Agemegos

I think that that is only a justification. I believe that the Church's bugbear with contraception is actually derived from pre-scientific Greek writings about conception. The Greeks (well some of them, anyway) believed and wrote as fact that a conceptus was produced by the father and implanted in the mother. It follows that individuality precedes conception, and that any form of contraception causes the conceptus to die, which is murder or at least manslughter, a deadly sin.

Now that we have microscopes the doctrine of preformationism is debunked, and we understand that a zygote is formed by contributions from both parents, which come together some hours or days after sex. Unless you want to maintain that every unfertilised abortion is a death, and every ejaculation an hundred million murders, it is hard to maintain that barrier methods of contraception, or methods that prevent ovulation, are manslaughter. A reasonable objection remains to methods that prevent implantation, but I don't share it.

Routed by science, the ascetics and sex-averse celibates who make up the majority of the hierarchy are reluctant either to make a humiliating public change of doctrine or to do anything that might condone the ickiness and pleasure of sex. So the modern rtinalisation for the ban on contraception goes like this:

"Sex produces both pleasure and children. But seeking sexual pleasure is a sin, called lust. If you have sex to beget children that is okay, but if you do it for pleasure it is a sin. We'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but if you use contraception there can be no doubt, so you're busted."

To me, this seems like arrant nonsense. But I'm not a theologian.

The Catholic Church really needs to get some married people with an understanding of normal sexual motivations into its hierarchy as soon as possible.

Chili

Just think of man as a solitary individual and you will soon understand natural law. It is only in our human nature (our second nature) that we are social animals and with the development of our faculty of reason are we known as rational/irrational animals but since irrational is equal to rational social rules of behavior are needed to help us understand right from wrong.

Zeichman

I just scanned through this thread, so I'm not sure if this has been mentioned already. But I'm a pro-choice Christian, and if people ever ask me to defend my views, I whip out the 137th Psalm to be a jackass:

" 8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,

happy is he who repays you

for what you have done to us-

9 he who seizes your infants

and dashes them against the rocks. "

Usually shuts them up real-good.

Chili

These would be the ones Herod was after and they are the premature born again Christians we know today -- such as those who are born again at the age of accountability or a ferocious altar call to assure a good catch.

John A. Broussard

Actually, from what I've read of the Hitler Youth Movement, celibacy was frowned upon. Intercourse with blonde, Aryan women was the norm.

Of course, there were undoubtedly exceptions.

John A. Broussard

Whoops! I read your post wrong, IvanJames. I thought you were referring to a 75 year-old virgin.