Roman Catholicism & Contraception - a critique

Catholic teaching is informed by its notion that life begins at conception. This sees conception as an event.  It is not.  It is a process.  It happens over time and is a summary of many events. 

The Catholic Church teaches that artificial contraception, condoms, the pill etc, is an act of violence and is a sin against human nature and human sexuality. The teaching is that sex just for our pleasure is wrong which is why contraception is bad. That is the thing about it that is the most unnatural. The tampering with nature as if the power to reproduce is a burden at the present time is another reason for calling it unnatural.
Sterilisation and vasectomy are counted as contraception too and if you confess these sins you are expected to get these procedures reversed. The Church says you must make amends for sin.

The Catholic Church says it cares so much about the family that it forbids contraception as being the enemy of the family. If we have no problem providing marriage for immature people, sixteen year olds, and people who may be unsuitable for raising children, we cannot claim that we forbid contraception for the love of the family.

Most people who believe that contraception is wrong, are persuaded by the argument that contraception encourages promiscuity, pressures women to give into men who want sex and in some cases sexually transmitted diseases. But you cannot condemn anything just because you think it is being abused. You can't condemn knives even if most people start stabbing each other.

The Catholic Church argues that contraception is intrinsically evil, it is evil regardless of any consequences good or bad and it cannot be used even to save a woman from a pregnancy that will kill her.

The Church says that God creates life and people only co-operate with him in this. So to use contraception is to defy what God may wish to do, give a child.

The Church says that using contraception implies that having a child is a burden not a gift.

Those who say they want a child but not now are saying a child would be a burden now.

If that their attitude and that is terrible then abstinence to avoid children also implies that if a mistake happens and a child is born that child is a burden. And the Church allows the natural method of family planning using the infertile period of the month! And if the fear of having babies is so necessary to stop promiscuity then why can’t women use this method to have all the sex with all the men they want?

The Church says that a husband and wife using contraception means the husband and wife are lying to each other. They are holding back their power to create life and are not giving their whole selves. But is a man who is impregnating a woman who doesn’t want to get pregnant giving his whole self? He is not respecting her.

Contraception is to be promoted and taught. If it is used properly it can only have good consequences and it is wrong to put religious dogma before people.

It is true that sex even with contraception can be dangerous. But it is important to minimise the risks. Driving a car has its risks but nobody says driving a car is wrong even if it is a totally unnecessary journey one is undertaking.

Safer sex can be safe sex. Learn to use condoms properly and even then it would help to avoid ejaculating inside the body of another.

We advocate contraception for protection from unwanted pregnancy and from sexually transmitted disease.

THE CONTRACEPTION BAN IS AUTHORITATIVE

Contraception means using pills and devices to prevent conception.

The Catholic faith says contraception is an intolerable grave sin. The Church is clear that it is not a mere opinion and it is a sin to argue that it is.

The Church forbids contraception and legally campaigns to stop it. Even permitting such campaigns is disgraceful and such permission goes with the faith.

Church interference with civil legislation has left people having unsafe sex and getting seriously ill and dying. When the Church does not campaign, it is because other principles have got in the way. It does not mean that in principle the Church will try to persuade the state to outlaw contraception.

The ban on birth control supposedly has God's support in the Bible. Many claim that in the Book of Genesis, Onan was killed by God for not fathering babies for his brother who was dead. But Judah did the same thing and God did not even think of killing him. This leads people to think that Onan’s sin was worse than his for he used coitus interruptus which was why he had to die. Onan died not just for refusing to father babies for his brother but for the way he did it - he used contraception. It is more likely though that as not fathering was punished by public humiliation not death according to the Law of Moses that Onan died only for using contraception.

The popes use the story to ban contraception and to argue that it was always God's teaching and not a papal invention. It is clear that if you take liberal Christian ideology glasses off that the popes understood the story correctly.

Catholic teaching is that uninterrupted tradition is infallible and any change is heresy. The pope says that he is speaking with the Church and nobody can contradict him so he is speaking infallibly. He says God has guided him and the Church to this decision.

Pius XI made an infallible statement in part 54,56 condemning birth control in his encyclical Casti Connubi: “No reason, however grave, may be put forward by which anything intrinsically against nature may be conformable to nature and morally good. Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious. Since, therefore, openly departing from the uninterrupted Christian tradition, some recently have judged it possible solemnly to declare another doctrine regarding this question, the Catholic Church, to whom God has entrusted the integrity and purity of morals, standing erect in the midst of the moral ruin which surrounds her, in order that she may preserve the chastity of the nuptial union from being defiled by this foul stain, raises her voice in token of her divine ambassadorship and through Our mouth proclaims anew, any use whatsoever of matrimony used in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offence against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of grave sin”.

In 2007 Pope Benedict XVI told pharmacists to simply not dispense emergency contraception on the grounds of conscientious objection. They were told to challenge patients who did not see any ethical problems with contraception. Benedict went on to say that the pharmaceutical profession must accept the right to conscientiously object. Thus this would "enable them not to collaborate directly or indirectly in supplying products that have clearly immoral purposes such as, for example, abortion or euthanasia." Muslim pharmacist Lutful Chowdhury backed the pope's stance. It is worrying that two religions that have functioned where possible as social prisons are supporting the pope's bigotry.

