"In confronting these realities, it must be realized that the dissenters experienced such a success that the majority of practicing Catholics are unwilling to even approach the encyclical on an intellectually-engaging plane."
If you think that any significant number of Americans (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Zoroastrian, or whatever) approach questions of sexual ethics on anything like an intellectual plane, you're sorely mistaken. I would suspect the reason that most people use contraception is that it seems to them completely ridiculous that there should be a prohibition on such a thing, when it seems to them so obviously to make their lives better, and that's about the end of their thinking on the matter. I'd suspect that's also the case regarding couples who are having difficulties getting pregnant and who thus pursue in-vitro fertilization -- it just seems to them impossible that God could fail to want them to have a family, and that's the beginning and the ending of their philosophizing on the subject.

Anyhow: the reasoning about what is or isn't "natural" here seems to require a commitment to a more or less completely indefensible way of drawing lines. I'd say our ability to do science and to artificially reconfigure our outer environments and our own bodies is part of what God has given us -- indeed, it almost defines the human. And for the vast majority of the application of that ability, the Church seems to have no problem; e.g., the building of large cathedrals, the consumption of various substances that make us happier (like alcohol or tobacco), and of course life-saving medicines. So it seems to me that one can agree with the premise that God's domain includes the bedroom (of course it does), and simply think that the Church has engaged in some seriously screwed-up thinking about what technologies God does or doesn't want us to use there.

I'd respond, but I got tired of reading it...about 1/19th of the way down.

Hugzz, if you can't hang with long posts, you might need to find another site. Some of IGA's best writings run over 1000 words.

Abstaining from conjugal relations except during those infertile times operates within this perfected love of the Father.

An astounding assertion of Zirkle theology: It is as Seth says it is, because Seth says it is.

Everything about your post fails totally, because of the total failure of the Zirkle certainty of the One True Understanding of Christian Perfection.

And this is not inconsistent with a prohibition on artificial contraception.

is the most unintentionally ironic use of the triple negative seen in these parts for many a day. I've never before seen a question begged without begging a question like this. Talk about using your conclusion to launch your proof!

"What?"

Maybe my lack of zeal was because it was the third time I had read it?
Just a thought.

I'd love to know which posts you think are most fascinating.

RE: SBZ's post

I think that the pleasure and procreative aspects of sexual relations between married couples can be separated.

We start splitting hairs when we discuss complete acts.

To be sure, some disregard your arguments for the sake of absolute privacy in the bedroom; however, is it not possible that some hear and understand your arguments, but wholly reject them?

To be sure, the act of sexual relations is an intimate act between man and woman, symbols of Christ and the church.
You stated earlier (although not here), one spouse could easily use the other spouse for only pleasure when contraception is brought into the bedroom. Isn’t this a problem that goes deeper? It is more problematic than just not wanting to have children, it is a wholesale disregard for the other; furthermore, women have, and often are, considered “breeders” or “baby-makers”, which is as much, if not more, problematic than being used for sexual gratification by the husband.

What happens with Benny finds that women should all be required to go around barefoot? ;) It reflects the true nature of humans, as naked in the garden… yet retains modesty required by fallen human nature.

Nash, you flatter me with credit where credit is not due. Your first quote was a redaction of a statement made by JPII in a L'Osservatore Romano piece on Humanae vitae, "The Truth of the Encyclical "Humanae Vitae," 16 Jan '69. He, inturn, was appealing to H.v. 21. So it is not becuase Zirkle say it is, but rather, it is becuase the extraordinary Magisterium of the Church, as the final arbitor of divine revelation, says it is. Incidently, you will recall that JPII was the final editor of Humanae Vitae before its public release.

And as to the unintentionally ironic use of the triple negative: This is a redaction of "Neither the Church nor her doctrine is inconsistent when she...condemns as always unlawful the use of means which directly prevent conception" (H.v. 16). I realize that I could have rendered this more palatable, but I chose to include all three of the negatives. Now, the Latin of this section does not have the three negatives, as it begins the section with the traditional "sive...sive...quae" construction - which, as you know, is difficult to render in decent English. I did not like the "official" English translation very much for this very reason, but in reading the Latin I could not come up with a better translation. If you can offer a better translation for the sive/sive/quae construction, please post and I'll change.

