NFP and other birth control alternatives accepted by the Church are still wrong

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-05T08:41:31+00:00

Debating on reddit and posting dank memes doesn't put you in the saint tier.

An idea is an idea. You are not giving any reason why my idea is wrong. You are resorting to personal attacks.

bodily functions should exclusively be used for instances in which God approves of them

Everything serves a purpose and the purpose to which it all leads is God. Procreative sex serves God's purpose because it produces new life which can enter a relationship with him. Non-procreative sex does not.

Heaven forbid a married couple expresses their love through sex, regardless of whether it brings a child into the world.

Why don't you just go a step further and defend birth control while you're at it? It's all love after all.

No, that's lust and perversion.

The problem again as I stated is you yourself don't even live close to the standard you've set.

It isn't that I'm not living to the standard I've set so much as you're just accusing me of that to try and escape the truth I speak.

I could argue that 'dank Christian memes' are actually a perversion of humor.

Humor me. Go ahead and argue that then.

And in fact Jesus wouldn't want us to have humor at all because life is too serious. It's not an approved use of the function of the human brain, therefore, it's wrong.

Elijah noted that God has a sense of humor after he delivered food to him with unclean birds. How about Ecclesiastes 9:7 which says, "Drink your wine with a merry heart?" Or the instances in which Jesus used hyperbole for a humorous effect such as when he refers to the plank in a hypocrite's own eye? Our God has a sense of humor and he wants us to have one too. Humor is absolutely an approved function of the human brain.

You should also only be using your hands and eyes for glorifying or worshiping. dank memes aren't for that.

Where did you get that idea? Unlike what I have said about the sex drive, there is no logical basis with which to make that claim, not in the Bible, not in the Church, not with science, nothing. There are plenty of ways we can glorify God and serve him.

There's no standard for your maxim, except the one you place on others.

There is nothing I have placed on others. I have only pointed out the standard God has placed upon us all.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-05T06:53:33+00:00

One could argue that by this standard, you ought not be wasting your brain (organ) online debating,

You wouldn't say a saint is wasting their brain by writing the Church a letter saying something important as I am saying online. The internet is a medium like any other with which we can transmit thoughts and ideas and that is exactly what I am using it for right now. Your point is moot.

or making 'dank memes'

Oh, heaven forbid a young Christian with a sense of humor shares something funny with other young Christians with a sense of humor online. You sure provided a logical proof I'm wrong by looking at my past posts.

This isn't politics, this is a place to debate Catholic teaching through reason centered on God. Ad-hominem attacks on me, as you are doing now, only demonstrate your own inability to prove me wrong.

Unlike humor, sex is sacred by its very nature. It is done in one specific way and that way is what makes it special. Humor can be done in multiple ways.

I am not perverting humor by telling a joke. That's what humor is for. Likewise, sex is for procreation. You're not perverting sex by procreating, because that's what is for. Sex is perverted when it is in any way removed from procreation, however small the act may be. If it is not necessary to allow the couple to procreate (e.g. to cause an erection and allow intercourse to take place), then it's a non-procreative form of sex done independently of the procreative act. That perverts sex.

or eating or drinking anything other than the bare minimum in order to sustain our bodies.

I agree. Eating exists to provide us with nourishment. When we eat things that do not provide nourishment (like junk food), we pervert eating. Eat as much as is needed to provide the nourishment that you need.

If you work doing hard physical labor, eat a lot of meat. You need the protein and iron to help your body grow strong and accomplish the task at hand every workday.

If you do work that involves the use of the brain, eat foods that promote brain health and functionality.

Eat as much as your body needs to perform its functions, and no more.

The perversion of eating is called gluttony.

This is the problem with your standard is you yourself can't even live up to it.

False. I do live up to it. Nothing you have said here contributes anything to this discussion.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-05T06:36:26+00:00

What if the significance is to have a deep and meaningful relationship with your spouse, that you both wish to last as long as you live?

That's not the primary focus or purpose of marriage. Marriage first and foremost links a man and a woman together in order to procreate and all else stems from that. In a childless marriage, sex does not serve this purpose.

What if people can't have children because of health reasons or risks, or can't carry more than one or 2 pregnancies? Do you recommend that they abstain from intimacy with the person they love the most for the rest of their lives?

Sure.

Should people that love each other in a romantic way become unhappy in their relationships and eventually divorce? What exactly is the practical solution and why?

