Posted on 04/18/2013 3:15:23 PM PDT by NYer
Which "facts don't hold"?
The Bible facts, as presented in this article (or in the writings of myriad Protestant commentators, if you prefer)?
The physical facts of healthy human biology?
The dictionary facts of the definition of "contraception"?
The historical facts of what all Christian confessions consistently taught until the 1930s?
The historical facts of what has happened to churches and societies since the acceptance of contraception?
It seems as if *mentally drawing a diagram of a set of scales* all these facts would have some weight ... but for our society, on the other side of scales is the "brick" that reads, "We like contraception, because then we have sex on demand without children." And that ends it.
So let's clarify by Looking at different aspects of sex.
Overall, which best matches your point of view: A or B:
A: Natural, healthy, normally-embodied sexuality is a good thing. Man-woman sex is the way it's supposed to be. Therefore
Or:
B: There are no givens as to what is "natural, healthy, or normal" in sexuality., It's all about what I want. Therefore
Which position comes closest to the way you see it?
Msgr. Charles Pope is a Catholic and is trying to sustain the Catholic belief and teachings on contraception.
Here’s the dictionary definition of contraception:
http://machaut.uchicago.edu/?action=search&word=contraception&resource=Webster%27s&quicksearch=on
There isn’t one from either the 1928 or 1913 Webster dictionaries.
It is a modern word, first recorded in 1891. Our knowledge of when human life begins has rocketed forward since that time. You may believe that contraception is wrong or immoral, but that doesn’t make it so. Nor must it naturally lead to homosexuality, adultery, fornication or abortion.
Clearly it happened long ago as well and is not a modern disease:
http://bible.cc/galatians/5-19.htm
This site is very good for understanding the Bible and what it really says in the NT Greek or OT Hebrew.
Compare what Msgr. Pope infers and what the original really says. All the verses he quotes are available.
Here’s Matthew 5:19 which he doesn’t quote:
http://bible.cc/matthew/15-19.htm
Here is Rev 21:8:
http://bible.cc/revelation/21-8.htm
My experience with Catholicism is that its adherents understand the Bible only less so than their priests. The interpretations are bent so as to buttress a doctrine with little or tangential Biblical support. If it is by divine revelation to a Pope, then so be it.
http://bible.cc/genesis/1-28.htm
Genesis 1:28 is an express command to marry and procreate. It would have been simple for God to also command that we may take no action to avoid procreation, but He didn’t. We, as a part of the natural world, may choose. That is not unnatural.
Not marrying is unnatural and against God.
You may believe as you see fit. It is, as always, your choice.
You have a nice weekend. It’s been stimulating.
You make the point that homosexuality (acted out as sodomy) was an ancient vice, well-known in the ancient world; very true. And so was contraception. The first act of contraception was done in Genesis 38; and in (dis)honor of the man who thus offended God, the word "Onanism" was used, through the 16th-19th century, by both Catholics and Protestants, to describe the sinful practice of deliberately turning sex away from procreation, Luther and Calvin, and many others, preached on the contraceptive implications of the sin of Onan.
All the violations of sex-as-God-created-it --- violations of the unitive and procreative aspect--- are sins. Contraception is a sin because it is perverting the act of sexual union by turning it against its own nature.
But you are mistaken, if you think that contraceptive perversion is comparable to chaste celibacy. You wrote:
”Genesis 1:28 is an express command to marry and procreate. It would have been simple for God to also command that we may take no action to avoid procreation, but He didn’t. We, as a part of the natural world, may choose. That is not unnatural….Not marrying is unnatural and against God.”
To reach this conclusion, my dear friend, you would have to reject a lot of New Testament wisdom. Marriage and procreation are indeed holy --- very much so, since marriage was established in Eden by God, and “Be fruitful” was one of His very first commandments and blessings.. But celibacy for God’s sake, has its own excellence and is in some cases even more suitable for His purposes.
I would have you take a good look at 1 Cor. 7:25 and Matt. 19:11. In 1 Cor. 7, St. Paul clearly teaches the advantages of the celibate state to the married state, providing a powerful refutation of any suggestion that being abstinent is against God.
1 Corinthians 7-
“Now concerning the thing whereof you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. But for fear of fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband… But I speak this by indulgence, not by commandment.For I would that all men were even as myself [unmarried]: but every one hath his proper gift from God; one after this manner, and another after that. But I say to the unmarried, and to the widows: It is good for them if they so continue, even as I…
If anyone is worried that he might not be acting honorably toward the virgin he is engaged to, and if his passions are too strong and he feels he ought to marry, he should do as he wants. He is not sinning. They should get married. But the man who has settled the matter in his own mind, who is under no obligation but has control over his own will, and who has made up his mind not to marry the virgin—this man also does the right thing. So then, he who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does better.