But, varancies of translation aside, the statement is simply the fact that natural family planning is intrinsically different than artificial contraception in that it does not introduce an artificial barrier, thus maintaining the unitive and procreative natures of the conjugal act.

Your first quote was a redaction of a statement made by JPII in a L'Osservatore Romano piece on Humanae vitae, "The Truth of the Encyclical "Humanae Vitae,"

Seth,

You will forgive me, I hope, for the over-the-top snarkiness (is snarkiness ever not over-the-top?) of my comments.

You will also, I hope, forgive me for taking the scholarly, academic construction of your entire post at face value. That is, that where you meant to advance your argument by source quotation, you did so diligently and where you intended to aid your point by paraphrasing, it was clear that this was occurring. But where neither of these occurred, as in:

Abstaining from conjugal relations except during those infertile times operates within this perfected love of the Father. It takes that which God has given within His creation and utilizes it towards its created intent. And this is not inconsistent with a prohibition on artificial contraception.

it was reasonable to assume that the argument made was one made in your own voice with your own words, which struck me as rather "authoritarian" on such an important and weighty topic as aspects of Christian perfection.

Seeing that I made this mistaken assumption, it renders the basic objection I raised, snark and all, kinda pointless. I think I frequently react negatively to assertions in which the writer's voice appears to be offered as infallible. I'm more of a "come along with me as we discuss"-type of guy.

That said, I'm not going to knowingly flout the Magisterium of the Church. And I agree with your last sentence in its entirety. In fact, that's probably the best I've ever seen it put.

So, sorry for wasting your time.

Nash, thanks for your response. I agree with you that I should have given more care to differentiating between what was a direct quote, a redaction and what were my opinions. In the future I will give more attention to this. And no, you did not waste my time. A well-reasoned, sincere critique is never a waste of someone's time.

This is all academic to me. I remember my sophomore year at a Christian Brother's prep school during a religion-and-facts-of-life- discussion when the answer to my question: "are you telling me I'm committing a mortal sin if I get aroused or a sexual thought pops into my head while slow dancing with a girl?" and was told yes indeed, that would qualify as a mortal sin.

At that age, about the only time sexual thoughts weren't popping into my head (one approx every 9 or 10 minutes---hey i'm Irish and Italian) was on the basketball court (no time to think about anything else). I wasn't about to spend puberty in a confessional begging for forgiveness for something that God and nature intended, so that's when I basically checked out as a Catholic when it came to matters sexual.

Anyway, it's too bad John XXIII couldn't have hung in there a few more years, things could have turned out much differently for the Catholic Church and impoverished countries like the Philippines where the poorest live in garbage dumps, and Pope John Paul II's strict birth control policies are embraced wholeheartedly.

"the fact that natural family planning is intrinsically different than artificial contraception in that it does not introduce an artificial barrier"

Challenging whether there is anything in this neck of the woods that can be dignified as a "fact", without at the same time rendering as "unnatural" a great many pieces of human artifice that the Church doesn't seem to mind, was the point of my initial comment.

Not being Catholic, I'm not obligated to engage Catholic teachings, although it is often helpful to my faith to do so.

Although I think Griswold was correctly decided, there have been some quite unfortunate results for society.

I agree with the idea that the bedroom, at least via teaching, is not off limits to the Church. However, I don't agree that artificial contraception is necessarily in contravention of God's purposes. Indeed, in cases of famine and extreme poverty, denial of such means of birth control may be both cruel and destructive to the greater society.

Regardless of what the Church has officially taught, at the local level, including schools, a "low" view of sex has often been put forth.

While faith can't be merely a matter of personal conscience, neither can it be entirely divorced from conscience. Although God certainly uses the Church to advance Truth, it is revealed in Scripture, whereas the Church is a fallible institution.

