Posted on 09/15/2019 1:53:27 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
There is one teaching that most Protestants readily recognize as Catholic, and it is usually received with derision: the prohibition of artificial means of birth control. The Protestants in my circles often disparage this teaching with little knowledge of Humanae Vitae, perhaps the most significant document to address birth control over the last one hundred years.
Our distaste for things Roman Catholic, dating back to the sixteenth century, has deprived us of a wealth of theological wisdom...Our acceptance of most forms of birth control is not helping us teach the next generation about sex and sexuality. It is time for us to reconsider our stance.
I teach ethics at a Southern Baptist seminary in Texas where one of our core ethics courses is The Christian Home. I cover a number of issues concerning marriage and family, but the one that receives the greatest response is my lecture on sexuality and reproductive technologies.
Our students reject abortion and emergency contraceptives but dont worry about the morality of the pill and other methods. They hold this position because their churches do.
Beginning with the Lambeth Conference in 1930 and concluding with the wholesale embrace of the pill in the decade or so that followed its release, most Protestants moved away from agreement with the Catholic Church on this moral issue and never looked back. Among Southern Baptists, the drift from renunciation to acceptance of birth control had a clear trajectory. The 1934 Resolution on Birth Control urges Congress to reject pending legislation because its purpose
"...would prove seriously detrimental to the morals of our nation."
Some forty years later, the Southern Baptist Convention took up the issue of birth control again, issuing a series of resolutions that opposed only contraceptives distributed to minors at school without parental consent...
(Excerpt) Read more at firstthings.com ...
I agree with you on the concept. Perhaps it just breaks down in our culture, where the assumption is that there is some cosmic injustice going on if a person feels a sexual urge and can’t act on it.
Healthy women’s sexual desires are strongest when they are fertile. (Hello, Darwin, nice to see you ...) When there is a fear of reproduction, this basic fact of biology creates the perception that women’s bodies are bad. God just got it WRONG!
Woah. If you ever find that article again please link me. (IVF by the way is another contentious issue dividing Christians.)
It was common in Christian writing in the past to consider unnatural heterosexual acts to be morally worse than homosexual activity, because there is a right way for a man and a woman to do it.
I believe it was Mrs. Don-o who observed that heterosexuals invented "gay marriage," and the homosexuals decided to get in on it.
I believe it was Mrs. Don-o who observed that heterosexuals invented "gay marriage," and the homosexuals decided to get in on it.
Really good point.
Mrs. Don-o is All That plus a cheezburger.
If married couples are having as many children as possible, more often than not it makes it impossible for the husband to follow the teachings of the Bible.
“1 Timothy 5:8 (KJV) But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.”
The Bible is clearer on this than it is regarding birth control. MUCH clearer. Having a kid every few years easily could force a man to engage in sin, i.e., not provide.
I can't agree with at, though. I think NFP can be kind of nerve-wracking, at least at some time, for many couples, and I wouldn't do it at all unless there was a good reason why a pregnancy would be bad news (medical, financial, every-body-is -at-the-end-of-their-rope-and stuff-is-falling-apart reasons.
O conversely, using NFP to achieve pregnancy: unless here are actual subfertility issues I don't think you usually have to make an effort to "achieve."
I think normally, people should act normally. And normally, you just have your blessed sexual relations when you blessed-well feel like it, and come-what-may.
My two cents' worth, adjusted for inflation.
The notion of limiting number of children is a side effect of the industrial revolution.
People in crowded housing, in crowded cities, must compete for limited number of jobs, and their pay is in meager coins. They’re separated from their food & must buy it.
Too many mouths to feed/ not enough coins = poverty.
In agrarian society, more children were an asset, not a liability.
Land + children = wealth.
Since families depended DIRECTLY on the land for their food,
more kids= more little farmhands!
More tilling, more planting & harvesting, more canning, drying, “putting up” for next season, more cows could be milked, tended, etc.
This isn’t the right one (I’ll keep looking), but it is relevant, check out the first paragraph:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sperm-washing-clears-gay-dads-763404
Yes and no. I know poor people with large families here in suburban Boring. They have a lot of kids in a few rooms (like I do), and sometimes not just kids but grandparents, aunts and uncles, in-laws who just got here from Mexico or El Salvador. Everyone who is old enough to work, works, and contributes to the household. Grandmothers or sister-in-law provide childcare and cook for everyone, even if they’re not all living in the same house.
When my oldest son got his first job as a lifeguard, a friend from Guatemala said, “Great! Now he can help the family!” *jaw drop* We did not need Bill the Son’s minimum-wage earnings to help feed the household, although we did, eventually, charge him rent as an incentive to move out.
“Are you really going to pay me $500 a month to share a bedroom with Tom and a bathroom with eight other people? Come ON!” No, he wasn’t. He got a roommate, an apartment, and a cat.
A real-meat cheezburger, until the Climate Hysterics get rid of all the cows.
I think the default with NFP is limiting the family size. Conceiving is either a positive decision or an “accident.”
Others’ mileage may vary. In fact, I know it doesn’t. Some of my friends can’t get their husbands away from sports or computer games with dynamite!
Does, that is.
The pill is now an abortifacent. It was invented as a contraceptive. The hormonal makeup has changed so the main intervention is preventing the uterine lining from increasing so the fertilized egg cannot implant.
You have sex... if you’re ovulating conception may occur... the embryo (fertilized egg) floats in womb... but cannot attach to the uterine lining. The embryo... which many consider a human being... albeit only a few days to a few weeks old... is then expelled from the womb with normal discharges.
I wasn’t referring to today’s individual families & their particular preferences.
I was referring to historical time frames— society in general was agrarian — and large families in general were considered a blessing, from Biblical times until the 1800s.
Industrialization caused mass migration off the farm & into cities. People in cities —in general— felt economically pressured to have fewer children.
I understand that. I was pointing out that your economic construct was a thing, but it’s not the only thing.
You'd be surprised how many of these middle-class suburbia bred mass shooters (from Columbine onwards) justify their need to kill with Darwinistic language like that. You know, because time, resources, and space are running out for our 'species' and all that crap. Just read their manifestos. The contraceptive mentality is MENTALLY UNHEALTHY, SOUL-KILLING, and MATERIALISTIC.
Take the mass shooters out of the equation, and you see that the mere 'expectation' that couples oblige in only having 1.5 to 2.5 kids max props up the workings of our entire culture from insane work schedules to insurance policy setups and nursing homes...SO that: rather than surrender fully to God's designs, and allow the culture to fall in place. Christians have unknowingly made cultural norms their starting point, and adjust the Bible around flawed concepts of the "American Dream." (and all the romance-killing practical concerns therein.)
And even still, it's not that the Catholic Church is saying everyone should have 10 children. Just that there is a way "doing marriage" that puts God, and respect for life, rather than sexual desires or material concerns at the forefront.
And back to the mass shootings...It's clear that while not all of them were only children, a good many clearly had WAY too much time alone. (And almost all had absent fathers in particular.) Adam Lanza's mother was a doomsday prepper. You know, gotta be practical!
Amen.
Great questions,will ask my expert :)
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