www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Natural contraception 'effective'

John,

My wife thinks so. She has a suspicion that her parents stopped going to Church not long after Humanae Vitae. Now that doesn't make Humanae Vitae incorrect. But, it does seem to me that HV and the teaching on divorce/remarriage are the biggest stumbling blocks to people today.

Joe

John,

My experience with NFP classes & teachers; and my coming to better understand the historic positions of the Church on sex was pretty much identical to yours. What I really found amazing was how little theology most of the NFP practitioner/teachers knew. And then I would hear bizarre things from people such as "NFP makes sex a sacrament."

What I would suggest is that perhaps the Church is wrong in making procreation the primary end of sexual relations. There is nothing in Scripture to suggest so. There is nothing specifically human about procreation. It is something shared with animals and even plants! But, that we achieve emotional and spiritual union in sex is unique to humans. The Song of Songs celebrates sexual love with no mention of procreation. When St. Paul gives directives on the sexual activities of husbands and wives, he never mentions procreation as an end. Also, when God made Eve, He did so because it was not good for Adam to be alone. In the second creation narrative, there is no mention of procreation as a fundamental reason for God's making Eve for Adam. It is companionship that is the primary purpose. In Genesis 1, "be fruitful and multiply," is not a command. It is a blessing. God blesses all life so that they will be fruitful. It is making too much of it to turn it into a command. In my opinion, the fathers were overly influenced by Stoicism, especially Stoic views of natural law.

There is no doubt that procreation is an end of marriage. It is an empirical fact that procreation is the biological purpose of sex. But, to make the biological purpose of sex the highest purpose is to make human beings subservient to biology. I will follow those Orthodox theologians who are writing now that the primary and highest purpose of the marital act is spiritual union and intimacy. How's that for being controversial? :P

Joe

I have yet to be convinced of this assetion, and, in fact, do not consider the arguments on behalf of this position even to have entered into the ballpark in terms of being persuasive-much less convincing. I know that this is the postion taken by many of the Church Fathers. I know that we tend to honor the Church Fathers-and I think rightly so. However, none of them was infallible and they were not without their own biases and errors in thinking-just as we are not without our own biases and errors. It is my opinion that many Christians of the time of the Church Fathers (including, and perhaps especially, many of the Fathers themselves), had ideas about the body, including sexual relations, that were influenced more by various aspects of Greco-Roman thought than by Holy Scripture. I think an examination of Scripture as a whole does not support the idea that marital relations must always be for the purpose of procreation. Futhermore, I do not believe that Scripture on the whole condemns the giving and receiving of pleasure in marital relations. The idea that pleasure (even in the context of marriage) is always sinful is, in my opinion, one of the more ridiculous and unfortunate developments in the history of Christian thought.

Ryan

Joe:

Very well said.

Ryan

Why don't Catholics who use or support contraception just break union with Rome?

John,

I did. I became Orthodox. However, contraception had nothing to do with it. In fact, it wasn't something that motivated by conversion at all. It was only after becoming Orthodox, that I looked back and reflected on all that I had learned.

Joe

And hence the procreative act can never be separated from its more sublime end---that which it symbolizes--Christ's love for his Church. (Now, as a logical consequence of separating that which should be united, we have frozen fertilized human eggs by the millions!) The oneness which is achieved is most perfectly realized in the unity of the child. True Christian love is life-giving.

I think the rejection of Humanae Vitae has caused the greatest crisis that the Church and the world have ever seen. I dare say that the real problem why the Ruthenian Church's attendance has been dropping is because of the rejection of HV. My grandparents from old country who settled in Pittsburgh had 14 children; they trusted in God's providence. It's been mostly down hill since their generation. Once Catholics rejected HV, they would, through hardness of heart, reject many other teachings of the Church. But it makes sense that when a couple rejects a teaching which is intrinsically a part of the holy mystery which is their primary vocation, they would no longer be willing to accept the faith whole and entire. HV simply revealed how deeply rooted dissent in the Catholic Church was. Add to this priests who in the confessional quietly and not so quietly consented to the rebellion, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Your motives for becoming Orthodox were, I am sure, good. It is sad that the Orthodox Church - which claims to revere the Early Church Fathers best - is influencing its children with a false teaching contrary to the Fathers. How odd that the Ancient Faith would relativistically accommodate modernity.

So I take it that all of these folks who struggle with HV are just evil sinners with depraved minds? I will admit that it does follow from the document. If HV is right, then prohibition against birth control is a part of natural law, implanted in the conscience of all human beings, just like prohibitions against murder and theft. Using birth control must be on a par with murder, theft, lying, adultery, and all other sorts of grave evils. Does this mean that only 2-4% of Catholics (who do not use birth control) have a shot at heaven? Is it really the case that everyone who rejects HV is doing so because of their need to satiate lust?

Joe

"The idea that pleasure (even in the context of marriage) is always sinful is, in my opinion, one of the more ridiculous and unfortunate developments in the history of Christian thought."

I must agree with your whole statement here. Marital sex is procreative and unitive.

Well, if we are going to follow the fathers rigorously, then we must say that the Church of Rome has departed from the ancient faith as well. Does this mean that there is no true Church today?

I really don't want to get into a flame war about whose Church has departed from the ancient faith more, because I guarantee you that for every accusation you make against Orthodoxy, I can make 2 or 3 against Rome. But, that would do nothing but breed anger and resentment and I would rather that we continue to discuss these issues in a spirit of justice and charity and that we simply stick to the arguments themselves and not take cheap shots against one another's church.