If artificial contraception were an automatic barrier between a couple and God, then it should follow necessarily that on the whole families that avoid artificial birth control would be more loving (in an agape sense) and in community with God and each other than those faithful who practice it. I don't see that this has been demonstrated. Your post carries an implication that artificial birth control is an entirely secular value that goes against natural law, and to that extent I disagree. Artificial birth control can result in people viewing sex mechanically or leaving God out of the relationship, but again, not necessarily so. So it seems to me that what people need to most seriously address is a sexual ethic in which God is experienced and revered in the whole of the marriage relationship. Too often, "natural law" is used to shortcut discussion. Although I believe there is such a thing as "natural law" I don't see that the Church has a perfect grasp of it.

For single people, artificial contraception has been a challenge to teaching or enforcing, spritually, any meanigful sexual ethic. I don't have easy answers there.

It is great to see some substantive faith posts at ITA.

Perhaps this is slightly off topic, but:

I don't need someone to explain to me how a church/religion can ban something that people do; for instance, I don't see anything particularly out of line with "thou shalt not murder." Sure, people murder anyway - but fair enough.

What I wonder, though, is about the relevance of the Catholic Church when it comes to issues like this. It may well be different in other countries, particularly poorer ones (see, e.g., Latin America), but in the US, I think the Church's position on birth control either 1) drives people away from the Church or 2) makes the rest of the Church's teachings less imperative. Probably, it does both of those things. I, for one, could never be a full-on Catholic; the prohibition on birth control (among many other things!) strikes me as, well, wrong. But that's neither here nor there.

The point I'm wondering about is this: According to the Church, artificial contraception is a Bad Thing. According to an enormous percentage of citizens of western/first-world countries, artificial contraception is a Good Thing. If the Church really means that people who use it are going to fry in the eteral fire, then aren't they just making themselves irrelevant? Isn't it likely that as other nations drag themselves up the ladder, that they're going to come to the same conclusion? Isn't the Church in danger of (eventually) chasing most of its adherents away?

I know the general reponse to this: If it's stipulated that use of artificial contraception is a Bad Thing that sends you to Hell, shouldn't the Church stick by this anyway, even if it means that its influence will wane? But surely there's more that can be said here, right?

the statement is simply the fact that natural family planning is intrinsically different than artificial contraception in that it does not introduce an artificial barrier, thus maintaining the unitive and procreative natures of the conjugal act.

There seems to be a hole in your logic making that "thus" inappropriate. Even if we agree that an "artificial barrier" removes the procreative nature of the conjugal act, it does not follow that the absence of such a barrier means the procreative nature is maintained.

Limiting intercourse to the infertile period is a conscious, deliberate effort to deny the possibility of procreation. Both "natural family planning" and contraception use technology, just in different ways: calculating the fertile/infertile period requires thermometers and mathematics, and its not obvious to me that a thermometer is any more natural than a pill. On the other hand, since artificial contraception, like natural family planning, is imperfect, one could argue that those who use the pill are just as open to the possibility of procreation as those who use NFP.

Consistency would seem to require either rejection of both contraception and deliberate "abstaining...except during those infertile times," or acceptance of both.

Thank God my conscience isn't troubled by Catholic encyclicals. I know more than a few Catholics who are equally unburdened. Surely if Christ intended his Church to be universal, he knew it would be composed a tremendous variety of opinions. Excellent post.

Nick:

If I understand the impetus of your post correctly, there would be a hole in the logic. However, I must mention that the Church's position on ABC v. NFP is one where we might say both the "ends" and the "means" are equally important. I say this becuase engaging in intercourse where the possibility of procreation is extremely limited may seem no different than ABC, but there the couple is still open to the possibility of procreation. The Church has never maintained (and I hope that I did not in my post) that abstaining from intercourse until infertile times of the month, for lengthy periods of time, purposefully, is sinful. Becuase there is no artificial barrier and the couple has come together under the possibility (if even slight) of conception, there is still cooperation with created Intent.

