Birth Control, a serious sin?
A COMPLETE ARGUMENT FOR CATHOLIC TEACHING EXAMINED
| Page | Argument |
| 9 | The Church forbids
contraception not because sex is dirty or bad but because it is really good
and a gift from God for our enjoyment and making babies |
| Refutation | |
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Would you believe somebody that told you that you are not allowed a nice meal except maybe once a month because it is really good? Every religion has its taboos and uses a similar excuse to the Catholic Church for them. For example, the Jew will believe that it is wrong to eat a pig because God values him so much.
The claim that contraception is forbidden because sex is so good implies that using it will bring bad consequences. The Church teaches that God has attached bad consequences to certain actions. For example, if you steal a lot you will have no friends and people will despise you. This is how God punishes. So it follows that even if you don't intend to sin by using contraception and you think it is right the bad consequences will still occur. It would follow that you should see from the consequences that it must be bad and can be held to be morally accountable if you do not see for you do not want to see.
Doctrines such as that contraception will have bad results because it is bad imply that God will punish those who use contraception. Virtue should be its own reward. The religious tendency to be more interested in appeals to divine sanctions and rewards than in teaching virtue to be its own reward is plainly vindictive and another example of how belief in God offers counterfeit morality.
Suppose that God sets it up so that your sins will have bad consequences. Suppose he doesn't punish you in this indirect way but makes you suffer directly. The former suggests more hatred for the sinner than the latter. A person who pulls their punishment on themselves can expect no sympathy at all while a person who is punished at the free will of another might. It is foolish how liberal Christians teach that God does not punish but evil punishes itself by having bad consequences that God has created in the hope of making God seem nicer. It does not work.
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| 11 | The Church doesn’t ban contraception because it wants more Catholic babies but because sex is a beautiful language that says, “I love you totally bodily and mentally and your ways and your fertility” |
| Refutation | |
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Jesus said that the love of God comes first. Love of others comes second. Of course the Church is more interested in making more Catholics. It believes that expanding the Church by making babies for God is more important than loving another person. Natural Family Planning is about religion not the couple or respecting sex.
All believers in God will hold that we should produce babies to glorify God by their religious lives and the more of such children the better. The belief is disgraceful. The idea of loving somebody as completely as the
Church suggests, is unrealistic and idealistic and crass. Could a husband love his wife sexually if
she erupted in boils all over or aged 50 years in one night? Is the husband to love his wife’s acne even if she
wants the acne and thinks it is a gift from God? Just because something is
his wife’s doesn’t mean he should love it.
The best love is between persons who generally love each other but who
occasionally drive one another up the twist.
A bit of hate is necessary. The Church says contraception is always very
seriously wrong. Yes I love you so
much I would not use contraception to save your life! That is loving fertility more than the
person. If it is gravely sinful to have sex with your wife if you do not love her fertility then why it is not a grave sin to live with her? Living with her is more important than sex. What about the language of living together? Why is it not gravely sinful to sleep with your wife after you have beat her up? The doctrine that it is gravely sinful to sleep with your wife and use contraception is simply an incitement to hatred against people who use it. If that is not hate then what is?
Catholicism teaches that contraception is not bad because it has bad results. It teaches that it is bad in itself regardless of whether the results are good or bad. Such an idea plainly cares about doctrine not people.
If person x wins money, you may feel annoyed about it because you wish you had got half of it or some of it. The Church puts this down as the sin of envy despite the fact that don't want to take it all from the person and want the person to have a happy and fulfilled life and that you just think you should have a share too. But if wanting the same benefits as somebody else is bad then clearly other people come first and you don't matter. Church condemnations are related to the hidden hatred the Church bears towards people.
We know that we are surer that the Holocaust was wrong than we are that any theory of morality be it Catholicism or Utilitarianism (the doctrine that morality is about promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number possible) is true. If God exists, what God wants and commands comes first. So we have to callously turn away from the knowledge that the Holocaust was wrong. Instead of that we have to condemn it on the basis of faith in God. God is a hateful doctrine. To loathe contraception because of faith in God is only for the twisted.
Loving your wife's fertility does not necessarily mean that you have to use her fertility this year. Maybe you and she have agreed not to have a baby for a while. Loving your girlfriend does not mean you have to marry her as soon as possible.