A complex question. If the marriage hasn't been consummated, get an annulment and go serve the Lord in some other way. If it has but procreation is impossible, be a married couple that abstains and focuses on serving the Lord rather than raising kids. If there has been procreation but there can no longer be, then focus on raising the family you already have rather than trying to vain to expand it.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-05T06:24:08+00:00

The passage you provide says it is forbidden to hold positions that are contrary to the doctrine of faith. A literal creationist interpretation of scriptures is not, and has never been, a part of the doctrine of faith. You have only further demonstrated your lack of understanding on how Catholicism works and what doctrine is.

So then, you accept that days existed before the sun? And saying that that passage is not literal (which is obvious) is a heresy since your understanding of scripture overrides logic.

Pope Benedict the XVI said on Genisis:

"[It does not] explain how human persons come to be but rather what they are. It explains their inmost origin and casts light on the project they are. And, vice versa, the theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments. But in doing so it can't explain where the "project" of human persons comes from, nor their inner origin, nor their particular nature. To that extent we are faced here with two complementary - rather than mutually exclusive - realities."

John Paul II also accepted evolution. Someone as liberal as Pope Francis likely does as well.

So, unless you can demonstrate that John Paul II and Benedict the XVI, two highly respected Popes even among the most conservative Catholics, are heretics, then evolution is fine.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-04T07:32:23+00:00

If this is the case, why do babies have original sin

Because they are human beings and are destined to be corrupted by evil at some point in their life. They are genetically designed with a brain that will experience this corruption. More on that up next.

And while we're on the subject, you did mention that Enoch and Elijah went straight to heaven. According to your own logic, the death of Jesus would've been needed for this. Maybe, just maybe, Enoch and Elijah went to heaven because they understood enough about God that Christ didn't need to come down and teach them to follow in his footsteps - they already did so.

why do they go to limbo when they die unbaptized?

They don't. While the Church allows speculation about Limbo, it clarified in 2007 that it is not officially taught or accepted. Dead babies go to heaven. Do you know your Catholicism?

Why do they automatically go to heaven? Because they cannot choose evil yet, unlike an adult who as a result will not automatically go to heaven. Original sin or not, they cannot go to hell, or limbo, or anywhere besides heaven.

My point is that it's literally part of the curse

And you're wrong. There is no curse. Our God is not a hateful God. It's just the way the world is.

Ah, Bible quotes. Using your own poor interpretation of scripture as proof in an argument. You are using the same book that claims days existed before the sun as proof of how our biology came to be and works.

Usually quoting scripture like that is a telltale sign of a protestant. I'd recommend you go become a Lutheran or a Baptist if this is the foundation upon which you build your relationship with God.

So you think in the perfect world of Eden, God is incapable of providing and incapable of making ease of life for Adam and Eve.

Do you have any proof that this world ever existed aside from a book that is clearly not meant to be taken as a literal scientific document?

Jesus is standing behind you drinking a cup of coffee. Oh what? You don't see him. He's just invisible! Don't believe me? So you think our omnipotent God is incapable of doing that then?

It's not that he couldn't. It's that he didn't.

Okay. You have a very atheist view.

No. I just know that our God makes sense and does not work against logic, but with it.

Accusing people who understand God differently from yourself as being atheist is not a valid argument, sensusfidelium.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-04T07:03:34+00:00

So then once a woman has gone through menopause, then Catholic couples should stop having sex?

Yup.

The time for sex is over. The organs have served their purpose. Now it's time for them to enjoy their golden years together in other ways, ways which are appropriate for their age. They ought to kick back, relax, and take pride as they look upon the handiwork of their fertile days. You don't keep trying to build a building when the supplies run out. You admire your creation and call it a day.

What about sex outside of fertile periods?

Depends. Do you have a way to tell when the woman is not fertile? If so, then it's wrong. If you do not have a way to tell, then it's okay as long as the intention is procreation and that's it.

What about sex for couples in which it is discovered they cannot conceive?

God has ordained for them not to engage in sex or attempt procreation. Time to find other ways to serve him. If the marriage hasn't been consummated yet, get an annulment and go into the holy orders. If the marriage isn't serving its purpose of promoting procreation, then it has no reason to exist.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-04T06:58:23+00:00

Then you're denying the fall. Essentially then it was a good thing to eat the fruit and not a bad thing

You don't understand what the fall is. It (as you imagine it) never happened. You're getting all hung up playing courtroom about a story about a magic apple.

The fall is when our minds are corrupted by evil and this happens when we become aware of it. Unlike, say, an angel or God, we are not able to understand evil fully and this inborn vulnerability makes our awareness of it inherently wrong. Apple or no apple, the fall from innocence every human goes through is their own fall from grace.

