams on a couple scale? Wives/husbands in holodecks? Any examples of birth control in the animal/plant/insect/bacteria world? Penis flow activation electronic sensors and how to make them natural?
Realist, please sober up before you use the keyboard again.
Thanks
Here it is one final time.
However you want to use language and whatever nuances you want to ascribe or deny to words like “contracept,” “prevent” or “avoid,” at least we should be able to agree on two things.
First, there are acts intended to render infertile otherwise potentially fertile conjugal acts, whether by barriers, hormones, interrupting the act, or whatever.
Second, there are also methods that do not render any particular conjugal act fertile or infertile, but merely enable couples to ascertain periods of fertility and infertility, and to act accordingly, so that every actual conjugal act is always exactly as fertile as the bodies of the partners are capable of being on that occasion, without any attempt to alter, diminish or interfere with the given level of fertility on that occasion.
However you wish to describe it, and whether or not you accept the Church’s teaching, this is essentially the distinction behind the Church’s teaching permitting recourse to the infertile periods while rejecting acts aimed at rendering otherwise potentially fertile conjugal acts infertile. Accept it or not, it is the Church’s teaching that the one does violence to the integrity of the conjugal act, while the other does not.
And, having said that, in order to discuss the Church’s teaching effectively, it is helpful to have recourse to language that corresponds to the things we need to talk about. And it is a fact — not my “spin,” but a verifiable fact — that in Catholic teaching documents “contraception” refers to the class of acts that seeks to render infertile otherwise potentially fertile conjugal acts, in contradistinction to those methods that do not render any particular conjugal act fertile or infertile, but merely enable couples to ascertain periods of fertility and infertility.
Furthermore — and this is my opinion, but I think it’s well founded — the Church’s usage makes sense. That class of acts that seeks to work against the conceptive potential of particular conjugal acts is rightly called contra-ceptive. Having recourse to infertile periods does not work against the conceptive potential of any particular conjugal act, and thus not contra-ceptive in the same way. The full conceptive potential of every conjugal act is always respected.
Mark posted:
No Slant is trolling and in many cases arguing disingenuously; also, John has not had an original thought since he began spamming us whenever but hey, if you only want to hear the great Amen sung in unison then go join the Church choir … ”
Is that so Mark
In using clear concise conjecture from pre Vatican II to today, I have shown time and time again how on any thread I have participated in how the church has revised her teachings, some clearly a defection from past infallably taught and others pastoral in nature, and how the council itself, out of John XXIII’s very own mouth was to only be pastoral
All you and Esau and David B/Anon/Esau/Pope JohnXXIV Supernova/David B Miantha can do is spew nasty comments in return
I have over 1970 years of church history to back my argument as an apologist, and all you seem to rely on is Vatican II and John Paul II and Paul VI here and there
So if that is not original to you, that is EXACTLY THE POINT MY FRIEND! WE ARE NOT HERE TO MAKE CHURCH DOCTRINE, BUT TO ENFORCE IT, SOMETHING YOU AND THE MODERNISTS DONT UNDERSTAND!!!
Well, whaddya know, John is adopting Esau’s style. Imitation the sincerest form of flattery?
“…in Catholic teaching documents “contraception” refers to the class of acts that seeks to render infertile otherwise potentially fertile conjugal acts”
Precisely. And, oddly enough, I don’t turn to the Webster’s Distionary for Catholic moral teaching and definitions. I go to the Catechism. I’m funny that way.
+J.M.J+
Fr. Brian W. Harrison wrote an article Is “Natural Family Planning a Heresy?”:
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2005/0502fea2.asp
In which he showed that the Vatican said that periodic abstinence during the fertile period is permissible as far back as 1853 – more than a century before Vatican II. The Church’s acceptance of periodic continence/use of the infertile times is not some heretic/modernist/Freemasonic novelty; it goes back to the mid-19th century.
He also gives Pope Pius XI’s explanation of why contraception is wrong, found in Casti Connubii:
“Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately deprived of 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” (CC 56).
We can argue till the cows come home over what is meant by “natural” or “unnatural” about contraception or NFP, but Pope Pius XI already explained why contraception is wrong: it thwarts the natural procreative power of the conjugal act.
Since this procreative power is not present during the infertile times, nothing is thwarted when using NFP. You simply cannot thwart something that is not there! This is why use of the infertile times *is not* equivalent to contraception and *is* morally permissible.
That’s the Church’s authoritative teaching. Agree with it or not, that’s still what the Church teaches.
In Jesu et Maria,
No Slant,
Your personal conscience does not trump Church teaching. If your conscience does not agree with the Church, that is because your conscience is in error, not the Church. The Church cannot be in error on matters of faith and morals. If you believe it can be, then why be a Catholic?
It doesn’t matter whether you think Humanae Vitae is not infallible; as a Catholic, you have to assent to ALL the teachings of Rome.
“This loyal submission of the will and intellect must be given, in a special way, to the authentic teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when he does not speak ex cathedra in such wise, indeed, that his supreme teaching authority be acknowledged with respect, and sincere assent be given to decisions made by him, conformably with his manifest mind and intention, which is made known principally either by the character of the documents in question, or by the frequency with which a certain doctrine is proposed, or by the manner in which the doctrine is formulated.”
(LUMEN GENTIUM, #25.)
The Church and Its Teachings? Foundations?
Some comments by NT exegetes:
“Now Rome which developed the Church of Dogma dared to add things which have scant basis in cripture like the Trinity, Individual priesthood, Auricular Confession, Transubstantiation, Infallibility, Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. None of these are present in scripture nor can they be deduced. Matthew 16:18 was discovered to apply to the papacy by Damasus I who had over a hundred of his rival’s supporter’s killed to gain the bishopric of Rome. It is after this time that the phrase from Matthew is more and more centered on Rome. The bishops of Rome committed many crimes. The biggest one was to ascribe their malfeasance to the Holy Spirit. Still is.”
“John 14: 26 not historic ( 62-. Spirit under Trial: (1) 1Q: Luke 12:11-12 = Matt
10:19-20; (2) Mark 13:11 = Matt 10: 19-20 = Luke 21:14-15; (3) John 14:26.)
John 16:13- not reviewed
Matt 16: 18-19 not historic (73- Who Is Jesus?: (1) Gos. Thom. 13; (2a) Mark
8:27-30 = Matt 16:13-20 = Luke 9:18-21; (2b) Gos. Naz. 14; (2c) John 6:67-69.)
1 Timothy- not written by St. Paul
2 Peter 1:20
Since Schillebeeckx basically ruled out prophecies by concluding God does not know
the future, one can rule out the infallible nature of this verse.
Also from Raymond Brown’s, An Introduction to the New Testament, 2 Peter was
the last canonical work written i.e. ~ 130 AD, author unknown. Tis a bit dated for use in claiming infallibility plus the verse is not from Jesus or Peter but some possible remembrance of a scribe.”
Ignore troll. Just more Hobby Horse doo-doo being shoveled.
Aren’t Church documents written in Latin? Isn’t there a difference in prevention and avoidance in Latin?
Anyone?
If a woman is having extra sexual desires around her ovulation and little or no desire during the rest of the cycle, it means her hormones are out of balance. Find a good herbalist who will prescribe things like dong quai, rehamannia, wild yam, etc…
Ahh, the “Hatcheteers” are alive and well!!
“David B Miantha ” That’s Mithrandir to you!
” I have shown time and time again how on any thread I have participated in how the church has revised her teachings, ”
By your own words you are condemned as a hobby horse. Game. Over. John.
Is has become tiring to step over all of this Hobby Horse manure.
“I have never seen anything in print that notes that then Karol Wotyla took the trouble to read the many letters from Family Life Couples to the commission and who were obeying rythmn…and yet seeking a change. Yet I read John Paul once speaking about dialogue as though it was wonderful.”
I’ve never seen anything in print noting that Bill Bannon possesses the thinking skills necessary to come in out of the rain. Yet I read him speaking repeatedly about study and counsel as though he is capable of either.
I’ve never seen anything noted in print about him not being a profligate embezzler and pederast either, to be perfectly frank.
Franklin
Except that I’ve read three biographies of him (Kwitney’s/ Weigels/ Politi’s) and many articles of praise and none mention his ever having read any of the letters. By having a pattern of non listening, John Paul appointed Cardinal Groer to Austria despite many warnings that he had gay incidents with others…well that took several years for John Paul to stop defending him and Groer stepped down. John Paul did not listen to his Bishop in South Africa who claimed South Africa was torturing several priests which South africa later admitted to…..and consequently Vatican investments stayed there after even US banks had left. It took way too long for him to listen to Cardinal Sin who early criticized Marcos and caught flack from Rome on the matter until the Cardinal proved to have been prophetic. Then suddenly and recently, that history has been touched up. So my suspicions of John Paul are based on reality….reading… and are commensurately reasonable in this case.
That all depends on the reliability of the sources you are reading.
Franklin
I’ll answer you a little though you did a “slice and hit” which type of post I usually ignore as being one more internet Steven Seigal impression by net males.
There is this difference between me and a Pope…I’m private…they are public and if they are going to accept public praise, they shouldn’t fear criticism: they now affect 1.1 billion people adversely when they fall….as John Paul did in 1999 in St. Louis when he called the death penalty “cruel” which even contradicts ccc #2267 despite its revisement and contradicts Romans 13:4 more importantly.
I’ve read three biographies of John Paul II.. (Kwitney’s/ Weigels/ Politi’s) and many articles of praise and none mention his ever having read any of the letters in the incident in fact his praisers like Weigel make short work of his never having attended the Commission to which he was appointed at the time. Does it seem to fit his modus vivendi that he applied for his visa late? By having a pattern of non listening to voices that bothered him, John Paul appointed Cardinal Groer to Austria despite many warnings that he had gay incidents with others. Well that took several years for John Paul to stop defending him and Groer had to step down. John Paul did not listen to his Bishop in South Africa who claimed South Africa was torturing several priests which South Africa later admitted to…..and consequently Vatican investments stayed there after even US banks had left. It took way too long for him to listen to Cardinal Sin who early on criticized Marcos and caught flack from Rome on the matter until the Cardinal proved to have been prophetic. Then suddenly and recently, that history has been touched up and now the Church is seen as having been on the side of People Power and no mention is made of Cardinal Sin being the real hero and catching flack for being early on that very issue. So my suspicions of John Paul are based on reality….and reading… and are commensurately reasonable in this case of the letters because the pattern of not listening to voices that bothered him is extensive.
