I’ve had the opportunity to defend the church’s teaching on contraption against other Catholics, non-Catholics and even Pagans. I got my start researching the “whys” of the church’s position when friends and family members started getting permanent sterilization procedures within months of each other.
I didn’t really get a chance to use what I had learned until I signed up for AOL and started participating on their debate boards. In 2003 when my pastor basically gave a pro-birth control speech during the homily, I felt driven to find more information on the web and I ran across this board. Ah, the happy hours of defending the church’s beautiful teaching and then suffering the inevitable ad hominem attacks, and bannings. The good ole days!
One thing I have learned from these exchanges is that the liberal, “progressive,” dissenting view has a few key points that they bring up over and over again. It’s like watching the same play at three different theatres. You know what’s coming because you’ve seen it before. I became acutely aware of this yesterday on JCecil’s blog. Mr. Cecil brings up the following points. My comments in purple.
As I have said before, how is a condom, made from the stuff of nature, not natural?
Interestingly the first time I heard this argument it came from a Wiccan High Priestess over on the AOL debate board entitled Religious Experiences. I believe she still posts there so if you have AOL you can most certainly go to that board, ask for Harmony and verify with her that indeed that is a valid Wiccan position. I once teased her about visions of diaphram plants swaying gently in the wind like flowers in a field and she seemed to like that.
People who hold that view believe that because God made all the atoms, molecules etc. ever made and since all things are made from these atoms and molecules, then everything is natural. The atom bomb, spermacides, DDT, all natural simply because God created the matter they are made of. The aburdity of this argument is tht of course Atom boms, spermacides, DDT, even Clorox Bleach don’t exist at all without the manipulation of man. It is that manipulation that generally takes things from the realm of “natural” or existing in nature to “man made.”
Is it any less natural than taking temperatures, measuring mucus, and all the other stuff of NFP?
Duh.
Basal body temperature,mucus production, cervical changes are all normal functions of the female body. It’s the way God designed the body. Thus they are truly natural because this is how they exist in nature. This is nothing immoral about recording these observations either any more than there would be in taking a weight, blood pressure, barometric readings or astronomy. Measuring and observing nature is part of the natural curiosity of man.
What about withdrawal, which is also “natural”?
Not everything that does not require manmade manipulated devices is necessarily “natural.” Man is not driven to pullout during the height of the sexual experience unless he is driven further by a selfish desire to avoid offspring. Also, because an act may not require articial elements doesn’t mean that it is not disordered. Coitius interuptus is as much a disordered act as binging and purging on food.
But these frustrate the act, you might say – the “sin of Onan” – spilling seed outside of the womb.
Most Biblical scholars – even those that support the Vatican position – agree that the sin of Onan really had to do with the responsibility to provide your kin with heirs, rather than contraception.
Uh… no. Just because most of the biblical scholars liberal,”progressive,” dissident types are likely to read have re-interpreted the Onan story doesn’t mean that ALL, or even MOST biblical scholars thorugh history have done the same. Casti Canubii even references the Onan passage.
The Bible has nothing to say about contraception.
Actually the biblical view of children is one of openness, welcoming, blessing. No where in the bible is having children considered a curse. Jesus himself welcomes the little children! The view of the bible is anything but contraceptive!!
What the bible does have to say about contraception it says inthe Onan story are here are two very good links to go into that in more depth.
Life issues on Onan
Onan revisited
The differences between artificial birth control ABC and Natural Family Planning, NFP, I will cover tomorrow if there is not a lot more disucsion on the scriptural points.
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