It has not been said, and it is important, that NFP is to be used for reasons that the couple believe serious and extreme. Thus, NFP is not some papist ABC. In determining what is a serious and extreme case, the Church has left it to the couple to determine, "with a well-formed conscious." This said, if the couple, after much reflection and prayer determine that having another child is not optimal for the marriage, there is nothing wrong with utilizing NFP. BUT, utilizing NFP, the couple realizes that they must be open to the possibility of conception, should it occur.

Blesch:

The comment about the Church's prohibition on ABC is well made: Most people disagree with it. But in everything, we must remember that there is a universal call to holiness, and that in everything we must set our sight on Christ - He is the finish line. Yes, as a 24 year-old, engaged, hormone-driven male, I find the Church's position on ABC to be very difficult to follow. While it is true that ABC has the VERY strong potential for turning a woman (or man) into a mere object of gratification, no one is seriously maintaining that a loving, committed, Christ-centered family uses ABC with such an intent. But let's face it: It boils down to sex, and sex is fun. No one likes the privy police, but as Christians we are called to take up our cross and follow Christ. And keep in mind that Rome's position on contraception was that of nearly every Protestant sect in the US for a long time. Although only a few promulgated prohibitions, I would argue that there was a general agreement among orthodox Protestant sects that any form of ABC should be avoided. Otherwise, I think that it would be difficult to explain the world's shocked reaction to the Anglican Church allowing ABC at the Lambath Conference of '32. No Protestant church had developed a doctrinal statement on ABC, and by the '60s it was simply one of the many victims of social progress, even in otherwise doctrinally orthodox church bodies.

I cannot spell: conscience.

Seth wrote:

The Church has never maintained (and I hope that I did not in my post) that abstaining from intercourse until infertile times of the month, for lengthy periods of time, purposefully, is sinful. Becuase there is no artificial barrier and the couple has come together under the possibility (if even slight) of conception, there is still cooperation with created Intent.

The thrust of my argument was that your (and the Church's) conclusion does not follow from its premises. Your argument seems to be as follows (and please correct me if I am wrong):

1. NFP retains the possibility of conception

2. There is no artificial barrier

therefore

3. The act retains both its unitive and procreative aspects.

My argument is that premise 1 is true of both NFP and contraception, and that premise 2 is either irrelevant to conclusion 3 or, in a more general sense taking dependence on technology to be equivalent to an "artificial barrier", equally true of NFP and contraception.

Thus, it seems to me that the Church's argument against contraception applies with equal force to the NFP which the church accepts. If the Church is correct in accepting NFP, then it must be wrong in forbidding contraception.

BUT, utilizing NFP, the couple realizes that they must be open to the possibility of conception, should it occur.

It's clear to me that the same is true of most married couples who use contraception rather than NFP for birth control. Conversely the failure of a couple to use birth control is no guarantee that they are open to the possibility of conception -- if it was, there would be fewer abortions.

I'm still waiting to hear anything like a plausible defense of what Nick has extracted as presmise 2, which doesn't also put too many things into the "artificial" category. Contemporary NFP exploits all sorts of scientific knowledge about ovulation and deploys various sorts of instruments, like thermometers. All that there seems to be, then, is a rough intuitive sense of "well it's just natural! And contraception isn't!" But that gut sense of natural/unnatural isn't an _argument_, and it isn't the sort of thing to build this kind of extreme policy upon.

I'll chime in here as another observant protestant. Like Joel B., I accept only the Scripture as authoritative and infallible. With the moral teachings of Scripture as a foundation and the writings of faithful men as a further guideline, we can make judgements on issues not addressed in Scripture, such as artificial birth control.

Question: What is the Roman Church's position on Viagra? Granted, it does not remove the procreative aspect of sex, but it is introducing something artificial to the conjugal union. Also, what about sexual relations when one partner is known to be infertile? There is no procreative aspect present there.

Contemporary NFP exploits all sorts of scientific knowledge about ovulation and deploys various sorts of instruments, like thermometers. All that there seems to be, then, is a rough intuitive sense of "well it's just natural! And contraception isn't!"