St. Paul clearly identifies the state of virginity or celibacy as a state that is better than the state of marriage. We also see this in the words of Jesus Himself:
Matthew 19: 11-12 Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others ---and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Those who can accept this, should accept it.”
Jesus is clearly speaking here, not of eunuchs (castrated men) in the literal sense, but of those who live singly and chastely for the sake of the kingdom of God. There are such who are not best suited to marriage, but for leading a single and chaste life, in order to serve God in a more perfect state than those who marry, as St. Paul clearly shows (above, 1 Cor 7: 37, 38).
The Church does not claim to understand these things by means of a special revelation to the Pope. This was he common understanding of all Christendom for well over a millennium.
The teaching about celibacy is right there in the text, quite explicitly: it is not for everyone, but for those who can do it, who have the gift for it, celibacy is of great spiritual worth.
The teaching on contraception is supported by what we can reasonably know about human nature, what is good for persons, families, and societies. The evidence, and reasonable inference from evidence, shows that contraception drastically reduces the "opportunity cost" of fornication: it makes women cheap and fornication easy. When that happens, we know what behavior lamentable human weakness will dictate. Contraceptive societies are in the process of killing off marriage and are in self-inflicted demographic collapse.
Non-contraceptive societies will simply expand to fill the vacuum. And we know who they are.
Imagine a crisp-around-the-edges Margaret Sanger in hell, saying gleefully, "Inshallah."
That's a nonsense argument. "Sex-as-God-created-it" is as goofy a term as you can get. Those reproductive organs are attached to souls with brains. They've got the brains that God gave them. They also have agency and choice. We're made in the outline of God.
Sex for pleasure and pleasure only is part of the sex-as-God-created-it package.
But you are mistaken, if you think that contraceptive perversion is comparable to chaste celibacy.
Whatever. You've not proven that contraception is a perversion of anything. God doesn't contravene sex for pleasure in marriage. Ask any Orthodox Jew what the OT says about sex, procreation and pleasure in marriage. It's the same in the New Testament. The sin is fornication or adultery.
Celibacy can only be chaste, so stop misuing the word. Someone who's celibate and not chaste is a pervert and that's my point. Celibacy is unnatural and contradicts God's teaching.
I understand that you want to defend Catholicism and your Catholic faith and please believe what you want, but the Catholic teaching on contraception and priestly celibacy is wrong, harmful and unBiblical.
You may not be aware of it, but every translation is a transmission. A transmission of the times, culture and perspective of the translator. The chosen words in the Bible are important and so is the context. Your two examples actually buttress my point.
Who is the audience for Matt. 19 and what is the context? Go reread it. Your interpretation of 1 Cor. 7 is utterly laughable.
What makes you think that Paul is unmarried or never married? Paul's own words tell us that he was an observant Jew (See Acts 22:3, Acts 23:6 and Gal. 1:14). He must have been married at some point as this is a principle tenet of Judaism.
In 1 Cor. he may be widowed, divorced or simply away from his wife and abstainig from outside sexual relations to satisfy himself, i.e. he's practicing self-restraint, something the Corinthian saints weren't doing.
I mean do you know what the first letter to the Corinthians said? No, because we don't have it. The Corinthians (all of them or just the leadership? Check v. 29-33) then reply with a series of questions, but we don't have their epistle to Paul, so we cannot be certain of what they wrote or the context of it. "It is good for a man not to touch a woman," is part of the Corinthian question and the Greek text makes clear this is a statement of the Corinthians.
Please read the entire verse as Paul clarifies what is right and correct in marriage. You might follow up with Paul's teaching in 1 Timothy 4:1–3. It's highly unlikely that Peter, John or any of the Apostles never married. They were Jews and OT/NT Jews marry.
If your Popes have revelation from God telling Catholics that their clerics should be celibate, fine and believe as you like, but the Bible doesn't support that position. Nor do the biological sciences. Catholic teaching on contraception is wrong and harmful as public policy. It gives the devil a wedge issue where none need exist.
Imagine a crisp-around-the-edges Margaret Sanger in hell, saying gleefully, "Inshallah."
That's witty and an ironic image. Thanks.
I don't want to over-interpret or mis-interpret you, but you seem to be denying that God made human sexuality in such a way that it has conjoined unitive and procreative aspects, precisely because reproductive organs are "attached to souls with brains". Of course we have freedom to choose, if by this you mean the power to choose-- not being robots --- but not everything we choose is good.