If loving fertility is so great and it is so wrong
to not love it in the Catholic style, why isn’t it a serious sin to want a nose-job or a
lip augmentation? Is that not refusing
to love yourself as you are? The
Church teaches that having some imperfection is an essential part of being
human and should be accepted but it doesn’t disapprove deeply. Why isn’t it a mortal sin (a sin that implies
rejection of God for all eternity) for a husband to give
his wife money because she wants a nosejob though there isn’t anything wrong
with her nose except that she doesn’t like it? The Church forbids a man to have sex with his wife
if she is using contraception without his consent and takes all
responsibility for it. For the Church
to say that contraception is wrong even then for the husband for sex is him
saying, “I love you totally bodily and mentally and your ways and your
fertility” is just a plain lie. He is
not going against the Church’s only real argument against contraception. If a man really loves his wife’s fertility he will
have sex with her in the time she can get pregnant. If you really love your wife’s fertility,
what are you using the natural method for?
You cannot love your wife’s fertility
– it is her you love. There is a
smoker who has lost the taste for curry.
If he eats the curry and neglects food that he can taste, is it really
true to say he respects and loves his sense of taste? To accuse a husband of failing to love his wife if
they use contraception is a vicious form of bullying.
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| 12 | It is mutilation to try and stop fertility with
drugs etc. Fertility and babies are not diseases to be avoided and you don’t
use drugs to stop yourself seeing. We
disapprove of drug addicts using drugs to stop their brains being
normal. Contraception makes fertility
and babies seem to be malfunctions when they are not so contraception is
wrong. |
| Refutation | |
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Then why is it not mutilation to drink
alcohol? Why all the fuss about
contraception? Why is it not
considered serious mutilation to let yourself have a pot belly? Fertility is a disorder when the wife can
die if she gets pregnant. Eating is
natural but if it can kill you it must be stopped and a tube must be put in
you to feed you. Strength is a good
thing. But it is bad if the strong man
is going to beat somebody to a pulp.
Then you can fire a dart at him to weaken him. The Church simply and deliberately refuses
to admit that sometimes fertility is bad.
This messing about with people’s lives and relationships is
deplorable. The Church does not believe that contraception is
bad for it is trying to fix what isn’t broken. It says it does and that is one of its
lies. It teaches that suffering is a
gift from God and you are to love suffering for it makes you depend on God
and not yourself or anybody else. So
it doesn’t believe that fixing only what is bad is intrinsically good. So then fixing what isn’t broken cannot be
wrong either. It is worse to hold that
it is good not to fix what is causes suffering than to hold that it is good
to fix what is good. It must be mutilation to try and stop a rape
victim getting pregnant. You cannot
say the sperms of the attacker are unjust aggressors because they are only
cells and it was the attacker who was the unjust aggressor and now he is
gone. Nature decrees that there is
nothing wrong with her being fertile at this time or even getting pregnant. So you cannot do anything to stop her getting
pregnant if the Church is right. If a girl makes a mistake when drunk, are the
sperms in her unjust aggressors? The
Church says they are not and she cannot be taken to hospital to prevent
conception even if she is Down’s Syndrome or unmarried. The Church says a wife must expose herself to AIDS
rather than use condoms with her AIDS stricken husband. It cannot accept the unjust aggressor idea
though some theologians do.
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| 12 | The Catholic Church refuses to marry couples who
say they intend to use contraception or who vow never to have children. This is because children are so important
in marriage and a great source of happiness for the parents. |
| Refutation | |
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It is not up to the Catholic Church to tell
couples they must have children. Besides
if she is so concerned about their happiness then why does she make celibacy
obligatory for priests? The teaching of the Church that it can marry an
old couple because they would have children if they could is total
madness. They wouldn’t have children
at say seventy years of age even if they could.
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| 15 | Natural Family Planning isn’t right in
itself. It is wrong is used for
selfish reasons. If you don’t want to
conceive because you want to go on holiday that would be bad. |
| Refutation | |
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Natural Family Planning is really about blackmailing the couple on pain of Hell into having children unless there is a serious reason not to. Postponing conception until the holiday is past is not selfish. There is plenty of time.
And such selfishness doesn't do anybody any harm! |
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| Page | Argument |
| 15 | It may be right to intend not to have a child and
those who use contraception use a bad way to do it and using Natural Family
Planning would be the right way to do it |
| Refutation | |
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Contraception is bad for it treats fertility as
something to be feared but the natural method does that too. Is it wrong to take hormones to bulk your
body up if you are a weight-trainer instead of solely depending on the
natural method of hard graft?
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| Page | Argument |
| 16 | Natural Family Planning is safer than the other
methods which can lead to infections etc.
The truly loving husband will want his wife to use Natural Family
Planning. |
| Refutation | |
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Try saying that to a girl who was saved from HIV by using condoms. The insult to most Catholic marriages is evident. What about women who suspect or know that their husbands are having rendezvous with prostitutes? The Church has no problem with women marrying men who had been very promiscuous and then exposing themselves to whatever viruses these men were carrying on the wedding night.