It's certainly possible to make a real distinction between pharamaceuticals and medical instruments. For instance, the FDA has completely different departments for regulating drugs versus "medical devices." The former is altering the way the body functions, where as the latter is merely monitoring its function.

Nevertheless, I agree with phil and Nick that the RCC's prohibition on ABC hangs on a very thin premise for such a weighty issue. If the Church allows all sorts of other artificial interferences with human life, and allows NFP for reducing the possibility of procreation (albeit less effectively than ABC), why the ban on artificially preventing procreation?

I remember my sophomore year at a Christian Brother's prep school during a religion-and-facts-of-life- discussion when the answer to my question: "are you telling me I'm committing a mortal sin if I get aroused or a sexual thought pops into my head while slow dancing with a girl?" and was told yes indeed, that would qualify as a mortal sin.

The fundamentalist answer to this, btw, is to prohibit dancing. I briefly attended a church which held this position. Some members of the church also eschewed playing cards, and at least one whom I met thought going to a movie theater was bad (an explanation I heard was that if someone sees you going in there, they don't know if you're seeing the innocent G-rated film or the racy R-rated film, so it sets a bad example).

Anyway, the teaching on teenage raging hormones which I agree with is that to have a sexual thought is not necessarily sinful. To harbor and dwell upon such thoughts is.

Nick:

Premise 2 is of the utmost importance. As you know, the Church's argument is one based on (1) natural law; (2) divine Revelation; and (3) the unique and solitary ability of the Extraordinary Magisterium of the Church to define, without error, numbers (1) and (2).

Yes, we may agree that the possibility of conception is present with both NFP and ABC. BUT, and this is what is important, NFP does not introduce an artificial barrier between the man and the woman. The unitive and procreative aspect of conjugation are present. Your 2d point is always relevant, as the absence of the artificial barrier is what the Church addresses in Humanae vitae.

So, again, I stress that the ends and the means are equally important. Yes, even the couple that uses ABC is (at some remote point in their mind) open to the possibility that conception is possible. But this is not the same as NFP; why not? Becuase there is no artificial barrier placed between husband and wife. This absence of an artificial barrier is the key. As you know, this is the crux of the "unitive" aspect of the act. And it is precisely the absence of this barrier that allows the act to reflect created Intent.

But all of this talk of "created Intent" and "natural law" requires some agreement on our part that we agree with the Extraordinary Magisterium the Church when She claims to be the authoritative guardian and expositor of these issues. But I think that even Rome-leaning Protestants can at lest half-way with H.V.'s discussion of the married couple reflecting Christ and His Church. In this way, one might say that if the conjugal act is a reflection of the redemptive act on the cross - that is the finite point in which the human and Divine elements of Christ are most visible - introducing a barrier between husband and wife would be a blurred reflection of Christ's act. From a Catholic perspective, the perpetual bloodless Sacrifice of the Mass is similar: At the consecration of the Host, Christ is most visible to the faithful, present in body, soul, and divinity. It is this act of consecration, this "comingling" (in the words of the Canon) of the Divine (Christ) and human (priest in persona Christi)that reflects the conjugal act of husband and wife. One cannot introduce a barrier in either act in order to retain its preordained Intent.

Gentlemen:

In thinking of this it also occurred to me that while someone here stated "NFP expolits all sorts of things," etc., there is one difference. Allow me a syllogism: Why is the maritaal act in a known infertile time not the same as actively making an infertile state? Every ACTION which proposes to render procreation IMPOSSIBLE (ABC) is excluded by natural law. The fact that a woman has a fertility cycle is not an action (going back to a little ciminal law here): It is a state. ABC is intrinsically an action, while observing infertile periods is not. And this is not splitting hairs, but makes a world of difference.

Utilizing a state in which man is created is very much different than utilizing an action which introduces a artificial barrier.

And I seem to recall some talk of the Devil putting enmity between man and woman...

"This absence of an artificial barrier is the key. As you know, this is the crux of the "unitive" aspect of the act."

