As an adult woman, married for almost 25 years, I look back on this teaching and how it has affected my life and see that in this area at least I was blessed with a childlike faith of acceptance. Even as a teen and a young married woman, I never doubted that the church was correct on this – I just assumed that it was correct and that I had to do the work to understand why. When I was challenged in my Catholic faith, the study of this one issue was what brought me back really on fire for what it means to be a Catholic Christian and living that out in my family life, creating our own Domestic Church.
I’d like to share two items this morning that I spent some time on. The first is a refutation to the second alleged logical fallacy presented on the Birth Control and Catholic Church Board last summer. I picked this particular fallacy to blog on today, because it ties in nicely with my second item today above.
These “fallacies” were written by the anonymous theologian (AT) on that board.
My responses in purple.
Alleged Fallacy #2
AT:. NFP is natural; ABC is not.
• NFP is natural only in the sense that it makes use of the woman’s fertility cycle to determine times for procreative and non-procreative sex.
• NFP is not natural in the sense that couples are not naturally drawn to abstain during fertile times of the month and have relations during the fertile time.
The church doesn’t support NFP because of the laws of nature or “naturalness” but rather because it conforms to the natural Law. That it works in harmony with both is a bonus!
AT• ABC is natural in the sense that we are using reason to intervene on the reproductive process to prevent conception.
It is true that it is natural for man to think and create and invent. However, it is not true that what results from man’s reasoning and interventions is always “natural.” As far as contracepting goes, that’s the end of the “naturalness” of any “artificial” methods – which of course is why they are called “artificial” and thus the A in ABC.
AT• It could also be argued that it is natural when it makes use of hormones that are natural to a woman’s body as in the birth control pill.
It could also be argued that there is nothing “natural” about using hormones to create an artificial “sterility” in a normally functioning reproductive system, or in manipulating hormones to deliberately destroy and eliminate newly created life.
AT• ABC is not natural in the sense that it does not make use of the fertility cycle and that some forms introduce chemicals and barriers that are not parts of the human reproductive anatomy and physiology.
Agreed. There is nothing natural about introducing false hormone levels in the body, putting devices into the uterus, wearing latex with strong chemicals, or removing or altering normal health body structure and tissue.
AT• Hence, we have another fallacy of false definition, with the term natural being abrogated for NFP and deliberately excluded from any understandings of ABC.
Agreed we have a false definition, but it is of “natural law” vs. “law of nature.” The church’s prohibition on ABC is based on the former, not the latter. We also have a style over substance argument in stating that ABC is natural simply because man thought of it!
AT• The fallacy of conflicting conditions is also at work in this slogan, along with a mild ad hominem, which judgmentally suggests that ABC users are doing something un-natural.
There is no fallacy of conflicting conditions except in your third point of trying to make ABC appear “natural” i.e. “ABC is natural because humans naturally thought of artificially adjusting hormone levels to produce an artificial sterile state In NFP the period of temporary sterility simply exists on its own. In ABC it is created artificially
The other fallacy that exists is the fallacy of ignoring the obvious. ABC users ARE doing something un-natural. It is not natural to take oral hormones, or apply a skin patch, or insert a diaphragm or IUD, put a sheath over the penis, or cut and impair normal body tissue. None of those acts are normal and it is not an ad hominem to point that out.
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