I'm interested in your point of view. Let's say that I think I would be more satisfied as a man than as a woman. Therefore I alter my body with hormones and surgery to remodel my sexual/reproductive organs, acquire a pseudo-penis, and make myself what is now called a "trans-man". Turns out this pleases my husband, and now we like to have sex for pleasure and for pleasure only. We didn't want babies, anyway. Have I a moral right to do this?
Why or why not?
"God doesn't contravene sex for pleasure in marriage."
I never said He did, or anything like it. If you are construing that as my belief, you are mistaken.
"Celibacy can only be chaste, so stop misuing the word."
This shows a confusion about words. The primary meaning of celibacy (Link) is simply "the unmarried state." The primary meaning of chastity (Link) is simply "sexual virtue," meaning, living according to the sexual moral standards of one's state in life.
Therefore celibacy can be chaste, but only if it involves abstinence from sexual expression. It is possible for a celibate to be unchaste: i.e. a person who is unmarried, but does not practice sexual virtue. A porn consumer/ wanker (Link, ok?) would be one example of many.
One hopes that all married people would be chaste (i.e. practice the sexual moral standards of their state in life.) This does not mean abstinence. This means fidelity: using their sexuality as a gift of exclusive self-donation to each other.
This sort of discussion often, very often, gets derailed by people using the same words, but with divergent meanings. Nothing but confusion can result.
"Celibacy is unnatural and contradicts God's teaching."
Your argument here is with St. Paul. He argues his case for it better than I do.
The Jews, interestingly, starting in Biblical times, used periodic abstinence as a means of achieving pregnancy. If you abstain from sex during menstruation, and then count 7 days after the last show of blood, then have a mikvah (purifying bath) and resume relations, you have just done 12-13 days of abstinence which puts you on the 12th or 13th day of the cycle, so the man's sperm count is high and the woman is just on the very verge of ovulation. This is the time of absolute maximum fertility.
That is, precisely, using NFP to optimize the likelihood of conception.
So. You want to do it the Biblical way? There you go! Mazel tov!
"The Catholic teaching on contraception and priestly celibacy is wrong, harmful and unBiblical."
You have asserted this repeatedly, but assertion does not constitute proof.
If the teaching against contraception is wrong, were all Christians of all denominations in the wrong about this for roughly 1,930 years? Because it was only in 1930 that any Christian Church --- the Anglicans meeting at Lambeth, England --- approved of contraception. Before that, it was considered Onanism by all Christian churches.
If the celibacy (the state of being unmarried) is wrong, at what age does it become wrong? Puberty? 18? 21? 40? Is a widower wrong if he does not remarry? Or is celibacy wrong only for priests, but OK for laypeople?
"Who is the audience for Matt. 19 and what is the context?"
First Jesus is debating with the Pharisees about divorce and remarriage, and this serves as a launch into the wider question of God's intention for marriage. At this point Jesus refers back to the very beginnings of marriage in Genesis. He concludes that if a divorced man remarries, both he and his "new" spouse are committing adultery. The disciples find this a hard saying and object that if this is the case, it would be better not to marry.
Jesus immediately refers to the example of eunuchs (men who were incapable of marriage) and says there are people who are born incapable of marriage, or who are made incapable of marriage, but there are also those who live like eunuchs for the Kingdom of God; and those who can accept this, should accept it.
It's not so surprising that the disciples thought this was a hard saying! Yes, in fact, says the Lord, for some it would be better not to marry!
Check out, please, what St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:8 (here's 5 different translations,in parallel format: Protestant, Catholic, contemporary and Reformation-era -- LINK) Obviously Paul was single, and was recommending singleness to others.
What I write has its foundation in Scripture and in the belief and practice of good Christians, including non-Catholic Christians, and including Christians of the Reformation era 500 years ago. You could go on insisting that just about all Christian churches have been wrong about sex and marriage, just about all the time; but such assertion, on the basis of the evidence you have so far shown, is dubious.
Thank you for continuing on this dialogue. Mutual understanding has not always been easy, but I believe we are making some progress. I appreciate your efforts and your good will.
Ping to discussion above.
Thanks!
You have a bad habit of conflating two unrelated things. You describe a mental illness above. Using contraceptives isn't, in itself, a sign of mental illness.