I think I'm losing you then by what you mean by 'unitive'; it was contrasted with the 'procreative' in the post. How does the pill create an artificial barrier to the unitive aspect? The act itself doesn't feel any differently. I guess I'm assuming that the answer is that the unitive suffers because the procreative aspect has been reduced. But then that would apply equally to NFP as ABC; no contraceptive makes fertilization impossible, short of sterilization.

Dave L is on the right track. Maybe one could make sense of this "artificial barrier" talk when there is something like a literal barrier, as with condoms or the sponge. But hormonal birth control operates -- using the body's own natural biological responses to various hormones -- by making the female reproductive system less likely to start a successful pregnancy. In this way, it is exactly the same as NFP: one uses various sorts of artifice and scientific knowledge to bring it about that, when one is having sex, there are good biological reasons that the woman will be less likely to become pregnant. Both involve artifice; both exploit our own biology by outsmarting it. Natural law simply fails to come into play here, in making a distinction between the two.

Utilizing a state in which man is created is very much different than utilizing an action which introduces a artificial barrier.

Ah, well now I see a clearer distinction there. I still don't agree with the theological conclusions about artificial birth control, but at least the RCC position is somewhat logical.

David, Philosopher:

Please see Eric's quote (of me earlier) directly above with regards to the unitive aspect of the act being destroyed. Even with the pill, although not a "physical" barrier in the sense of a condom or diaphram, the positive action of taking the pill is inherently the same.

While I see a theory being advanced as to the union among man, woman and God, what I don't see is presentation of evidence that it produces couples that are more closely bonded, that raise their children in a more Christian fashion, that are more faithful to the study of the Word.

Are couples who avoid ABC more or less likely to oppose unjust war? Are they more or less likely to tithe their income? Are they more honest? Less greedy? Because there is a Biblical call to wholeness and community , then it seems to me the marital relationship must be set in the context of a couple's overall faithfulness and relationship to community. Maybe there is evidence that couples who avoid ABC are stronger in their faith, witness and service life, and the spiritual disciplines, but I am not seeing it presented here.

Joel:

Your questions about the couple who utilize ABC are the same questions that many ask when confronted with the issue of ABC. This is especially true of my friends (and every other member of my family) who are Protestant: If the couple lead a Godly life, rearing children in the process, what is the problem? I would suggest, and Humanae Vitae says, nothing. But from the Catholic position this is only one part of the equation, namely, the answer. The Church's position is that the solution one uses to arrive at the answer is equally as important. This is why the Church cannot appeal to a doctrine of double effect (which I sense in your post, but could be wrong (please correct if so)): If we, as a married couple, will have children, what matter is it if along the way we utilize ABC when children are simply not an option - due sincere and just physical or emotional issues? Here the answer is that every conjugal act within the marriage should reflect the created Intent of the marrital act, no matter what the ends are.

But no, you have not seen any hint (at least I truly hope not, on my part) that couples, living their life in Christ, are any less "holy" becuase they utilize ABC. From the Church's position, as marriage is a sacrament, coming together in the marrital act is the greatest expression of the sacrament, both physically and emotionally. This is why one is able to obtain an annulment of marriage if it is not consumated. By reflecting God's created Intent of the act by not actively introduing a barrier to render either the unitive or procreative elements of the act null, the couple more fully expresses (and thus more correctly or truly expresses) the sacramental bond. Now, from a Protestant perspective, this must sound very foreign. But again, this argument supposes an idea of community that is rooted in a sacramental conception of marriage and an ideal of community that is essentially ecclesiological: It is not only the couple's witness to Christ in the community that is counted, but also how the couple, as a refelction of Christ's relation to the Church, interact with one another, both inside and outside the bedroom.

Seth, as I've now argued several times here, taking the measures of NFP are just as active, just as positive, as ABC. Both involve significant action on the part of the couple to make sure that, when they have sex, it is unlikely that the woman becomes pregnant. The distinction you are looking to use just doesn't work here.

Seth,

Of course I would suggest that the ends are crucial, particularly inasmuch as I see nothing in Scripture that bans ABC.