Our failure to criticize Popes and the OM (where the Church can err in morals unlike the infallible realm wherein She defines) between the 5th century and the 19th brought hellish burdens on blacks for all those centuries. Rome did oppose slavery but it was known implicitly to be the slavery of native new land peoples. Thus Pope Paul in Sublimus Deus in 1537 denounced slavery but 11 years later spoke of its advantages….natives was his concern in 1537 and blacks was his subject 11 years later.
Elijah wrote: “If abstinence is contraception then I guess I practiced contraception for all the years before I got married.”
I think the quoted text settles it in a nutshell. NFP is scientific observation and data-gathering, which can be used to facilitate abstinence. SDG and others have already devoted enough words to why abstinence, even abstinence for a time within marriage, is different from frustrating the sex act.
A note: an unmarried woman could also gather the same data about herself and her cycles as couples practicing NFP do, and although it wouldn’t be immediately useful for planning sex, as scientific inquiry it would be very worthwhile. (I’m of the opinion that there is no such thing as a worthless piece of knowledge.)
One thing not mentioned in the SA article is that David Grimes is an abortionist who has held positions with both Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation and has literally performed thousands of abortions, by his own estimate about 10-20% after the first trimester.
“Just because the wife (and/or husband) is practicing NFP doesn’t mean the husband isn’t having an affair. It might even drive some to have an affair.”
Actually we could rephrase that with equal validity to be:
“Just because the wife (and/or husband) is NOT practicing NFP doesn’t mean the husband isn’t having an affair. It might even drive some to have an affair.”
Is it your contention that carefully balancing and respecting and understanding your bodies ability to potentially create life and abstain during those periods potentially causes greater levels of infidelity?
Do you feel that the infidelity in such instances is proportionately higher to those that contracept?
Do you feel that folks who contracept and may have sex 24/7/365 without potential child birth (abortive pregnancy being possible) face any similar temptations having been conditioned to expect sex when they please without consequence?
Mark is the first person here to be completely honest about NFP. “But the fact is that it’s not satisfying, gratifying, lovingly blissful, or any of the rest of it. It’s hard, frustrating, painful, and difficult. It’s a lot of sacrifice and self-denial.” As I said any method of birth control has costs associated with it, and whether the piper is paid in self-denial or health risks, the piper gets paid nonetheless.
As for Sparki, you can take your sympathy and stick it. Anybody who thinks that the decision to use hormomonal birth control is solely the decision of the husband is living in the 15th century. Like I said, and you intentionally misinterpreted (as seems to be so common here), it’s the *couple’s* choice. Obviously no woman, or man for that matter, should ever be forced to use any form of birth control against their will, NFP included.
Mr Bannon posted:
Our failure to criticize Popes and the OM (where the Church can err in morals unlike the infallible realm wherein She defines) between the 5th century and the 19th brought hellish burdens on blacks for all those centuries. Rome did oppose slavery but it was known implicitly to be the slavery of native new land peoples”
Mr Bannon, are you trying to equate slavery with the church? Did you not know that it were the Protestants coming to America, who pushed slavery and those Irish who died by the thosands in the civil war to end such horrors?
Do you not know the history of New Orleans, settled by the French creoles (Catholic), who lived side by side with the blacks is basic harmony until the “Americans” and non catholics came on down and segregated the blacks. Mardi Gras was even effected by these “Americans” as the Creoles called them and they despised catholicism as well
Dont blame slavery on not criticizing the Pope. Yesterday the pope spoke about Iraq, but who really listens? The Popes of yesteryear wielded real power unlike today where the Pope is like the Monarchy of England with no power outside of the church at least. If you want to criticize the pope, do so on matters of faith and morals within the church which are so lacking
“Mark is the first person here to be completely honest about NFP.”
Umm, sorry, no.
Mark gave an honest assessment of his experience with NFP, I don’t doubt, when he said he finds it;
“… not satisfying, gratifying, lovingly blissful, or any of the rest of it. It’s hard, frustrating, painful, and difficult. It’s a lot of sacrifice and self-denial.”
…but that perspective differs drastically from mine, and it’s just silly to assume that only those painting a bleak picture are being “completely honest”.
Pardon me, but we just did not find NFP to be that difficult. Truthfully, using NFP, most of the month is “open season” – so to speak – and the times that aren’t just call for a little restraint. The thing is, if you just ACCEPT that you won’t be having sex for that length of time (just as you would if you were taking a business trip, or taking your scout troop to summer camp) then it is not that big a deal. It just ain’t.
I hate to disappoint anyone, but we found our love life with NFP to be as “satisfying, gratifying and lovingly blissful” as ever.
Mark is the first person here to be completely honest about NFP
You really think everyone is the same, don’t you? Mark’s account is very interesting, but it covers the perspectives of him and his wife, not the world over. Married couples really differ in their situations. Mark and his wife are going through pretty stressful times, if they’re both in graduate/medical school! That’s hard work! Good luck to the both of you.
John
None of what you wrote had a thing to do with Popes and the ordinary magisterium which can be wrong… and slavery is an example that the ordinary magisterium can be wrong and that wrongness will be centuries in duration to the extent that criticism does not occur.
Reading books will give you micro history…the history station won’t nor will quick essays on the net….the following bull by Pope Nicholas V was so far reaching in the slavery issue since it granted half the world to Portugal and its inhabitants as slaves that it overrode an anti black slavery local bull by another Pope to a Bishop in the Canary Islands just decades before it and it made hard work for 3 Popes in the 16th century who simply wrote against slavery of new Indians not of blacks. In canon law and in most theologians, it was considered just title to a slave for Catholics owners for 4 reasons one of which was being born to a slave mother which spelled horror for all blacks and their descendants even after a several Popes attacked the actual trade in the 19th century since attacking the trade did not save those born into slavery and whose owners had “just title” which you will see at the bottom of my post in the catechism of Trent:
The Bull Romanus Pontifex (Pope Nicholas V), January 8, 1455. 4th paragraph
“We [therefore] weighing all and singular the premises with due meditation, and noting that since we had formerly BY OTHER LETTERS OF OURS GRANTED among other things free and ample faculty to the aforesaid King Alfonso — TO INVADE, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and TO REDUCE THEIR PERSONS TO PERPETUAL SLAVERY, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit –”
Forty years later another Pope gave the same grants to his native land, Spain for the other half of the world….Pope Alexander VI in “Inter Caetera”. So two Popes gave the right of enslaving to two Catholic countries of the entire known world in the late 15th century and Popes in the 16th tried to rescind the damage to native Indian groups not to blacks already positioned within slavery since their owners had “just title”. That’s why the catechism of the Council of Trent in the section on stealing (7th commandment)…under “Various Names Given to Stealing”…attacks enslavement of a new person but condemns stealing another person’s slave since it is his by just title… here is the catechism’s words: ” To enslave a freeman, or appropriate the slave of another is called man-stealing.” It’s on line….read it if you are really seeking the truth beyond the non detail world of protective quick essays.
The Church is perfectly protected by the Holy Spirit as to morals when She takes the trouble to infallibly define anything….be it ex cathedra (Pope alone) or universal ordinary magisterium (Council or Pope with Bishops when defining something solemnly). But She is not so protected in the ordinary magisterium and never said that She was. It’s all of our jobs to clean up the ordinary magisterium commensurate with our abilities unless we want more millenium long mistakes like slavery and interest on simple loans as evil….that’s why St. Benedict in his Rule said that Abbots were to listen to the littlest monk since God may use the littlest monk to announce His message and the Abbot’s humility is being tested thereby. That’s why Popes can be tested as to whether they are listening to little ones in a birth control commission.
That’s why in the non infallible realm of birth control, Fr. Bernard Haring
and Fr. Karl Rahner were perfectly correct in seeing that if the popes were incorrect in this area…the incorrectness could go on for centuries if they chose the silence ofter recommended for sincere dissent. Loyalist Catholics will call them heretics….but no Pope over them ever did so nor proceeded to charges of heresy in ecclesiastical courts. Often lay zeal does not match the actions of the very Popes it praises. Popes know the difference between the ordinary magisterium and the universal ordinary magisterium and they know Canon 749-3 which see.
Mr Bannon
I dont want to hijack this thread with regards to slavery, but first I respect nothing that Karl Rahner or Hans Kung could ever write so lets get that out in the open
With respect to slavery, just like all of the evils of the world, the church looked upon it as another evil that is man made from the time of Adam and Eve, and as you are aware from the OT, slavery was common and even today, all men may be created equal in the eyes of God, we all know that not all are equal whether born with an impediment, health issue, poor, or born into slavery
With respect to Pope Nicholas V and the Papal Bull, I think the crux was to convert the pagans who as evidenced in North and South america with the Aztecs and American Indians thought nothing of human sacrifice, so if invading and putting these murderous pagans into bondage to get them to stop eating humans, then that is their just punishment, I think you are off an a tangent
John
Karl Rahner and Hans Kung are no where’s near each other in theology. I once bought a Kung book and found it so juvenile and non scholarly that I threw it out with two days to great cost to my wallet. I have Rahner books none of which are juvenile. Kung was dechaired/ Curran was dechaired/ Heinnemann was dechaired….Rahner on the other hand edited the 13th edition of the Enchiridion Symbolorum and was momentarily on the outs with one Pope as were many 20th century theologians who were later praised and brought as periti to the council. The only real blip was in Raymond Brown not being scrutinized enough and twice being on the PBC. He did great things but he caused problems aroung the issue of inspiration.
Thing is, bill b., that I see the teaching of Humanae Vitae only being expounded, entrenched and solidified by the subsequent action of the universal magisterium.
There are still dissenters, of course, and most Catholics ignore the teaching in their practice, but the teaching itself seems more sound than ever.
Thankfully, we don’t set doctrine by the practice of the masses. A bunch of Catholics no longer believe in the Real Presence, either.
It’s a lot of sacrifice and self-denial.”
Yes, but we Catholics are taught that sacrifice and self-denial are not BAD things. They are good things. It may be difficult and we may be petulant about it from time to time, but it’s still a good thing to do in the long run, whether one’s sacrifice is abstaining from sex, food, spending money on one’s personal whims or whatever.