The Roman Catholic cult regards it as sinful and has done its best to stop the use of condoms in Africa even though this has resulted millions dying of AIDS. It is clear that the Church has no right to be so dogmatic on such an issue for dogma can stifle the truth. The Church does not want to see if condoms will help which is clear from the fact that a man having once-off sex is expected to do it without a condom and put himself and his partner at risk. It does not care! Some Catholics teach their ban doesn’t do any harm but still the fact remains that even if it does they still believe the ban should stay in place. They don’t ban birth control just because the ban does no harm.

Even asking as Catholics are expected to do as a result of their faith if it is right for male prostitutes to wear condoms to protect their gay sex partner is a sign of extremism. It should not be up for debate. The Church says the problem here is not the condom ban but the prostitute being a prostitute in the first place. This says that if prostitutes were something else there would be no problem.

The sinfulness of contraception and the extremism of how it is condemned shows it is an essential part of the Christian faith. Tradition is wider than what popes say and allowing contraception is a novelty and tradition is that novelties are not allowed. The faith is given once and for all by Jesus and cannot be changed.

NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING IS HERESY

Catholicism teaches that using devices and medicines to prevent conception is a sin and a serious one at that. However, it says you can work with nature to space out conception or avoid it for serious reasons. So family planning is allowed as long as there is nothing artificial in it.

The Church teaches that natural family planning leaves it open to God to create life if he wishes. But if God is so trusted then why do tactics have to be used to make it more difficult for him to cause a pregnancy?

The Church says that sex must be open to life at all times and yet it allows you to marry somebody you know is barren. The hypocrisy is astounding.

The Church says you must let God plan your family. This makes sense if there is a God and a Catholic God at that! But the doctrine is dangerous if there isn't. If there is a God, you are not to blame if pregnancy results and great misery happens because of it for it was God’s decision to send the baby. It stops you taking responsibility for the harm you have done.

If God plans your family, whether you use birth-control or not it makes no difference. He will be able to send a baby. If God wants to send a baby, contraception won't stop him. Contraception could be part of his plan. It is nonsense to imply that if you need to let God plan your family you must never use contraception.

Almost beyond belief, the Church permits natural birth control! This is confining sex to the period of the month in which the woman is most unlikely to conceive.

If family planning is up to God then it doesn’t matter if you use the safe period in which conception is less likely or not. The Church says fertility is a blessing and a divine gift and is natural and not a disease so contraception is wrong. Then inconsistently it allows you to wear coloured contact lenses to change your eye colour. So is your natural eye colour not a gift and not a blessing? It even lets you have a nose job though there is nothing wrong with irregular features! It is possible to approach contraception as follows: "We will use these condoms for we feel using them is co-operating with God's plan. If he doesn't want us to have any more children, then they will work. No contraception method is 100% foolproof". To claim that using contraception necessarily implies that you don't appreciate the gift of fertility is slander and judgemental. The pope does not love people who use contraception when he invents sins and accusations for them. If you are not totally sure that what a person did is sinful and you say you hate the sin, be honest and admit that it is them you hate.

It is one of the heresies of the modern Church that natural family planning is fine for any reason but the actual teaching of the Church is that it is only allowed in grave and extreme cases! The permitting of the natural method of the Catholic Church was introduced by Pius XII. Tradition was wholly against him. This modification of the teaching was heresy too.

The natural method was only permitted because the encyclical of the previous pope, Pius XI, Casti Connubi was misunderstood. That pope permitted sex if the couple was sterile or too old to reproduce. This permission was misinterpreted without warrant to refer to the natural method in its Rhythm Method form or the use of the safe period. The pope is thought to have written the following about those married couples who had sex during the infertile time of the month. His encyclical says: “Nor are these considered as acting against nature who in the married state use their right in the proper manner, although on account of natural reasons either of time or certain defects, new life cannot be brought forth” Pope Pius XI. Time had to mean old age. Certain defects refers to sterility. It is stretching the meaning to think he meant the safe period with the intent to avoid children. It contradicts what he said that nothing whatsoever must be done to prevent conception. He did not mean the safe period because it is not fully safe. He speaks of a condition in which new life cannot be brought forth so he is not thinking of it at all.

He says nothing of having sex while knowing a baby cannot come. Back then there was no real way to be very sure. All he is saying is that if a couple have sex when it may be the infertile time, they do not sin. The reason they do not sin is because they don’t know the chances of conception and don't intend to avoid conception. They are not sinning as long as they don't mean to prevent conception. The pope gave no impunity from sin to those who had sex while believing a baby couldn’t result. If you have sex with your wife and don’t know her chances of conceiving when it may be her infertile time there is no sin. That is all he is saying.

Pius XI had no problem with Catholics having sex during the safe period. He just had a problem with them using this period as a form of birth control. He never mentions in the encyclical that that is allowed. The natural method was well known in his day. For him, the birth control he meant included natural and artificial methods.

In 1951, Pope Pius XII, 29th October, said that natural family planning was allowed only when a doctor had decided the wife should have no more babies for it would destroy her health or when the family is afflicted by severe poverty. So the circumstances are very abnormal.

Natural family planning can lead to the same contraceptive mentality that the Church condemns contraception for: the feeling that a baby is a burden and not a gift from God and its conception is to be avoided. With the new Catholic doctrine, at least, you can hold that you really want a baby but can’t have one perhaps because another pregnancy could kill the mother. You are to use the natural method with regret. You approach it as a necessary evil not as a good thing.

The Church's dangerous teaching is riddled with hypocrisy and therefore cruelty.