Sometimes I regard Catholic Church teaching against ABC in the context of famines and limited resources as promoting suffering for the sake of suffering, that is as if suffering is of itself a virtue.

Further, thermometers don't seem very "unitive" to me, but rather a distraction.

Philosopher:

Once again, I must maintain that NFP does not introduce an artificial barrier between husband and wife. I don't know how else I can state this. The Church is not concerned with with however "active" the husband and wife are with regards to her cycle or temperature, but rather the artificial barrier that ABC introduces.

And Joel:

Look to Gen. 38:7-9 - Onan was struck dead because be engaged in coiuts interruptus.

Seth, perhaps a concrete definition of "artificial," broadly applicable, would help resolve the confusion.

perhaps a concrete definition of "artificial," broadly applicable, would help resolve the confusion

And a definition of "barrier," specifically as it pertains to unitive and procreative aspects of sex.

However, I suspect that the discussion will soon reach the point of diminishing returns. As Seth has pointed out, the Roman Catholic teachings on ABC and NFP are dependent on RC understanding of sacraments and natural law. As a protestant, I do not consider the Church infallible in its assertions about natural law even when I respect the work of its theologians, nor do I agree with the RC understanding of sacraments -- my denomination recognizes adult baptism, the Lord's Supper, sometimes footwashing, and that's about it. Consequently, the RC understanding of marriage as sacrament strikes me as bizarre and its position on ABC as internally inconsistent, if not incoherent. That is likely due to our different presuppositions.

Seth, I would like to thank you though for laying out the RC position so clearly. It has been educational.

Look to Gen. 38:7-9 - Onan was struck dead because be engaged in coiuts interruptus.

I have to disagree with that statement. If there is a Biblical prohibition against coitus interruptus, it is not found in the account of Onan:

Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the LORD's sight; so the LORD put him to death.

Then Judah said to Onan, "Lie with your brother's wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother." But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so whenever he lay with his brother's wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the LORD's sight; so he put him to death also. (emphasis added)

Clearly, Onan was punished for refusing to do his duty to impregnate his sister-in-law.

Seth, I think what phil is getting at is that regardless of whether there's an artifical barrier in NFP, it is intercourse specifically designed and timed so as to maximally prevent conception.

What phil's point is (I think) is this: it doesn't make any sense for the sin to be the physical barrier, i.e. the condom or the pill, but it makes a lot of sense for the sin to be a procreative act with no intent of procreation. As the only given reason using an artifical barrier is a sin is that it destroys the unitive and procreative nature of sex, how is any other act (whether with or without an artificial barrier) which expresses the same intent not also a sin?

I think it's a very fair question, and it speaks to a weak point in your continued distinction between ends and means. The ends are the same: sex without procreation. The intent is the same: sex without procreation. Only the means differ, and as the person who mentioned Viagra above points out, this is a very sketchy distinction even so.

Falling back to natural law doesn't fix the issue with intent here. In short, I think that intent does (or, at least, should) matter. Perhaps this isn't something the RCC recognizes, but that just makes their position less tenable, I think.

And as for Onan, well, there's plenty of reasons to dislike the Old Testament. (See, e.g., Job.)

Gentlemen:

I cannot, here in words at least, tell you how edifying it has been to discuss this issue with you. Nick, you have hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the distinctive RC nature of this argument. Sadly, Protestantism has forgotten its own roots on this issue. In my own searching, I have yet to find a Protestant theologian or church body that approved or at least had anything beneficial to say about ABC before the Anglicans at Lambath, 1930. And this is not something that Rome invented. Catholic and Protestants should remember that the early Church Fathers agreed with what was defined as dogma with Humanae Vitae: Augustine (Contra Faustus 15:7) (AD 400); Clement of Alexandra (Inst. to Children 2:10:91:2) (191); Hippolytus (Ref. Haeresis 9:12) (225); and Jerome (Epistulae 21:12 (396)

Eric, I would still maintain that there is a long tradition of the "c"hurch understanding Onan's act as I described: Luther, Osiander, Calvin, and Wesley, in their Commentaries on Genesis, explicitily state Onan's death was a result of coitus interruptus. Cotton Mather, in his The Pure Nazarite, calls the sin of coitus interruptus "onanism." So, yes, he was punished for not fulfilling his duty, but the Catholic Church, and all of the Reformation fathers (the only one we're missing here is Hus), understood this "duty" to be completion of the act.