I freely admit that abstaining from sex is rarely what I *want* to do on the occasions that we deem it necessary, but that just makes the sacrifice all the more meaningful. Plus it encourages us and other couples with grave reasons to avoid pregnancy to get those matters resolved (if possible) so that we are soon once again in a position to welcome another child.
As for Sparki, you can take your sympathy and stick it.
‘Smatter, BW? Struck a nerve, did I? I’d apologize, but I’m sure I was right to point out to you that the wife’s health IS relevant to the sexual part of marriage. I mean, if she develops heart or liver disease that weakens her tremendously or if she has a stroke that leaves her partially paralyzed, or if she dies suddenly from a blood clot, it’s definitely going to have some effect on the couple’s sex life.
Anybody who thinks that the decision to use hormomonal birth control is solely the decision of the husband is living in the 15th century.
I didn’t say it was. But a husband who loves his wife is certainly free to go to her and ask her to give up hormonal birth control so that she is not in danger of embolism, heart attacks, stroke, liver disease and cancer. He is also free to show how willing he is to have less “convenient” sex so that the two of them can have longer and healthier lives together.
As for the fellow who is not willing to give up “convenient” sex for the sake of his wife’s health…well, you don’t expect me to applaud his attitude, do you? Do you think any person or any religious background would say that’s an acceptable attitude for a healthy marriage?
Like I said, and you intentionally misinterpreted (as seems to be so common here), it’s the *couple’s* choice.
I never “interpreted” anything of the sort. It’s often the couple’s choice, but not always. I do hear a lot of men admitting that they leave it to the women (especially among non-married couples), but there is not one single statement in any of my posts that have indicated that I thought only men or only women determined what birth control would be used.
I do think that men should be manly enough to make their wives’ health a top priority in the decision-making process, though, which you have called “irrelevant.” If you think I’m wrong for feeling that way, fine, but there’s no need to accuse me of something I didn’t say.
Obviously no woman, or man for that matter, should ever be forced to use any form of birth control against their will, NFP included.
Agreed, and I have never advocated anything to the contrary.
Speaking as a woman, though, when my husband insists that I take care of my health, even if it means he has to undertake some sort of a hardship, I love him all the more, and it inspires me to make sacrifices on his behalf. This strengthens our marriage. When we are delaying pregnancy by periodic abstinence, it’s another opportunity to practice this mutual self-sacrificing love.
Why more men are not willing to consider giving up sex for a couple days each month to protect their wives from the potentially deadly effects of hormonal birth control is beyond me. I’m not in that kind of a marriage, and it just doesn’t compute for me. It seems like such a small sacrifice for the sake of a longer and healthier life for the wife in the marriage.
BW, if you’re comfortable with the reality that hormonal birth control has serious and even deadly side-effects for women, and if your spouse doesn’t mind, then of course, just ignore me.
Tim
Until it is defined as infallible, it is not “being solidified” in everyone else’s mind though it is so in yours. Beware….creeping infallibility. That’s why we have canon law inter alia: to reign in the subjective…..Canon 749-3. “No doctrine is understood as defined infallibly unless this is manifestly evident.”
A Pope should do an ex cathedra encyclical on this issue but each of them realize that the scholarship involved would be incredible and take months on this topic because though the dictum…{contraception is wrong}….has a long lineage from the didache onwards, the reasons for the dictum do not have a long lineage even within some of the key players within their own life times. Some thought the man’s seed was the whole potential person/ love was never talked about in regard to the act until modern Popes….why?…does that raise questions about those people upon whom the tradition is based / is there a problem in that two key players (Augustine and Jerome) were not simply celibates but ex fornicators ( Aquinas taught that after sins are forgiven, God may leave strong remnants of sin in the foregiven…inclinations toward the same sin) and what affect did that have on this issue since in Augustine’s case it led him to err already on the IC since he noted that original sin is tranferred wherever there is pleasure in the act and so Mary’s parents had pleasure in the act and so she contracted original sin but was cleansed of it in the womb. Aquinas’ tendency to follow the sexually experienced Augustine in sexual matters led him into the same error. How valid can they be on contraception if they both erred on the IC for sexual reasons.
To do an ex cathedra encyclical on the matter would mean a Pope would have to examine these and more knotty problems and it would take months. Ironically John Paul II took months on TOB but refrained from examining these problems and refrained from doing an ex cathedra encyclical on the very issue he seemed so sure of. Solidification….really? 95% not obeying and no Pope calls a special synod of Bishops at Rome to stop a 95% mortal sin rate…..but rather the Popes go about their vacations, their speaking travels, their international readings and decisions, their audiences with various groups.
But no Synod on a 95% dissent rate? If 95% of Catholics were robbing banks every week, you can believe there would be multiple Synods until it was solved.
Solidification? Some issues in tradition have no relationship to science at all….e.g. the Assumption. Sexuality does and the science on it and the psychology on it for most of the tradition….were hardly plausible until modern times.
In 1968 a generation which had just seen the Assumption encyclical in 1954 and saw infallibility take place on that issue which really has no effect on anyone’s life….they waited for an infallible decision on an issue that was far more existentially important. And what they got in the press conference’s words twice ….was not infallibility at all….but a Pope who was siding with a minority at the birth control commission…John Ford, Cardinal Ottaviani, et al and the future John Paul who did not show up at the commission but sent his opinions privately to Paul VI…. because he applied for his visa too late.
14 years before that generation had seen an infallible encyclical on a non life related issue….the Assumption. They had every reason to believe that their intimate life related issue would be given such treatment and they waited two years. Instead they got a non infallible encyclical announced as such twice at the press conference….16 years after getting an infallible one on whether Mary was Assumed into heaven not unlike Elijah and Enoch. And an encyclical that alluded to Tradition even though less than 15 Popes amongst hundreds seemed to say a thing about it thoughout history….one being Pope Sixtus V whose penalties against contraception were reversed by the very next Pope.
And you can’t understand the pandemonium. It is an area in which they did not want to hear a “maybe I’m right”….they wanted to hear absolute certitude and they did not…..and an explosion followed that your generation never knew the nuances of.
ps above to John, I had mistakenly put solemn Council declarations (and Pope with Bishops) in the universal ordinary magisterium and such are really an act of the extraordinary magisterium declaring that some things in the ordinary magisterium are in fact universal ordinary magisiterium is se and now known for sure to be such.
“ With respect to Pope Nicholas V and the Papal Bull, I think the crux was to convert the pagans who …thought nothing of human sacrifice, so if invading and putting these murderous pagans into bondage to get them to stop eating humans, then that is their just punishment, … ”
No pope ever condoned enslaving the ‘native’ Americans, and it was not neccessary to do so in order to stop human sacrifice. merely use of force against those who actually did the sacrificing would’ve been enough to stop it. (in fact, it was. Natives were (mostly) enslaved came after the devil Gods were destroyed.)
None of what you wrote had a thing to do with Popes and the ordinary magisterium which can be wrong… and slavery is an example that the ordinary magisterium can be wrong and that wrongness will be centuries in duration to the extent that criticism does not occur.
Bill Bannon —
Where exactly was the Catholic Church wrong as regards Slavery in its actions against Slavery as listed below:
1. The Catholic Church unhesitatingly condemned racial slavery as soon as it began.
2. In 1435, six decades before Columbus sailed, Pope Eugene IV condemned the enslavement of the black natives of the Canary Islands, and ordered their European masters to manumit the enslaved within 15 days, under pain of excommunication.
3. In 1537, Pope Paul III condemned the enslavement of West Indian and South American natives, and explicitly attributed that evil, “unheard of before now,” to “the enemy of the human race,” Satan.
4. Papal condemnations of slavery were repeated by Popes Gregory XIV (1591), Urban VIII (1639), Innocent XI (1686), Benedict XIV (1741), and Piux VII (1815).
5. In 1839, Pope Gregory XVI wrote:
“We, by apostolic authority, warn and strongly exhort… that no one in the future dare to bother unjustly, despoil of their possessions, or reduce to slavery Indians, Blacks or other such peoples.”
6. Pope Leo XIII (1890), too, condemned slavery, and so did the Second Vatican Council (1965).
Esau
You’re playing a list game without knowing it…that’s also why you ignored Trent’s catechism and the document by Pope Nicholas V giving half the world to Portugal and the reference to Alexander VI doing the same for Spain….don’t worry, Pope Leo XIII did the same exact move and I’m sure innocently enough in the late 19th century.
List of bulls with no explanation of what they did and failed to do in detail are simply deceptive flatteries of much more complex situations. We all want the Church to be perfect and She is in her sacraments and in her infallible documents and in her store of graces…..but not in her behaviour in the ordinary magisterium about which John Paul II apologized as to several aspects of it. I repeat….the ordinary magisterium does not have to be defended (even though most apologetics sites will defend it to the gills) since it contains along with good things…the sins of the Church which Vatican II noted and which John Paul II apologized for as to some of them. It is the universal ordinary magisterium that is perfectly protected by the Holy Spirit….not the ordinary magisterium as you can see from the Trent catechism which mostly is ordinary magisterium except when it is repeating declaration related things from Trent’s Counciliar Declarations.
To your list:
Your number one has no substantiation and since most Fathers accepted slavery as did Trent’s catechism already shown, it seems to be flattery simply.
Your number two was already mentioned by me and shows the problem with lists; it was a local letter to one bishop in the Canaries about natives who were Christians…yet the Pope shortly after gave Portugal the right of conquest over infidel natives in the Canaries (look up the Romanus Pontifex of Eugene IV of 1436).
Your number three was cited by me where I noted that it had zero application to blacks but simply to Indians which your own quote notes.
Your number 4 gives a list without telling the reader were they condemnations of simply Indian slavery (several) and not black slavery (several on the list), or of the trade (one or two on the list). None on that list had a lasting effect on those blacks who were born to slave mothers since that was considered “just title” by the moral theologians and canonists of the time and that is why if you write to the Catholic Historical Society and ask them for back issues regarding religious orders having slaves in the US in the 19th century, they’ll send them to you for a price of course.
Your number 5 in 1839 was by a Pope who was urged to this by two good Cardinals ( Cappacini and Lambrushini…not the one from 1968) working with diplomats of Britain who had already banned slavery from its territories…since both Portugal and Spain had anti clerical goverments at the time, the Pope was very open to what Britain and the Cardinals suggested because unlike the 15th century, Rome was not friendly with either in 1839…but it was Britain’s idea not the Pope’s and Brotain wanted it to look like the Pope’s idea so all parties actually had to wait until it could look like Rome’s initiative so that warlike action was less likely by Spain and Portugal against Britain for being behind it.