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| Page | Argument |
| 17 | Natural Family Planning seems to stop husband and
wife enjoying sex spontaneously. This
thought is wrong for it confuses spontaneity with slavery. Self-control with sex is not deprivation
but just the couple abstaining from sex in self-denial for the good of each
other. |
| Refutation | |
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The husband then does the most self-denial for it
is good for the wife to have no pregnancy for it is not the most enjoyable
experience in the world and the man has the easy deal. They are saying that to have sex whenever you want
is slavery. This is totally
ridiculous. It must be slavery to
drink water when you want it or to cuddle when you want it. Is it not slavery to have sex when you want
during the safe period? How much sex
must take place before it becomes slavery? It is just a load of drivel to excuse how Natural
Family Planning cares little for the husband and wife or marriage. It is about control and power. Those who promote it just want to inflict
Catholicism on others because they feel trapped in it themselves.
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| Page | Argument |
| 17 | Beware that you don’t think that having less
spontaneous sex as with the Natural Family Planning will lessen love. Many marriages have times when a spouse is
away working for long periods during which no sex happens. |
| Refutation | |
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Some couples need regular sex to maintain love.
Not all couples are the same. The
Church cares little for such couples.
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| 18 | Overpopulation is not a concern for there is
enough room and food in the world to feed everybody in it and it is our greed
that has led to famine in the |
| Refutation | |
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One day it will be a concern even if this is
true. And when that day comes the
Church will still be opposing contraception. |
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| Page | Argument |
| 18 | Catholics believe that a person can go to Hell to
suffer forever for
using contraception for God loves us so much that he lets us have what we
choose |
| Refutation | |
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So you choose Hell when you choose
contraception. This is Christian
bullying of the worst kind.
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| Page | Argument |
| 19 | If we use contraception we are offending against the
proper use of sex and sex is so good that this is a very serious sin. All sin is rejecting a gift of God. For example, the gift of loving human life
is rejected by murder. The gift of
loving sex is rejected by lust. |
| Refutation | |
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It is not offending against the proper use of sex
but the proper use of fertility. What
if a man used condoms for he didn’t like the feel of his wife’s vagina
against his skin and then emptied the sperm in the condom into her
afterwards? The Church forbids coitus interruptus as a method
of contraception. It follows that if a
man enters his wife and she hurts and she protests he must carry on until
ejaculation even if he leaves her bleeding and feeling raped. Contraception is always wrong in the eyes
of the Church. Nobody can say that he
can pull out for the intention is not to contracept but to spare her
pain. Why? Because it follows then that if a man and
wife try for a baby and he ejaculates and she decides it could do her grave
harm if she got pregnant she can go to a doctor and have the egg killed
before it gets fertilized. The Church
would forbid that.
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| Page | Argument |
| 21 | Contraception is never right and always wrong for
the same reason that one act of rape is never right or one act of racism is
never right. |
| Refutation | |
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Yet this faith allows a lie to be told to save
your brother from the hit squad.
Contraception even if bad cannot be as bad as racism or rape. You cannot rape or be racist for a good
purpose but you can use contraception for a good purpose. It cannot be always wrong.
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| Page | Argument |
| 21 | Are contraception and losing virginity before
marriage the worst sins in the Catholic book?
Our sins are so serious that Jesus had to be crucified to save us from
them but the worst sin is to refuse to go to him in repentance |
| Refutation | |
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The question isn’t answered and the authors get
evasive. Though they say unrepentance
is the worst sin it is clear that they shamefully don’t think that the sins
they mention are too far behind it.
The sins killed Jesus.
Contraception nailed Jesus to the cross! This is heavy pressurizing stuff.
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| Page | Argument |
| 27 | Is it cruel to ask one to give away all ones money
to the poor? No. |
| Refutation | |
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This is what you would expect them to say if you
tell them you think the contraception ban is cruel. |
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CONCLUSION
The
doctrine that contraception is wrong may be dressed up in the robes of
charity. But it is actually a
woman-hating and dangerous doctrine that gives men the right to procreate
through rape. It plainly gives husbands
carrying killer sex diseases the right to pass on the disease to their wives
and future children by forbidding condoms even then. Contraception like all things human has had
some bad results. But the results would be totally horrendous if the Catholic
doctrine were followed consistently and in bigger numbers.
The pope knows fine well that if you believe in morality there are only two options:
One, the legalistic idea that actions are wrong in all circumstances, eg changing religion or using contraception.
Two, the idea that it all depends on the situation so a woman can use spermicide if she is about to be raped even if contraception is generally wrong etc. This being so, he has no right to order people and must leave them to decide. Instead, without compromise he orders all to believe on God's authority that birth control and using spermicides is always wrong. Though it leads to contradiction, he accepts one when it suits him and when it doesn't he accepts two. He has no right to expect people to believe he condemns in good faith.
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23 May 2009