I was Lutheran (LCMS) before I came into communion with Rome. In listing Luther above, I just had to go to my copy of his Commentaries and see what Vater Luther had to say. One can NEVER get enough of Luther:

"Onan must have been a malicious and incorrigible scoundrel. This is a most disgraceful sin. It is far more atrocious than incest and adultery. We call it unchastity, yes a Sodomitic sin. For Onan goes in to her; that is, he lies with her and copulates; and, when it comes to the point of insemination, spills the semen, lest the woman conceive."

Oh. So is it your view, then, that there's not actually anything like an argument here, for the Church's position? It's just the Church's position because it's the Church's position, and the Church is right because the Church is right? That's a self-consistent view, I suppose, but the original post seemed to want to contend that there was something _intellectually_ wrong with dissenting from this view. If all that was supposed to be going on was a mere assertion of the Church's view as such, I wouldn't have bothered.

Nick, you've offered a separate argument from the one I was pushing, though it's an important one. What the Church needs for its argument (pretending for a moment that, contrary to what Seth was saying, this should all be amenable to argument) is a general premise that draws a line between approvably natural and condemnably artificial activities. I have been arguing that there's no such premise out there that can get the lines where the Church wants to get them. But your point is that, even if one _could_ construct such a premise, it would be utterly morally implausible. The Church's argument would thus depend on a premise that either cannot be formulated or would be implausible on its face were it to be formulated; not, one would think, a strong argument, and definitely not an argument on the basis of which one should be willing to forbid such life-enhancing technologies as birth control and artificial insemination.

Seth,

Yes, I'm aware that the account of Onan has historically been used to justify prohibition of coitus interruptus (as well as masturbation). However, I disagree that this passage explicitly supports that doctrine.

Onan was not to have Tamar as his wife. He was to provide an heir for his brother, who would also presumably care for Tamar when she was old. Instead, he apparently used her for sex. That was the wicked act, and while you can argue that a married couple engaging in coitus interruptus are also using each other for sex, it requires more than this passage to prove it.

In my opinion, this passage of Scripture has historically been used as a prooftext by those who had concluded a priori that such behaviors are sinful, based on other moral and natural law reasoning.

Philosopher:

I think that there is an argument here, and I have tried to the best of my falled ability to present it. Yes, as a Catholic, I am conscious-bound to follow the Church's position, and yes, I do believe that Magisterium has the final word. But, and we have witnessed here, this does not mean that I will not attempt to maintain the validity of the argument from other perspectives. I'm not a moral theologian; on a good day I barely qualify as a reasonably well-informed Catholic. Yet I will argue that the Church's position is not that ABC is immoral simply becuase the Church says it is; we all know this. I would suggest that you look to the latter half of Veritatis Splendor on the dialectic of intellectual inquiry and the natural law. JPII, I think, makes a very strong argument that the Church's consistant position (and indeed all Christianity before 1930) on ABC is one grounded in the created order and, as such, to some degree "present" to be discovered and defined dogmatically as Truth. "Present" as opposed to "developed," as we might approach a philosophical idea. In this way H.V. is much less a noetic issue than, say, the homoousion of the Son.

John Wesley was a strong opponent of birth control and does seem to connect Onan in that way. However, beyond that, Wesley seems to connect Onan with that "alone" act some people engage in. Both applications seem a real stretch to me. On the other hand, Wesley's commentary does seem to show Wesley highlighting the specific instance of disobedience: "Onan, though he consented to marry the widow, yet to the great abuse of his own body, of the wife he had married, and the memory of his brother that was gone, he refused to raise up seed unto his brother." However, since Eric has already covered the ABC matter, I'll leave it at that.