Your number 6 is when the real end of slavery along with the end of the just title of “born to a slave mother” ended. And I always said that the trouble was until the 19th century.
Bill Bannon —
Kindly consider the following excerpt:
“Christianity found slavery in possession throughout the Roman world; and when Christianity obtained power it could not and did not attempt summarily to abolish the institution. From the beginning, however, as is shown elsewhere in this article, the Church exerted a steady powerful pressure for the immediate amelioration of the condition of the individual slave, and for the ultimate abolition of a system which, even in its mildest form, could with difficulty be reconciled with the spirit of the Gospel and the doctrine that all men are brothers in that Divine sonship which knows no distinction of bond and free. From the beginning the Christian moralist did not condemn slavery as in se, or essentially, against the natural law or natural justice.
The fact that slavery, tempered with many humane restrictions, was permitted under the Mosaic law would have sufficed to prevent the institution form being condemned by Christian teachers as absolutely immoral. They, following the example of St. Paul, implicitly accept slavery as not in itself incompatible with the Christian Law. The apostle counsels slaves to obey their masters, and to bear with their condition patiently. This estimate of slavery continued to prevail till it became fixed in the systematized ethical teaching of the schools; and so it remained without any conspicuous modification till towards the end of the eighteenth century. We may take as representative de Lugo’s statement of the chief argument offered in proof of the thesis that slavery, apart from all abuses, is not in itself contrary to the natural law.”
Ethical Aspect of Slavery
Does not the above provide a certain understanding as to the Church’s thoughts regarding Slavery that even existed at the time of the Apostles?
Further, the article states:
“The master was judged to sin against justice if he treated his slave cruelly, if he overloaded him with labour, deprived him of adequate food and clothing, or if he separated husband from wife, or the mother from her young children. It may be said that the approved ethical view of slavery was that while, religiously speaking, it could not be condemned as against the natural law, and had on its side the jus gentium, it was looked upon with disfavour as at best merely tolerable, and when judged by its consequences, a positive evil.”
Esau
The trouble is that the word “Church” is being used as a personification as though it is one person….. which works when the extraordinary magisterium declares an issue infallibly in Trent for example on the sacraments.
But “Church” used as a personification as though it is one person acting….in the “ordinary magisterium” on slavery is simply not true and is a type of cover up because Pope Alexander VI who gave half the world to his native Spain in Inter Caetera, was a different act of the ordinary magisterium than that of a better man like Pope Leo XIII or than another better man Paul III ameliorating the situation rather than aggravating it like Alexander VI did for countless families of color. There were Popes who made it worse and Popes who made it better and both were the ordinary magisterium…..which is obscured by a personification “Church” which communicates a unified oneness of action…..which only happens in the universal ordinary magisterium.
When you use “Church” as a personification of the ordinary magisterium …the OM…where the Holy Spirit is not guaranteed the way He is totally guaranteed in the Universal Ordinary Magisterium process that involves the extraordinary magisterium making decisions on dogma, then that personification pushes you into covering up the sinful side of what happened in the OM.
The OM is not one person acting but many…some good… some selfish; the extraordinary magisterium is like one person acting because the Holy Spirit is infallibly working on many men in a Council e.g. so can be called “Church” or one actor…. with no obfuscation.
To the point of your piece whose intentions are good but they are not seeing this difference between the om and uom, I’m still stunned by the fact that a group of Sulpicians in Maryland at the end of the 18th century sold a mother slave away from her child as they were selling land to the Jesuits (suppressed at the time as an order but functioning as regular clergy with permission). And the Jesuits protested not the selling apart of a mother and child slaves but that the Sulpicians were keeping the profit rather than including the profit as part of the land transaction. Again objective sin of the om…whether or not both groups had sincere erroneous consciences before God given that they grew up with this as normal.
And you see how your piece’s use of a personification for “Church” removes the reality of what was being done in the ordinary magisterium and in accord with deficient canons which were by no means infallible and which gave them just title to a slave born within slavery. Those Jesuits and Sulpicians have been shown their damage and heartbreak of others as soon as they left this world for the next though a sincere erroneous conscience could have saved them from damnation for something that if it were done today would surely condemn any Christian though I’m sure radical Islam is doing the very same thing in parts of Africa now like the Sudan.
This use of the personification “Church” for the OM is why I have not seen one true explanation of the usury error. The writers feel compelled to protect the OM which never was guaranteed infallibility. And so writer after writer will explain away that the OM was simply wrong on the interest on a simple loan and for probably 1400 years. Economies didn’t change on the real issue but changed only on the issue that was always permitted even by Aquinas (but not Luther)….extrinsic titles or fees on entrepreneurial risk to investors. But on the simple loaning of you to your cousin of 3000 ducats in 1622 so he could go to France on a lark, you sinned mortally if you asked one cent in interest….you were forbidden to receive Communion of course unless you told it in Confession….and if converting, you probably had to agree to the then position in the OM. Now you can loan your cousin the same amount and ask him for interest due to your taking the risk that he might die there and you will get nothing back at all. Don’t post the apologetics view…I know them….and I know the detail in the Summa wherein Aquinas dismissed thru misinterpretaion a scripture that would have saved his theory on interest which was really Aristotle’s: “and thou wilt fenerate to all nations”…a promise by God to the Jews which Aquinas wrote off as still a sin. The authors defending usury are covering up something unconsciously in the OM where the HOly Spirit is not guaranteed as though it is the UOM where He is guaranteed.
This over defensiveness was caused by the Reformation split partly…a neurosis based on the separated brethern saying we had zero infallibility…..so we keep going overboard the other way and tried to make even our mistakes seem infallibly good….like usury and slavery look like good things with good intentions when you use a personification to cover them. They were not. They were mistakes for some and perhaps sins for the reckless like Alexander VI. And when the sex abuse horror slowly happened, some Bishops likewise…from this “we’re perfect neurosis”…covered up when they should have turned these men over to the police who sometimes helped Bishops cover it up.
Can’t post for awhile now until I do my taxes…..Saturday is the last day. Good luck and prefer books that have more detail than the net can have on such issues.
David B posted:
” With respect to Pope Nicholas V and the Papal Bull, I think the crux was to convert the pagans who …thought nothing of human sacrifice, so if invading and putting these murderous pagans into bondage to get them to stop eating humans, then that is their just punishment, … ”
No pope ever condoned enslaving the ‘native’ Americans, and it was not neccessary to do so in order to stop human sacrifice. merely use of force against those who actually did the sacrificing would’ve been enough to stop it. (in fact, it was. Natives were (mostly) enslaved came after the devil Gods were destroyed.)”
As usual David B is not correct as Pope Eugene IV spoke directly on this subject in 1435 with respect the Spanish Conquest of the Canary Islands, after Columbus brought them Christianity, made it very very clear that excommunication would be imposed on the enslavement of those BAPTISED, no mention of those who refused or still professed their canibal or primitive traditions
Sicut Dudum
Given by His Holiness Pope Eugene IV
January 13, 1435
We will that like sentence of excommunication be incurred by one and all who attempt to capture, sell, or subject to slavery, baptized residents if the Canary Islands, or those who are freely seeking Baptism, from which excommunication cannot be absolved except as was stated above.
5. Those who humbly and efficaciously obey these, our exhortations and commands deserve, in addition to our favor, and that of the Apostolic See, and the blessings which follow there from, but are to be possessors of eternal happiness and to be placed at the right hand of God, etcetera
Given at Florence, January 13th, in the Year of Our Lord, 1435
I know this is a hopelessly tangled thread by now, but I’d just like to point out that “right of conquest” does not equal “slavery.” Plenty of peoples in the world have moved from one jurisdiction to another without becoming slaves. Conquest and slavery were often tied together in this period, but weren’t understood as the same thing.
billb, freedom of conscience does not equal freedom to disobey.
You may doubt, you may investigate, you may question, you may point out what you see as weaknesses, you may argue and debate… but you may not disobey or encourage others to do the same, infallible definition or not. Non-infallible does not mean non-binding. You should know that.
There just is no parallel to teaching on slavery (wherein the church tolerated a *possibly* immoral institution, arguably, out of worldly influence), and if there were any parallel, it would work against your logic, not for it.
If the Church were tolerating the use of contraception out of a desire to conform to the ideals of the world, I might see a parallel, but actually the opposite is true. The fact that both are (in your view) non-infallible teachings is irrelevant. They are still apples and oranges.
In other words, you can’t logically say “Look… back here there was this non-infallible teaching that was wrong (in my view), so that means it’s okay for me to contracept”.
It just doesn’t wash.
Bill Banon —
There are a number of issues in your post.
For one, you wrongfully mistake the actions of individuals within the Church as being the actions of the Catholic Church itself, which, interestingly enough, is the very same error that you have accused me of.
You mention:
To the point of your piece whose intentions are good but they are not seeing this difference between the om and uom, I’m still stunned by the fact that a group of Sulpicians in Maryland at the end of the 18th century sold a mother slave away from her child as they were selling land to the Jesuits (suppressed at the time as an order but functioning as regular clergy with permission). And the Jesuits protested not the selling apart of a mother and child slaves but that the Sulpicians were keeping the profit rather than including the profit as part of the land transaction. Again objective sin of the om…whether or not both groups had sincere erroneous consciences before God given that they grew up with this as normal.
However, these Jesuits do not comprise the entire Catholic Church and, furthermore, are not even considered part of the Ordinary Magisterium.
Moreover, you cannot say that since it were some Jesuits who committed these actions, it was actually the Catholic Church — when, in fact, these were actions committed by the individuals themselves.
As far as usury goes, you are not providing an honest account of the situation (as there were many details you actually left out) or, if you are, you’ve not described the situation in its entirety.
But rather than explore this any further with you (as this particular point involves more detail than I care to further elaborate on especially on this thread), since I had just wanted you to clarify that bit in your original post, I am content in knowing, at the very least, your views as revealed in your recent post and thank you for your reply.
Esau
I agree with you (Can you believe it!)
