Well since no method of birth control is 100% effective, then the Catholic Church should be ok with all of it, because it’s still a “type of act that could be fertile.”
It’s not fair to take an excerpt out of context and claim it’s a “random assertion with no support and a lot of double-talk.”
I claim neither to really understand nor to really agree with the Catholic Church’s position, but they have put some thought into it, and unless I take the trouble to study what they’ve said about it and to understand their point of view (and the “natural law” approach to ethics on which it’s based), I can’t claim that it’s irrational or unsupported.
I don’t know whether it’s a fair representation or not, but I see the RCC position as saying that contraception is like bulimia: to use artificial birth control is to the act of sex sort of what chewing and spitting out the food rather than swallowing it, or eating it and then vomitting it back up again, is to the act of eating. For a naturally infertile person to have sex would be analogous to a person eating something that their bodies couldn’t digest and extract nutritional value from.
Bulimia is not a sin. Nor is Metphormin, but neither is “natural.” (Metphormin is a drug that helps diabetics and pre-diabetics control blood sugar levels by interfering with the “normal” activity of the liver.
Speaking of the Catholic Church…
Cardinal Dolan: Pope Francis opened door to gay civil unions debate
While that’s not remotely an endorsement of civil unions, it’s not remotely a condemnation of them either.
So clearly gay acceptance is eroding the Bible’s authority, when they’ve even got the Pope on their side.
/thread
It sure reads to me as an endorsement, but sheesh the civil unions idea is ancient history.
On his latest podcast Dan Savage makes the same point - endorsement of civil unions would have been good in 1985. Nowadays they’re an idea whose time has passed - marriage equality is rapidaly taking root across the western world, and civil unions would be a step backwards.
That said, one must recognize the major effort involved in dragging the Church forward to 1985 from its former position of, what, Vatican II? Some progress is better than no progress.
I find this reason very interesting; They must not have sex if it is a woman’s fertile time is also interfering with their God’s plan, I understand that it is because God could still cause a pregnancy if so chosen, then why can’t God have the condom break or the pill fail? It looks like a way to just run another’s life. or cause them fear.
And that is natural???
How is any of that relevant to catholic moral teaching about the morality (or not) of homosexuality?
He’s talking about what governments should be allowed to do, not about whether homosexual acts are a sin or not. It’s perfectly consistent with orthodox Roman Catholic teaching, today, to believe that it’s not the role of the state to impose Catholic morality on people.
I don’t know if the Catholic Church will ever change it’s position on the morality of homosexual acts, but if they do, it won’t be for a while yet.
I don’t know the Catholic church’s position on oral sex to orgasm, but given it’s nonsense about birth control and vaginal sex, I’d guess the situation is one of these:
-
the church has some twisted logic for why it’s okay while still insisting that sex can only be for pregnancy
-
the church forbids it altogether and millions of Catholics ignore that and do it anyway and gets used to ignoring church doctrine, further eroding its authority
Stupid either way.
i.e. “I don’t know what they say, but whatever it is, it must be stupid.”
I’m not sure it’s entirely unreasonable to expect that chaste people have unrealistic views about sex.
The Catholic Church considers oral sex to orgasm to be a sin, and always has.
If their sexual ethics are solely based on logic, their celibacy shouldn’t be relevant.
From my (limited!) perspective, the problem with their sexual ethics isn’t irrationality or twisted logic, it’s that they rely too much on logic and rational deduction, unchecked by reality (which might reveal flaws in the premises their logic is based on).
I think this is true. The Eastern Orthodox have been making that criticism of Roman Catholicism for a very long time, and they have a point.
Maybe some need to keep in mind the Pharisees who deduced all sorts of rules from the Law and forgot that the shepard will and should break the Sabbath to save a lost sheep.
The problem with using logic to determine moral rules is that while the process is necessary, it should be kept a simple matter of what does the most harm verses what does the most good, and, in addition, save the lost sheep on the Sabbath. And remember that human beings are not terribly good at logic, and even worse in committee.
Thanks.
So it’s option b - millions (my estimate, without backup, but most people would roll their eyes if you said it wasn’t a good guess) of Catholics routinely ignore church teachings on sex because they know they are stupid.
This is, not surprisingly, leading to people noticing that church teachings can be stupid, and feeling courageous enough to ignore them.
Not a good trend for the church.
Don’t ask for a cite because I’ll likely not be able to find it, but I recall some years ago a self-identified Catholic here on the SDMB was actually offended at the idea that he or she followed everything the Catholic Church (or maybe the Pope) said. Not just denying it, but literally found the idea offensive that we would think that a Catholic would follow the Catholic Church or the Catholic leader entirely.
Well, sure, because many Catholics think for themselves. Which is my point. She was actually offended by the idea that the church has, or claims to have, actual authority. That shows you how eroded its authority has become.
People are going to use their brains to think past irrational religious teachings. It’s inevitable.