Joe

Well said, Joe !

-- John

Well said, Ryan !

-- John

I did. My reasons for doing so were the birth control teaching, the divorce teaching, the filioque, the papal claims to supreme authority and universal jurisdiction, and the novus ordo Mass -- all of which I disagreed with. Meanwhile, I discovered the Eastern Church . . . Eventually, I chose to start the process of joining the Orthodox Church.

However, a lot of Catholics choose to remain in the Catholic Church even though they don't accept certain teachings of it. That can include the birth control teaching (which is widely disregarded) or other teachings. (I have even heard a few Catholics tell me that don't believe in the literal presence --body, blood, soul and divinity-- of Jesus in the Eucharist.) The one common element I found among them is that they like being Catholic. In other words, they like identifying themselves as Catholic and they like participating in Catholic rituals. For some, it's about beliefs. For others, it's about worship, prayer and customs. For others, it's about family and community and ethnicity. For others, it's because it's expected of them. Etc. The reasons vary. And whether the pope or EWTN would count them as Catholics is another matter. But, they themselves count themselves as Catholics because (in the end) they like being Catholic.

-- John

John,

My short answer is not the teaching, but the campaign organized against it by ecclesiastics primarily, which tended to undermine the authority of that teaching and to relieve people from taking it prayerfully and seriously.

My argument for my answer has to be personal, anecdotal, and probably, too long.

I was a senior in high-school in 1967-8, attending a Catholic boys high school run by Christian Brothers. As part of the curriculum in senior year it was traditional to take a semester-long course on marriage. Since this was during the "waiting-period" between the recommendations (minority and majority) of the Papal Commission, and their recommendations had been "leaked", the teacher presented the facts about this, and left it there. He did not express an opinion on what the Pope would or should do, although we did discuss what were seen as the arguments pro and con.

In Sept. 1968 I started freshman year at a Catholic university in Washington, DC. Sometime during the first couple of weeks, it became clear (because of fliers on bulletin-boards, various impromptu announcements at the end of classes, conversations with classmates, etc.) that there was a big "push" on to protest the Pope's recent pronouncement on "the Pill". Students were being encouraged to participate because that might help bring the Pope to see reason and reverse his "non-infallible" opinion on birth control. Obviously, these events would then be published in the campus newspaper, so that being made public, it could be used as "proof" that the teaching was not being "received" by the faithful (the feedback loop).

In addition, it was publicized on bulletin boards, that the Campus clinic would begin to fill prescriptions for the Pill on demand. I should say "simply provide", since if a woman did not have a prescription, she could get one there at the clinic at the time.

At some point it was announced in the city's newspapers that Cardinal O'Boyle's effort to discipline Fr. Charles Curran and his co-dissenters (some of whom were on my campus) had been "rebuffed" or "discouraged" by "Rome". This led to any number of impromptu rallies and celebrations on our campus, which was, of course, "exempt" from the control of the local bishop under Canon Law. I didn't attend, but I could hear them and see them. The participants were a combination of students, faculty and clergy. It was as if we had won a war. From this point, to the present day, it became popular to lampoon and caricature the Pope, as a matter of course.

In conversations with classmates who had had attended high schools run by this religious community (New York, Maryland, Illinois, Virginia, etc.) I learned that those students weren't much suprised because their teachers had opined or taught that the Pope would be following the recommendation of the Majority. So, I concluded that quite a number of these students had been "pre-conditioned" to the idea that the Church would allow birth control.

There began to congeal certain "cliques" of kids and faculty, who would celebrate "liturgies" in various places and at various unscheduled times, many of which were what I can only describe as "experimental": at the student lounge, at midnight, on a coffee table, in an empty classroom, etc., etc. The regularly scheduled Masses would take place at the scheduled hours in the approved Chapels, following the liturgical norms, etc., but quite a few students began to "enjoy" attending these surreptitious celebrations. [From what I heard about them, not a few would have been almost certainly invalid, for various reasons.]

It became well-known (as in newspaper articles) that around the country priests were telling penitents in the confessional not to worry about using the Pill, because "encyclicals weren't dogmatic teaching", and this encyclical, in particular, would probably be overruled in the future.

What most of this amounted to was a disdain for any kind of authority (teaching, canonical, teaching) in the Church, other than the authority of the "best and brightest". The only way I know how to express what I witnessed was to say that these ecclesiastics were "poisoning the well" of the Church's authority, the "well" being the faithful acceptance by the ordinary folks of Church doctrine and practice. Those Religious on campus who were appalled by all this were treated the same way as the Pope was treated.

Prior to 1968 there were Catholics who were "liberals", and legitimately so. Fr. John Courtenay Murray, SJ, seems to have been a "liberal" of this sort, and he was very important in drafting Vatican II's Decree on Religious Liberty. He also wrote a famous book, We Hold These Truths, in which he fairly convincingly describes why the Constitution of the United States was viewed in a friendly fashion by most US Catholics, whose tradition is not overly friendly toward democracy, as compared to the Protestant tradition.

But, in the aftermath of Humanae vitae, especially with the idea and practice of "dissent", which holds that "I can be a good Catholic, and still do or believe whatever I want", I think we see the birth of a new element, not in fact "liberal", much more "self-authoritarian", which bases its religious response on the individual's own personal genius, rather than on the teachings of the Church.