One must take a look at the times, where news traveled over months, not nanoseconds like today, and then one was not even sure if what was reported was correct
The Spaniards were a bit overzealous in their attempt to spread Christianity in the 15th and 16th century but it should be clearly stated that as a military force, it is difficult sometimes where to draw the line, expecially when it was known your comrades and former spaniards were for the most part eaten and those who did not convert were looked at as less than human at times
The sign of the apocalypse: John and Esau agree! Run! Hide! balls of flame will fall from the sky!
“David B posted:
” With respect to Pope Nicholas V and the Papal Bull, I think the crux was to convert the pagans who … ”
John,
I was repeating what another poster said, and thereafter argued against his contention.
John,
Here’s what I said in response.
No pope ever condoned enslaving the ‘native’ Americans, and it was not neccessary to do so in order to stop human sacrifice. merely use of force against those who actually did the sacrificing would’ve been enough to stop it. (in fact, it was. Natives were (mostly) enslaved came after the devil Gods were destroyed.)
If you think that I’m, “as usual”, incorrect, too bad.
PART ONE
Bill Banon —
Also, about your other bit here:
Solidification….really? 95% not obeying and no Pope calls a special synod of Bishops at Rome to stop a 95% mortal sin rate…..but rather the Popes go about their vacations, their speaking travels, their international readings and decisions, their audiences with various groups.
This is interesting since most of the things you mentioned in the latter actually had much to do with frequent teaching (papal encyclicals, pastoral letters by bishops, etc.) on contraception and the like.
You, again, mention it later in your post:
But no Synod on a 95% dissent rate? If 95% of Catholics were robbing banks every week, you can believe there would be multiple Synods until it was solved.
Again, intererstingly enough, that is perhaps the reason why there have been much activity by both the Pope and Catholic bishops as well as their associates (in fact, the very kind you had mentioned above in terms of speaking engagements, travels, international readings, audiences, etc.) which taught frequently on Contraception.
PAPAL
Respecting the Person and God’s Design for Procreation by Pope John Paul II
ALSO:
1. Openness to the gift of children – September 1979 – Pope John Paul II
2. Ratifying Pope Paul’s teaching – October 1979 – Pope John Paul II
3. Indissoluble; open to fertility – November 1979 – Pope John Paul II
4. God’s grace is powerful – June 1980 – Pope John Paul II
5. Contraception leads to falsification – November 1981 – Pope John Paul II
6. Pastoral action must not contradict doctrine – May 1983 – Pope John Paul II
7. Church is guide to conscience – August 1983 – Pope John Paul II
8. Responsible parenthood – October 1983 – Pope John Paul II
9. State should stay out of family planning – June 1984 – Pope John Paul II
10. Dissent not acceptable – January 1985 – Pope John Paul II
11. Not debatable – June 1987 – Pope John Paul II
12. Live it, don’t question it – March 1988 – Pope John Paul II
13. Freedom of conscience – December 1990 – Pope John Paul II
14. Contraception is an intrinsic evil – August 1993 – Pope John Paul II
15. The two dimensions of marriage – February 1994 – Pope John Paul II
16. Harmful demographic policies – November 1996 – Pope John Paul II
Note: I attempted to post links to the actual source documents for the above-mentioned details but the BLOG wouldn’t let me since it considered it SPAM.
However, here’s a Summary Page:
Pope John Paul’s Statements On Contraception
PONTIFICAL COUNCIL
Vademecum for Confessors concerning Some Aspects of the Morality of Conjugal Life by Pontifical Council for the Family
U.S. CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS
Married Love and the Gift of Life by United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
BISHOPS’ CONFERENCE OF SCOTLAND
Marriage and the Family by Bishops’ Conference of Scotland
PART TWO
BISHOPS
1. In Obedience to Christ: A Pastoral Letter To Catholic Couples and Physicians on the Issue of Contraception by Bishop Glennon P. Flavin
2. Marriage: A Communion of Life and Love by Bishop Victor Galeone
3. Self-Giving Love: Humanae Vitae’s Paradoxical Wisdom by Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted
4. Unholy Sacraments by Bishop Thomas G. Doran
5. Natural Law Morality Today by Cardinal Cahal B. Daly
6. The Church’s Infallible and Immutable Doctrine on Contraception Stands Amid Growing Opposition (Cardinal Lozano Barragán)
PRIESTS
1. Emergency Contraception: What the Words Mean by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
2. Invincible Ignorance About Contraception by Fr. Anthony Zimmerman, STD
3. Contraception: a Challenge to Catholic Preaching by Fr. James Buckley, F.S.S.P.
4. Contraception: Fatal to the Faith by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
5. Can Contracepting Parents Teach Their Children Chastity? by Rev. Matthew Habiger, O.S.B.
6. We Cannot Separate the Realities of Our Lives from the Love of God by Most Reverend Robert F. Vasa
7. Sterilization as Contraception by Fr. William Saunders
Note: Previously mentioned note applies for the above as well. If you’re interested in the source documents for the above, you might try:
Source Documents Link
Thus, your attempt here to actually portray the Pope and the bishops as being ‘indifferent’ (or not even in sync) on this matter does not concur with the overall facts.
CORRIGENDUM:
#1 Under PRIESTS should’ve obviously fell under BISHOPS since it is Archbishop Chaput.
Also, please note that only works from those with ecclesial status had been listed and not those of the laity (which comprised of even folks from the Medical Community) who also contributed greatly to the work of the Bishops on these matters concerning Contraception.
Some of these works can also be found in the link provided above.
Esau
You are posting lists to someone who already told you that lists are simplistic. What’s wrong with this picture?
All that writing and not one of them is organizing to move it to the infallible stage and John Paul II had twenty years plus in which to do it since he entered the Papacy early in life relatively. Get back to me when one of those people believes it enough to do so and organizes a movement to move it into the ex cathedra venue or the venue of all Bishops with the Pope. Don’t quote me Lumen Gentium 25…I know it by heart….and its not incorrect but its also not infallible and not complete….(in its complete form, it would be as good as infallible to me)…but its not complete and the Theological Commission at the Council knew it was not complete according to an oft repeated incident in the theological circles. We need a Pope who believes in this issue so much that he goes on Euro TV and debates professor after professor…not less educated quiet types…not mudmen from New Zealand…but professor after professor…. on birth control… on TV. Why would one fear TV debates if one is so sure? Writing documents that cannot be confronted…. in a room…. does not bespeak the deepest belief….hence Christ wrote no documents in the Incarnated state…but He went directly to debates in the streets and temple only. Documents may have outlived their usefulness since they reach….who exactly….those who already think in the direction of the writings and the young and converts. A TV debate of the Pope against professors on birth control on Euro TV would reach the very people who do not read such documents and books and so that is the very opportunity that a Pope should desire…if he is sure.
bill b, if there is an infallible pronouncement on ABC, will you accept it? Live by it?
“…but He went directly to debates in the streets and temple only.”
Christ did not debate. He taught.
Bill Bannon:
Those things listed under Pope John Paul II weren’t documents!
They were TALKS, GATHERINGS, ETC — NOT DOCUMENTS!
Even the USCCB one as well as the PONTIFICAL COUNCIL & the SCOTLAND ONE!
Furthermore, for your information, Lumen Gentium is DOGMATIC and, thus, de Fide!
You’ve COMPLETELY lost credibility with me!
Writing documents that cannot be confronted…. in a room…. does not bespeak the deepest belief….hence Christ wrote no documents in the Incarnated state…but He went directly to debates in the streets and temple only. Documents may have outlived their usefulness since they reach….who exactly….those who already think in the direction of the writings and the young and converts.
DOCUMENTS????
Just take a look for yourself — Like Saint Paul, the Pope TRAVELLED & TAUGHT MULTITUDES as well as WRITE!!!
Openness to the gift of children
1 September 1979
Under the heading “Contraception,” the Pope said at Limerick, Ireland in Sept. 1979:
“And here, I want to say a very special word to all Irish parents. Marriage must include openness to the gift of children. Generous openness to accept children from God as the gift to their love is the mark of the Christian couple. Respect the God-given cycle of life, for this respect is part of our respect for God himself, who created male and female, who created them in his own image, reflecting his own life-giving love in the patterns of their sexual being.”
Ratifying Pope Paul’s teaching
2. October 1979
To the bishops of the Episcopal Conference of the U.S. at Chicago on Oct. 8, 1979, the Pope said:
“In exalting the beauty of marriage you rightly spoke against both the ideology of contraception and contraceptive acts, as did the encyclical Humanae vitae. And I myself today, with the same conviction of Paul VI, ratify the teaching of this encyclical, which was put forth by my Predecessor by virtue of the mandate entrusted to us by Christ” (AAS, 60, 1968, p.485, Origins, Oct. 18, 1979).
Indissoluble; open to fertility
3. November 1979
In speaking to a French group Nov. 3, 1979, the Holy Father emphasized that conjugal love involved a totality of self-giving. He said:
“It aims at a deeply personal unity, the unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and one soul; it demands indissolubility in faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility (cf. HV 9).
God’s grace is powerful
4. June 1980
On June 7, 1980, to a group of Indonesian Bishops, His Holiness said:
“In the question of the Church’s teaching on the regulation of birth we are called to profess in union with the whole Church the exigent but uplifting teaching recorded in the Encyclical Humanae vitae, which my Predecessor Paul VI put forth ‘by virtue of the mandate entrusted to us by Christ’ (AAS 60, 1968, p.485). Particularly in this regard we must be conscious of the fact that God’s wisdom supercedes human calculation and His grace is powerful in people’s lives.”
“Contraception is to be judged objectively so illicit,” said the Pope, “that it can never, for any reason be justified.”
Contraception leads to falsification
5. November 1981
In the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio, on the role of the family in the modern world, Pope John Paul II taught:
“When couples, by means of recourse to contraception, separate these two meanings that God the Creator has inscribed in the being of man and woman and in the dynamism of their sexual communion, they act as ‘arbiters’ of the Divine plan and they ‘manipulate’ and degrade human sexuality – and with it themselves and their married partner – by altering its value of ‘total’ self-giving. Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality” (n.32).
Pastoral action must not contradict doctrine
6. May 1983
On May 30, 1983, Pope John Paul II addressed the participants in the first Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Family. Among other things he discussed the need for pastoral action to be faithful to Humanae vitae and Familiaris consortio:
“It is absolutely necessary that the pastoral action of Christian communities be totally faithful to the teachings of the Encyclical Humanae vitae and the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio. It would be a grave error to set up pastoral requirements in opposition to doctrinal teaching, since the very first service that the Church must perform for people is to tell them the truth of which she is neither the author nor the master.” (Osservatore Romano, June 6, 1983).
