CATHOLICISM AND BIRTH-CONTROL

Contraception is using pills and devices to prevent conception. The Roman Catholic cult regards it as seriously sinful.  The logic is that using birth control is about separating the means of getting a child from getting the child.  It is about the pleasure not the child.  This is regarded as lacking in virtue and failing to see the child as a gift in herself or himself and as a gift from God.  Archbishop Fulton Sheen said it is like trying to have a world where your trees always bloom for your pleasure but never produce fruit and you are happy with that for you don't really value or think you need the fruit.

The Church has done its best to stop the use of condoms in Africa even though this has resulted in 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 be.
 
Even if birth control were a sin, there is no justification or reason in the insistence of the Church that it is as bad as murder and you will go to Hell forever if you die unrepentant of the sin of birth control just like you would for murder. The stance of the Church is extremism and bigotry. The Church could teach that it is venial sin - this is sin that you have to pay for by suffering in Purgatory not a sin so serious that you would suffer punishment for it that never ends and which can never end.
 
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. It says you must let God plan your family. This makes sense if there is a God which shows how dangerous the concept of God is but it means 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. This means if it is up to God 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 is natural and not a disease so contraception is wrong and yet it allows you to wear contact lenses instead of getting laser surgery on your eyes even though the laser would be less unnatural. It even lets you have a nose job though there is nothing wrong with irregular features!
 
Pius XI made in 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”.
 
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.
 
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 doctrine that natural family planning is forbidden except in extreme circumstances, at least, you can hold that you really want a baby but can’t have one perhaps because another pregnancy could kill the mother.
 
The Catholic Church and many other Churches claim to care about the family.
 
If so why do they have no problem providing marriage for immature people, sixteen year olds, and people who may be unsuitable for raising children? They are the people that claim that marriage is for procreation. Where are the courses to prepare couples for children?
 
The Catholic Church condemns single mothers but nothing was said about Pope Pius IX taking a Jewish boy from his parents and raising him himself. If single parents are so bad then why is the surviving member of a married couple one of whom died prematurely leaving children allowed and encouraged to keep the children?
 
It is up to each individual couple to decide for themselves if contraception is a bad thing or not in their marriage. The Church tells them to believe it is bad. But belief colours your perception. No marriage is perfect. The Church is encouraging couples to blame contraception for these normal imperfections and problems. And they have to lay loads of blame on it for contraception is supposed to be a very very serious sin. This is psychological manipulation.
 
If contraception causes problems in marriage, one answer would be for the husband and wife to maybe have plenty of affectionate sessions with no sex or no penetration, or to engage in masturbation sessions in which they watch one another masturbate (the Church says masturbation is a sin) so that they use it less.
 
But if a husband and wife are intimate friends and intimate parents and not just intimate sexually the problems should not arise. If contraception causes problems they must only be minor.
 
The Church wants the use of contraception to stop. It wants to stop a couple having the option. If nobody uses condoms, they will disappear from our pharmacies and those who seek them will not find them.
 
Research shows that young people who are below 17 and who have sex are less likely to use contraception. Church teaching is a dangerous influence on them at their impressionable age. Research shows that young people who are informed by their parents about contraception are more likely to use it. The Church would seek to block their right to know these things. It is so unfair because most young people have sex from 17 to 19.
 
The Natural Family Planning Method is no use to many teenagers and young women for their menstrual cycles are irregular. There is no way to tell for sure when they are most likely to become pregnant. And teenage stress and exam angst, heavy drinking, sickness, drugs, medication and travel can make periods so irregular that there is no point in trying to figure out when the woman is in danger of pregnancy.
 
THEOLOGY AND BIRTH CONTROL

Everybody knows what the Catholic Church thinks about the pill, condoms, intrauterine devices and sterilisation. It says they are all seriously wrong and never ever justified. The Church however allows NPF, natural family planning based on the time during a woman's menstrual cycle when she is unlikely to conceive. The Church says there is a huge moral difference between contraception and natural family planning. It says contraception is suppressing fertility while natural family planning is working with it.
 
Working with it? Working around it more like! It is still treating fertility as something to be avoided. If that is okay, then contraception can't be wrong . If sex must be open to life, then why not allow condoms for they don't always give 100% protection anyway? Even the Church says that contraception is not a sin if it practiced by people who seriously think that it is acceptable before God. This tells us that it cannot be a sin unless it means people knowingly and evilly treat their fertility as a curse at least for a time. But using NPF doesn't mean you don't have that kind of attitude. Many users will have the attitude. It is the attitude that causes the moral problem for the Church. It is lunacy to say that contraception is wrong for it must always express a bad undesirable attitude.
 
The Catholic Church teaches that artificial birth control is always immoral even when it is to prevent a husband infecting his wife with the AIDS virus. The idea that contraception is bad has more to do with hatred of sexuality and the desire to see it punished by having unwanted babies than with any real concern for the people who use it or need it. Contraception must be the worst sin possible when it is better if you are having sex to risk your life and bringing sick babies into the world to suffer by neglecting contraception. Nothing is that bad that it can be banned under all circumstances. The Church allows killing in self-defence for heaven’s sake!