We're Christians and within the Christian meaning of celibate is abstinence. Otherwise, you're accepting fornication as not a sin. It's another nonsense argument. See your own definitions in your own link. The Catholic prohibition on clerical marriage is unBiblical. If it is a Papal decree via revelation from God, fine. Believe as you will, but don't pretend that it's Biblically based
Christ's and Paul's arguments are consistent. Marriage is the highest and expected state. That's consistent with the OT teaching. There is no need for clerical celibacy to serve God. Christ is pointing out the moral terpitude and vacuity of the apostate Jewish teachings on marriage. The world of the NT was much like our own today, morally bereft and selfish. As for other "Christians" practicing the misinterpretation of Christ's and Paul's words, keep in mind that Protestantism as a whole is made up of schizmatic Catholics. Protestants are a Catholic subculture. If Catholic's got it wrong, it's likely that the offshoots of Catholicism would as well. You've hung your hat on the wrong verses. They don't mean what you think they mean. Take a look at the Bible as a whole. Protestants do the same thing you're doing. Hang on to a verse for dear life, to rationalize an irrational belief.
I respect your right to conscience and you can believe what you like. But conflating contraception with moral depravity is nonsense. Can contraception lead to moral depravity? Yes. Must it lead to moral depravity? No. Human choice, as you've pointed out, is the difference. We can choose good.
”You have a bad habit of conflating two unrelated things. You describe a mental illness above. Using contraceptives isn't, in itself, a sign of mental illness.’
I am not conflating two unrelated issues, but precisely aiming to compare and contrast. So now I have to ask again , because I’m trying to get to the level of understanding your principles.
What do you think of using drugs, devices and surgery to attempt to change one’s sexual nature, i.e. from “male” to “female” or t’other way around? Is it positively good as an act of human choice and intelligence through the application of science? or is it neutral, not to be thought either right or wrong? or is it morally objectionable as contrary to Divine and Natural Law; or what?
If you would give your well-considered answer, and expand a bit on the reasons why, then I will better understand your principles and therefore your arguments.
You’ve raised other relevant issues, but in order for this not to run to a couple thousand words, I’m keeping it short for just now.
“I’m here to learn.”
Thank you.
The word “contraception,” is a modern word. The biblical word, and the word used by Christian antiquity to describe what we moderns call “contraception” is Onanism. The word comes from this passage wherein Onan “spills his seed on the ground” and God kills him for it.,
Up until the mid 1800's the mistaken understanding of reproduction was that semen was literally a seed fully capable of generating life, and that the female was just the fertile ground. We know know that this is not true, and that neither, alone can generate life. Contraception no more destroys life than celibacy. All those sperm, and all those eggs are going to die anyway...
later in Genesis 38, Tamar prostitutes herself to Judah by the side of the road. That's some ethical foundation.
In the Bible, God put Adam and Eve in the garden with the one object in the universe which would bring their downfall, and the one entity determined to make it happen, KNOWING that they would eat from the tree. That's love? If I as a father left my newborn in a room with a killer, knowing the child would die, would I be called a good father?
In the Bible God destroyed everyone and every living thing except Noah and the contents of the ark in the flood because humanity would not obey him. That's love?That's the love of a father?
This is not the case. Although of course, lacking microscopes, the people of antiquity knew nothing of genetics and embryology, all people from the time of the herder/breeders realized that the male and the female contribute something. As early as Genesis (arguably written around the 6th century BCE) the central struggle of the Bible is encapsulated in these words(Gen 3:18) - "I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the Woman, between your seed and her seed..." The whole subsequent story springs from this: the age-old enmity between the Evil One, and humankind, identified as "the seed of the Woman."
In ancient Greece, Aristotle believed that menstrual blood was the actual substance from which life generated. In the 1677, a student of Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek first observed spermatozoa in seminal fluid, and most importantly, discovered sperm in female reproductive tracts after copulation. This finding eventually led to the end of earlier preformation theories, which held that entire individual humans were present in the female egg, and that sperm acted only somehow to facilitate the release and growth of this individual.
Even as late as the 19th century, physicians still refused to consider the possibility that male factors played a role in fertility at all. It was at that time that modern embryological science began as the mammalian egg was discovered, but sperm's essential role in fertilization remained unproven until 1879.
That's not even 150 years ago.
My point here is that people could conceptually distinguish between abortion and contraception millennia earlier than you give them credit for; and Onanism would not have been seen as the same as abortion, since it involved only seminal fluid, and not a conceived child. But both abortion and contraception were seen as morally objectionable: abortion because it is an offense against the sanctity of life, and contraception because it is an offense against the sanctity of sex.
BTW, I see that you have some perplexing scruple against Tamar as a heroine. The following article should at least amuse you: concerning the 'Woman Problem' in Jesus' genealogy (Link). I'd love to know your reaction to it.
~
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