Church is guide to conscience
7. August 1983
On August 17, 1983, the Holy Father addressed 35,000 people in a general audience in Rome:
“It is not enough to say that we must always follow our conscience,” the Pope said, “Each one of us must ‘form’ a right conscience, one that seeks to know the truth as revealed to us by God, according to his wise and loving plan.”
The believer, he said, has the assistance of the Church in forming a “right conscience.” For “it is the duty of the Church to give expression to that truth which is Christ himself, and to declare and confirm those principles of the moral order which have their origin in human nature itself.” (Western Catholic Reporter, Sept. 5, 1983)
Responsible parenthood
8. October 1983
Emphasizing that artificial contraception is intrinsically evil the Pope taught in 1983:
“At the origin of every human person there is a creative act of God. No man comes into existence by chance; he is always the object of God’s creative love. From this fundamental truth of faith and reason it follows that the procreative capacity, inscribed in human sexuality is – in its deepest truth – a cooperation with God’s creative power. And it also follows that man and woman are not arbiters, are not the masters of this same capacity, called as they are, in it and through it, to be participants in God’s creative decision. When, therefore, through contraception, married couples remove from the exercise of their conjugal sexuality its potential procreative capacity, they claim a power which belongs solely to God: the power to decide in a final analysis the coming into existence of a human person. They assume the qualification of not being cooperators in God’s creative power, but the ultimate depositaries of the source of human life. In this perspective, contraception is to be judged objectively so profoundly unlawful, as never to be, for any reason, justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to maintaining that in human life, situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God.” (L’Osservatore Romano, Oct. 10, 1983)
State should stay out of family planning
9. June 1984
“Demographic policies must not consider people as mere numbers or only in economic terms … they must respect and promote the dignity and the fundamental rights of the human person and of the family.” He called it “a grave offence against human dignity and justice” for authorities to engage in any activities “which attempt to limit in any way the freedom of couples in deciding about children.” Likewise “gravely unjust,” he said, is any attempt to condition international aid for development “on programs of contraception, sterilization, and procured abortion.” (Catholic Register, Toronto, June 23, 1984)
Dissent not acceptable
10. January 1985
After the Pope completed a five-month series of lectures on human sexuality, marriage, and the regulation of births, on November 28, 1984, the Osservatore Romano printed a front page editorial by Archbishop (later Cardinal) Edouard Gagnon, propresident of the Pontifical Commission for the Family. It stated:
“Today … it is no longer possible to have doubts about the authoritative doctrine of the Church [of Humanae vitae] and about the unacceptability of dissent.” Some theologians were “happy to find in a certain popular resistance to the encyclical a good opportunity to propagandize their own ideas on the autonomy of the individual conscience.” But the Pope’s campaign to end doctrinal confusion is “the only way out” of society’s crises, and sustain “with a solid doctrine” the efforts of people fighting “in defence of life and the institution of matrimony.” (London Free Press, Jan. 19, 1985)
Not debatable
11. June 1987
Two years later the Holy Father himself reiterated the above sentiments. Addressing a Conference on Natural Family Planning, he said:
“What is taught by the Church on contraception does not belong to material freely debatable among theologians.”
Those who argue otherwise “in open contrast with the law of God, authentically taught by the Church, guide couples down a wrong path.” (Prairie Messenger, June 15, 1987; Osservatore Romano, June 6, 1987)
Live it, don’t question it
12. March 1988
On March 14, 1988, Pope John Paul addressed a Congress on the Family. It being close to the 20th anniversary of Humanae vitae, he remarked that its doctrine “belongs to the permanent patrimony of the Church’s moral doctrine.”
“The doctrine expounded in the encyclical Humanae vitae thus constitutes the necessary defence of the dignity and truth of conjugal love.”
“I cannot pass over in silence the fact that many today do not aid married couples in this grave responsibility of theirs, but rather place significant obstacles in their place … Married couples can be seriously impeded by a certain hedonistic mentality widespread today, by the mass media, by ideologies and practices contrary to the gospel. This can also come about, with truly grave and destructive consequences, when the doctrine taught by the Encyclical is called into open question…
“Pope Paul VI expressed the certainty that the document constituted a contribution … to the establishment of a truly human civilization. Twenty years after its publication, the foundation of that conviction is truly borne out in many ways; in ways which can be verified not only by believers, but by every man or woman who is thoughtful about the lot of mankind, since anyone can view the consequences of man’s disobedience to God’s holy law.”
Freedom of conscience
13. December 1990
In the summer of 1988 the Pope told theologians
“You can’t say that a member of the faithful has carried out a dilligent investigation of the truth if he doesn’t take into account what the magisterium teaches …”
In a World Day of Peace message for January 1, 1991, released in December 1990, he reiterated the complexities of conscience.
“Yes, the conscience is supreme – but not as a source of truth. And yes, a person has to follow his conscience, but a person does not manufacture truth. A person must learn from revelation and other sources.” (B.C. Catholic, January 20, 1991 )
Contraception is an intrinsic evil
14. August 1993
In the encyclical The Splendor of Truth (Aug. 6, 1993) the Pope reaffirms the intrinsic evil of contraception as taught by Pope Paul VI:
“With regard to intrinsically evil acts, and in reference to contraceptive practices whereby the conjugal act is intentionally rendered infertile, Pope Paul VI teaches:
‘Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good, it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it (cf.Rom.3:8) – in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general.'” (n.80).
The two dimensions of marriage
15.February 1994
In his Letter to Families, signed on Feb. 2, 1994, the Holy Father says:
“In particular, responsible fatherhood and motherhood directly concern the moment in which a man and a woman, uniting ‘in one flesh’, can become parents. This is a moment of special value to both of them for their interpersonal relationship and for their service to life: they can become parents – father and mother – by communicating life to a new human being. The two dimensions of conjugal union, the unitive and the procreative, cannot be artificially separated without damaging the deepest truth of the conjugal act itself.
“This is the constant teaching of the Church, and the ‘signs of the times’ which we see today are providing new reasons for forcefully reaffirming that teaching. Saint Paul, himself so attentive to the pastoral demands of his day, clearly and firmly indicated the need to be ‘urgent in season and out of season’ (cf. 2 Tim. 4:2), and not to be daunted by the fact that ‘sound teaching is no longer endured’ (cf. 2 Tim.4:3). His words are well known to those who with deep insight into the events of the present time, expect that the Church will not only not abandon ‘sound doctrine’ but will proclaim it with renewed vigour, seeking in today’s ‘signs of the times’ the incentive and insights which can lead to a deeper understanding of her teaching.” (n.12).
Harmful demographic policies
16.November 1996
The Holy Father wrote a Message to Bishop Elio Sgreccia on the occasion of an international congress on the theme “At the Sources of Life,” sponsored by the Centre for Studies and Research on the Natural Regulation of Fertility of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart.
Text
2. The crisis of values and ideals, which has taken hold of contemporary society, challenges believers to undertake widespread and persevering formational activity: this is the frontier advanced by the new evangelization, to which they must be committed on the threshold of the third Christian millennium.
The family, the heart of human society and the nucleus of the ecclesial community itself, is one of the subjects that demands the greatest attention from the Church and from those responsible for the destinies of peoples. Unbridled hedonism and disregard for human life, which is weak and unproductive at its mysterious and delicate beginnings, require the proclamation of the “Gospel of life” to be supported bya constant commitment to teaching spouses to be aware of their own vocation as servants of life, in responsible collaboration with the Creator’s provident wisdom.
This convention marks an important stage in the silent and painstaking work which the centre has been doing for more than 20 years, in the delicate area of responsible procreation by the promotion of natural methods. The courageous effort to promote these methods in obedience to the teaching of Humanae vitae, Familiaris consortio and Evangelium vitae, after a difficult start surrounded by the misunderstanding of public opinion, today enjoys growing scientific recognition and is confirmed in the serenity and peace of married couples who are committed to living periodic continence and understand its value and spirit.
These results can instil new courage in the face of the worrying consequences of a false sexual freedom for which contraception provides the incentive and means, increasing the dulling of consciences and the eclipse of values.
The harmful campaigns of certain demographic policies, which attempt to pass off contraception as licit and right, and which spread and impose on individuals and peoples an instrumental and utilitarian view of life, must be answered with every initiative that can support scientifically and with correct information the validity of natural methods, in accordance with the Church’s constant teaching.
By the way, what is taught by the Pope is nevertheless BINDING on the conscience of the Faithful!
Those of you who made the mistake, please note that I the author of the “honest account” of my experiences with NFP am not the one posting here as “Mark”. I’m someone else.
Sparki,
I never meant to imply that sacrifice and self-denial were not good things. Of course they are. What I’m insisting on is that they’re there and for many of us are there in abundance, that this is difficult and not easy or fun, and that this needs to be recognized if we want to sound credible and realistic. Unlike you (apparently), I have not found that NFP means abstaining for “a few days” out of the month; it’s meant, when combined with the other factors in my life, abstaining most days out of every month. This will be the case for more people than you may realize. To fault everyone for not being willing to give up “a few days” is not being realistic when for the person you’re talking to “a few days” may mean “almost every day”.
what is taught by the Pope is nevertheless BINDING on the conscience of the Faithful!
According to those who are faithful to him.
Esau,
I recommend you read Jimmy’s Da Rulz. He generally doesn’t enforce them much on well meaning Catholics but you should try to abide by them anyway. I’m refering to post length.
Esau…Tim…
I’ll try to imitate Tim’s brevity and Esau’s list ability:
A.) Yes I would assent Tim to an infallible declaration on birth control but there won’t be one until you have a Pope who is willing to do the vast historical research involved….see the very last paragraph of Lumen Gentium 25 on that requirement…Lumen Gentium… which Esau thinks is de fide. My interest in the matter mostly involves extreme cases and not my own; I have relatives who are sterile and dissent on this issue though it has no inconvenience to the sterile like them at all… whatsoever. It is possible for human beings to actually be interested in this issue in respect to truth rather than self interest. Case: a young man obeys Scripture which says it is better to marry than to burn (with desire constantly)….he obeys and marries, goes on honeymoon and gets in a car accident on the honeymoon on Jamaica island and is given a contaminated blood transfusion and gets AIDS. According to Rome and Cardinal Trujillo: he is to then begin a Josephite non sexual marriage (on which no saint or Pope or theologian wrote any book whatsoever) and he is to do it just shortly after Scripture told him to marry or burn and he obeyed… or…. they as a couple are to risk her life constantly whereas using three condoms simultaneously for her safety would permit them to avail of part of the meaning of coitus as the aged and the sterile are premitted to do by the Church (try not to post me on the Cardinal’s view of the virus getting through even three condoms…try your best….I know it’s going to seize you like an oracle but try….imagine custom made fool proof briefs and intergrated condoms by a latex corp just for this predicament)….by the way, never base your argument against the pill on health factors because if a pill then comes along with no side effects, your argument is gone….Aquinas made that mistake on his reason for fornication being wrong.
And no….the conscience is not bound in an absolute sense on non infallible issues as it is on infallible issues and we know this inter alia from the one famous theologian who actually supported “Humanae Vitae” strenuously…the conservative Germain Grisez (who saw all theologians but himself as making modern errors and tells you so in half of his footnotes) whose tomes are used in seminaries…see page 854 of Volume 1 of The Way of the Lord Jesus…..about $65 to purchase…take a peek at that page in a catholic book store….it’s not stealing because Aquinas said that “reason accounts little as nothing”…like when you take home a paper clip from work rather than an ink jet printer.
B.) Esau, you’ve given another irrelevant list…none of those “talks” were mutual interchanges like Christ had but were ONE DIRECTIONAL lectures…talks take no courage….interchange would. I’ve done street pamphleteering of Augustine’s prophecy work in Manhattan and Newark….that’s risk present but not constant.
Try each with your teenage children…..there you go….one directional talks are much safer.
You avoid the real meaning of what your opposition is saying and then address a myth of his position. Find out why.
Paul wrote….not documents….but letters to distant people whom he could not get to right away. You’re debating like a lawyer which has a twinge of gamesmanship about it.
C.) Esau, give us the name of one known published (by a known publisher) Theologian that thinks Lumen Gentium is de fide…not Brian Harrison or Dr. May types who are more known on the net than they are in real life. Someone actually famous and published by a known house. It would mean that LG 20 is de fide…which reads:
” Therefore, the Sacred Council teaches that bishops by divine institution have succeeded to the place of the apostles, (15*) as shepherds of the Church, and he who hears them, hears Christ, and he who rejects them, rejects Christ and Him who sent Christ.(149)(16*)”
Now there is a sense in which LG 20 is true but there are senses in which it is perfectly false since I don’t hear Christ whenever Cardinal Mahony talks and neither did California prosecutors…. and Cardinal Newman pointed out that most Bishops in the 4th century including the Pope were overcome by the Arian error and it was the laity and several Bishops like Athanasius who held the orthodox position. So LG 20…like LG25…. is true but only with a lot of ifs, ands, and buts. If one Bishop says he believes in the death penalty and another says he does not…..is Christ saying two different things through two Bishops….he who hears them hears Him? Likewise LG 25. They are theologically certain but not de fide as presented but could become de fide if they were cleaned up with the addition of all ifs, ands, and buts.
I’m gone. This is like the Hotel California….you can check out any time but you can never leave.
“…try not to post me on the Cardinal’s view of the virus getting through even three condoms…”
In other words: Don’t point out anything that that counters my irrationality.
Well, atleast somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he knows he’s wrong.
MS, I sympathize with your situation. And I also encourage you to explore various NFP systems to see if one can provide better data for you and thereby reduce the duration of your periodic abstinence. Women generally ovulate in the middle of their cycles; a couple days later, there is no egg present. That ought to give you nearly half of your cycle mimimum during the months you have a grave reason to delay pregnancy. Nearly every woman can also add in the day or two days following their period, and that gets you back up to half a month. To be sure, this is a greater hardship than abstaining for just a few days, but it’s better than abstaining most of the month. My cycles are crazy and inconsistent, and I had to experiment with various methods until I found something that worked.
“”I’ve never considered questioning or ignoring the Church’s teaching. But the fact is that it’s not satisfying, gratifying, lovingly blissful, or any of the rest of it. It’s hard, frustrating, painful, and difficult. It’s a lot of sacrifice and self-denial.””
I feel the exact same way MS and can definitely agree that NFP is the most difficult form of BC to use. I have a very busy schedule and have to travel a lot for work. The biggest problem for me is if my wife is infertile while I am away and then fertile when I get back it can mean months with complete abstinence. Sometimes I think that complete abstinence would be easier than practicing NFP. If there were a way to just completely eradicate the sex urge and live completely celibate with my wife I would do it in a heartbeat. Sadly most people who teach NFP don’t talk about how truly challenging practicing NFP is.
I haven’t considered ignoring the church’s teaching either, but trying to practice NFP is definitely a very big cross.
bill 912
Well I may be “irrational” but at least I won’t perish for slothfulness (very big in the OT though unmentioned now) in failing to add anything to a thread through the almost exclusive use of short sarcastic two liner barbs as wisdom. It’s as though you were kidnapped and brain washed with Henny Youngman material but turned it outward.
Or you are posting at work and sit near your manager…. and then add nothing to the thread when you get home.
bill b –
I don’t think one needs to take health concerns into account at all in order to argue convincingly against the Pill (Humanae Vitae doesn’t), but AT PRESENT, the health issues ARE still a factor and are “fair game”, so to speak.
I happen to be very suspicious of any widespread application of drug therapy that may not be medically necessary, but may be driven by social factors… I’m thinking mainly of things like Ritalin, Prozac, sleep aids, etc… not that they are not used legitimately in some cases, but the fact that they are applied SO widely makes me beieve there are other factors at work.
I just think it’s a bad idea to have such a huge chunk of our population taking hormones when (for most) there is no medical justification for it.
Now, in Europe, they are talking about a NEW hormone pill to make women “feel sexier”. God help us.
Bill Bannon:
The original statement that was being contested was the following from you:
Solidification….really? 95% not obeying and no Pope calls a special synod of Bishops at Rome to stop a 95% mortal sin rate…..but rather the Popes go about their vacations, their speaking travels, their international readings and decisions, their audiences with various groups.
The list above featuring many various activities by the Pope and the Catholic Bishops demonstrates clearly that your ‘indifferent’ representation of the ecclesial body have no basis in fact at all.
Just because your picture of somebody who really cares about the matter is:
“a Pope who believes in this issue so much that he goes on Euro TV and debates professor after professor”
… this does NOT mean that the Pope actually didn’t care at all to this very extent — as the list above proves quite the contrary!
It does NOT matter that he does not satisfy your criteria, which, by the way, sounds rather sensationalistic!
Now, on the matter of Lumen Gentium, it strikes me odd that for somebody who claims to know so much about the Church, you fail in this very regard by what you have said here about the nature of Lumen Gentium, which happens to be DOGMATIC and, furthermore, solemnly promulgated by the Pope Paul VI.
In fact, this is why RAD TRADS make it a point to state that Lefevbre had an issue with not the two DOGMATIC constitutions, Dei Verbum & Lumen Gentium, but rather the two that were, in fact, NOT Solemnly Promulgated, being Gaudiem et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae.
Nevertheless, as stated in the Catholic Encyclopedic Dictionary:
… infallibity extends to secondary doctrines and facts whose connection with revealed truths is so intricate as to bring them within its scope.
In addition, as stated in the Instructions in the Catholic Faith:
The bishops as a whole are infallible when they are gathered in ecumenical council or when they separately all teach the same doctrine.
Even further, as the article Magisterial Documents and Public Dissent in L’Osservatore Romano states:
… there is no basis for the interpretation that the verification of an infallible teaching of the ordinary, universal Magisterium would also require a particular formality in the act of declaring the doctrine in question.
Thus, the footnote to this reads:
In his commentary on the second schema on the Church proposed at the First Vatican Council, J. Kleutgen defines as doctrines of the ordinary infallible Magisterium those that “have been held or transmitted as undoubted” (tamquam indubitata tenentur vel traduntur).
JR posted:
“Esau,
I recommend you read Jimmy’s Da Rulz. He generally doesn’t enforce them much on well meaning Catholics but you should try to abide by them anyway. I’m refering to post length.”
Ohhh please someone get Esau to stop this cut and paste and paste and cut and whatever, I get acused by him and a few of his lemming followers that I dont read what he says, but it is so tiring
Oh please, John, STOP WITH YOUR HYPOCRISY already!
Have you even PAID ATTENTION to what YOU post?
Ohhh please someone get Esau to stop this cut and paste and paste and cut and whatever
John:
Maybe these samples from a collection of your recent posts might help jog your memory:
There are FAR more than just these two, but to include ALL of them or even MORE samples of such posts from you would make this thread go on forever and ever.
I didn’t even include the ones Innocencio and Esquire had brought attention to in the past.
Esau
“Held or transmitted as undoubted”….you can’t be serious.
Prior to modern Popes, about 7 Popes out of 265 said the anything on sex…several of them bizarre like Pope Gregory the Great in his pastoral rule 3.27: ” Wherefore, it is necessary that they should efface by frequent prayer what they befoul in the fair form of intercourse by the admixture of pleasure.” Strangely Augustine too thought that the ancient patriarchs approached their women only with the thought of children and not pleasure also. Jerome put that idea in Tobias and the modern translations take it out…..using other sources than he did.
Pleasure too was venial sin for Augustine if one partner asked for sex without willing children explicitedly….even though Scripture told that partner to ask for sex to avoid fornication and for the other to say yes in general: ” Book I of Marriage and Concupiscence
CHAP. 16 [XIV]–A CERTAIN DEGREE OF INTEMPERANCE IS TO BE TOLERATED IN THE CASE OF MARRIED PERSONS; THE USE OF MATRIMONY FOR THE MERE PLEASURE OF LUST IS NOT WITHOUT SIN, BUT BECAUSE OF THE NUPTIAL RELATION THE SIN IS VENIAL.”
Both men’s views are rejected implicitly by the modern Popes thank God since Augustine’s lay victim was obeying Scripture in asking for the debt… and repeatedly through such obedience to that Scripture was committing venial sin per Augustine… and therefore fell under Aquinas’ insight that repeated venial sins lead to mortal sin ” he who contemneth little things shall fall little by little.”
So Augustine’s and Gregory’s and Aquinas’ lay victim who was asking for the debt and thus obeying scripture….was in more trouble than Woody Allen being discovered at an Al Qaeda reunion dinner.
Remember this when you read praise of the “tradition”. But you’ll forget by the next debate.
It was a tradition(s) only in the sense that it was in the decretals for centuries like a lot of strange things were like the 4 just titles for having slaves. There were hundreds of theologians who dissented from Humanae Vitae subsequent to its release and Pope Pius IX’s “Tuas Libenter” held that a sign not requirement of infallibility would be universal consent of theologians….read it and weep…I’m working on my 1040:
Pope Pius IX, Tuas Libenter, Letter to the Archbishop of Munich, Dec. 21, 1863:
“For, even if it were a matter concerning that subjection which is to be manifested by an act of divine faith, nevertheless, it would not have to be limited to those matters which have been defined by express decrees of ecumenical Councils, or of the Roman Pontiffs and of this See, but would have to be extended also to those matters which are handed down as divinely revealed by the ordinary teaching power of the whole Church spread throughout the world, and therefore, by universal and common consent are held by Catholic theologians to belong to faith.”
—————————————————-
can. 749 § 3 of the Code says: “No doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless it is clearly established as such.”
“Clearly established”, Esau…..massive dissent when Pius IX said that universal and common consent were signs attendant on infallibility in the OM should be a problem for you….unless you’re addicted to internet theologians…. who don’t seem that published off net.
John and Esau –
Please knock off the personal tit-for-tat. It does nothing to advance the reputation of either of you, and makes the combox a trial to slog through.
Bill Bannon:
Internet Theologians???
For one, the first came from the Catholic Encyclopedic Dictionary.
The second came from Instructions in the Catholic Faith, which is another book.
The last one was from L’Osservatore Romano, which I’m surprised you’re actually not familiar with.
In fact, the authors of the works referred to in the list previously provided do have published works, which you would have realized if you had actually investigated the source link.
Also, in the same source link, you would have encountered (had you investigated in detail) works provided by the Medical Community affirming the notions contained in their works.
And, for your information, much of those source materials came from their published works.
It’s a deficient logic to think that if you should find their works on the Internet, they must not actually be “published” as excerpts of published works and even the published works themselves tend to be made available on the Internet — which is not a surprise since we live in the MODERN 21st Century!
“…massive dissent when Pius IX said that universal and common consent were signs attendant on infallibility in the OM…”
Universal does not mean “every single Catholic”.
Universal and common consent is not limited to only Catholics of a certain time period, either, but extends to all Catholics of all times. You can’t dismiss the consistently held beliefs of the whole Church through history because some moderns get upset. Let them whine.
If anything, the teaching of Humanae Vitae is being cemented, even if ever so slowly. I can’t tell you (not being any expert) whether it is actually, really, fer-sher, beyond a doubt “Ex Cathedra teaching, but I can tall you that it has moved in that direction (rather than the other) ever since. That many – in the modern West – don’t like it is neither here nor there.
It does nothing to advance the reputation of either of you
Tim J.
This is NOT the intent of my posts at all.
If I actually CARED about my reputation on the blog, don’t you think my rather candid remarks to John would assume a more pleasant tone?
However, I feel this would be dishonest of me.
I feel it’s better to be “real” than to act like a phooney like that.
I post things to John to refute things he says which are clearly false.
For example, my previous post to him which addressed his outrageous claim that he does not actually think the Novus Ordo is INVALID but only questionable — yet, he’s made repeated statements condemning it.
In fact, it is often that you see these kinds of teachings handed down specifically in RESPONSE to a time of great dissent and apostacy. Look at how widespread Arianism was at the time of the councils that dealt with it. Universal consent be hanged. It may be a sign of the OM at work, but it is not any sure bet, nor is it a requirement.
By the way, Tim J., if you would please observe, my original posts on this thread (as well as my posts on the other NFP-related thread) had nothing to do with John whatsoever.
Here, I was carrying dialogue with Bill Bannon on topic.
It was only when John interrupted the flow of the discussion on the thread (as he usually does) that it was diverted off the topic.
I understand, Esau, I REALLY do, but I just think you and John bring out the worst in each other, and that it is not healthy for either of you – right now – to engage the other in the combox.
REALLY LONG posts and excessive use of bold, all-caps and stuff are legitimate gripes and are not necessarily a personal attack.
I appreciate the factual content of many of your posts, and hate to see that get lost among the more emotional, personal stuff.
John has pushed my buttons before, as well, but I think he has made a *little* effort to improve lately, and I’d hate to lose that.
Bill Bannon:
I believe your understanding of:
can. 749 § 3 of the Code says: “No doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless it is clearly established as such.”
… is actually based on a mis-understanding.
Please Consider:
Bill Bannon:
I believe your understanding of:
can. 749 § 3 of the Code says: “No doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless it is clearly established as such.”
… is actually based on a mis-understanding.
Please Consider the Following:
The Magisterium of the Church, however, teaches a doctrine to be believed as divinely revealed or to be held definitively with an act which is either defining or non-defining. In the case of a defining act, a truth is solemnly defined by an `ex cathedra’ pronouncement by the Roman Pontiff or by the action of an ecumenical council.
In the case of a non-defining act, a doctrine is taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Bishops dispersed throughout the world who are in communion with the Successor of Peter. Such a doctrine can be confirmed or reaffirmed by the Roman Pontiff, even without recourse to a solemn definition, by declaring explicitly that it belongs to the teaching of the ordinary and universal Magisterium as a truth that is divinely revealed or as a truth of Catholic doctrine.
Consequently, when there has not been a judgment on a doctrine in the solemn form of a definition, but this doctrine, belonging to the inheritance of the depositum fidei, is taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, which necessarily includes the Pope, such a doctrine is to be understood as having been set forth infallibly. The declaration of confirmation or reaffirmation by the Roman Pontiff in this case is not a new dogmatic definition, but a formal attestation of a truth already possessed and infallibly transmitted by the Church.
However, the above is a moot point since Lumen Gentium WAS SOLEMNLY DEFINED as well as DECLARED DOGMATIC.
Esau
You don’t hear goodbyes well. Your whole above passage is talking of what happened in sect. 62 and 65 and one other section of Evangelium Vitae. Here’s part of your quote for which you gave no source:
“Such a doctrine can be confirmed or reaffirmed by the Roman Pontiff, even without recourse to a solemn definition, by declaring explicitly that it belongs to the teaching of the ordinary and universal Magisterium as a truth that is divinely revealed or as a truth of Catholic doctrine.”
See that phrase “by declaring explicitly” to be in “ordinary and universal Magisterium” …got it…here’s what it looks like in real life in Evangelium Vitae on abortion being condemned infallibly and never done on birth control:
” Given such unanimity in the doctrinal and disciplinary tradition of the Church, Paul VI was able to declare that this tradition is unchanged and unchangeable. 72 Therefore, by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, in communion with the Bishops-who on various occasions have condemned abortion and who in the aforementioned consultation, albeit dispersed throughout the world, have shown unanimous agreement concerning this doctrine-I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written Word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.”
End….I’m gone despite any more posts. I’m deleting the short cut…I’m waving. You’re good folk. I have things to do.
Bill Bannon:
I’ve got to admit, all things considered — I REALLY APPRECIATED your posts!
I would’ve enjoyed further dialogue, but understand your time constraints.
Thanks!
Tim J posted :
“John and Esau –
Please knock off the personal tit-for-tat. It does nothing to advance the reputation of either of you, and makes the combox a trial to slog through.”
Tim I agree totally and have tried to reach out to Esau many times, but someone keeps posting as me, using false names with my name in it (Pope John) and even posting my e-mail. Then of course the normal schismatic garbage he throws around and BOLD and so on
Esau goes way above what is normal in a thread
I have no problem in just discussing the facts, the latest imposter “JOHN” is way to far, trying to actually use my name and post things of a sexual nature, and you have never seen me even go there
I would like nothing more than to get along with Esau and David B who tag teams with him
Arguments are tiresome
Please help me here
John,
Since when is ‘John’ your patented trademark? I called myself Pope John, knowing full well that NO ONE would think that I was you.
“I would like nothing more than to get along with Esau and David B who tag teams with him ”
Then why do you says things like this? I don’t tag team with Esau. I have neither the time nor the desire (no offense, Esau).
John:
You are the most DISHONEST person I have ever encountered.
HAVEN’T YOU NOTICED THAT ALMOST EACH AND EVERY THREAD, IT IS YOU WHO TAKES IT OFF-TOPIC AND POST TO/ABOUT ME?
TALK ABOUT AN OBSESSION!
All I’ve ever wanted (AS CAN BE SEEN HERE & ON OTHER THREADS), is TO ENGAGE IN THE PREVAILING DISCUSSION UNLIKE YOU.
Also, the very reason why I post the way I do when addressing you (i.e., my long posts which feature many of your actual past posts) is to expose not only your DISHONESTY but also that IT DOES NOT ADHERE TO TRADITIONAL CATHOLIC TEACHING!
For example, my previous recent post that concerned what you said to TIM J.:
Yet, John had stated in the past:
AND
AND
The Apr 12, 2007 9:36:44 AM post was mine.
David B. & Tim J.:
If there is the matter of my responding constantly to John’s calumny and deception that his thoughts coincide with Traditional Catholic Teaching; that’s fine and, I acknowledge, your right.
I admit that I will often respond to his posts in kind.
However, as I have learned from the past, it is best to address such at their roots rather than to have such filth be encountered by those who may mistake such deception (especially the manner in which John himself has presented them) as something in actual agreement with Traditional Catholic Church Teaching.
I apologize to Jimmy Akin in advance, but I cannot help but give retort to his calumny about the Pope and the Church as well as expose his rebellion against the Church disguised as Traditional Church Teaching.
Esau,
Perhaps you could shorten your responses to John by linking to John’s original posts, rather than re-publishing them. You could even link to your response.
Perhaps you could shorten your responses to John by linking to John’s original posts, rather than re-publishing them.
David B.:
I was actually thinking about that myself.
But how do you do that?
I don’t know how to post a link to a particular comment.
Could you tell me how?
I think that would DEFINITELY make my posts INCREDIBLY SHORT since they are mostly a compilation of his as his own words betray him.
Unfortunately, when it comes to computers, I am the Missing Link.