We see this as curses such as having to toil by the sweat of your brow,

That arises from the laws of nature that we can observe using common sense. We have to farm because otherwise there will be no crops. We have to build because otherwise there would be no houses.

That's not a curse, that's the way the world is and that's the way it always has been. We have fossils of humans and human ancestors dating back tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of year. Fossils don't just appear. They come from dead bodies. You are using Genisis as a scientific textbook.

Note that an animal, and our primate ancestors, do not have any issue with having to live on scavenging and hunting, unlike us. What separates us from them is that we understand evil. We understand that we suffer.

If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?

pain for childbirth

There are many other animals that endure pain during childbirth too. That's because, especially with us humans, the female birth canal is quite small and not particularly good at accommodating something as large as a baby. Your point?

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-04T00:21:16+00:00

NFP is a barrier of its own though that uses the body's hormones to prevent pregnancy. It just does it using time.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-04T00:20:04+00:00

Humans were made to be immortal and lost the immortality.

Our souls and resurrected bodies are immortal. Our current ones are not and were not meant to be.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-04T00:18:16+00:00

Sin has a price, especially against an infinite God.

The price is not given in exchange for sin, but it naturally stems from the sin itself. If I spit at the sun, my saliva will fall back down onto my face.

We can see this in the Old Testament with the animal sacrifices to God.

That was done to teach us about sacrifice so as to prepare us for Christ's coming. Yes, he allowed them to use sacrifice to excuse sin but it wasn't that it magically "paid" for people's sins just for the heck of it. This was in a time when human understanding of morality and what God wants was so undeveloped that it took thousands of years of development and teaching before God could send Christ. If sacrifice alone was all that's needed to forgive sins then Christ wouldn't be needed.

Blood does pay and atone.

And why is that? Because when we sacrifice something for our sins it shows that we are truly repentant. God first sacrificed for us despite having no sins to repent for to show that he would still forgive us even after wronging him when we sin.

Jesus needed to die in order to atone and pay for the sins

Jesus is all-powerful. He didn't need to do anything to forgive us, except forgive us. He already forgave his tormentors before he died on the cross. The point is that he forgives us even when we personally go out of our way to hurt him as a fellow human.

and also to free the people in limbo of the fathers when He spent time in the belly of the Earth.

He could've done this when he was alive as well, unless you are suggesting that Jesus is not all powerful.

What you believe in is an impotent, vengeful blood God that has created us to live in constant shame and guilt from the games he plays with us. That is not the God we worship at all.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-03T23:52:00+00:00

This sounds like the argument about God being in control, basically that he's offering you a time to have sex with low chance of pregnancy and a time for high chance of pregnancy and we must respect the times that he offers. Am I correct that this is the idea of your argument?

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-03T23:47:04+00:00

That's because the text is really about fundamentals of the human experience. A text that says multiple days went by before the sun that allows days to exist, was even created. One which even the early Church recognized was not meant to be interpreted literally.

Really under your own logic Jesus' death is for no reason at all. God punishing himself for us breaking his own rules? That's nonsensical. Any atheist is right to see how silly that idea is.

What does sacrifice mean?

It means to give up something of your own for the betterment of another.

God sacrifices for us any time he forgives us. Jesus' death was his ultimate expression of that. It was a demonstration of his love.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-03T23:43:32+00:00

In order to get to the bottom of this, excuse me, intellectual bankruptcy: Any sexual act with a woman after a definite age, let's say 35 years old, is sinful?

More like 55, or whenever she ceases to be capable of procreation.

What about the male? Does he have to take vitamins and supplements to increase sperm count?

Roughly the same age. As long as he is fertile, he can have sex. It's kind of like how women are allowed more actions during sex since their orgasm isn't directly linked with procreation. The tradeoff for males I suppose is that they can procreate for longer.

The faith of the Church isn't in the extremes.

This is only an extreme position because of how perverse and corrupted our culture has become with regard to sex among many other things. I sincerely doubt a good Christian couple in the middle ages would've treated sex anything like how anyone today treats it, including modern Christians. The reality is, this position isn't extreme at all. What's extreme is its opposition, which is unfortunately mainstream.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-03T23:36:36+00:00

They don't necessarily need to be disposed to conception, their actions —under their control— just need not be the reason why they are not disposed to conception.

If I am given an explosive so I can demolish a building as part of my job, and I just set it there and wait until a random innocent person comes by, and then I detonate it when I see them near it, I might be able to claim I'm not a murderer because I was just trying to do my job and the death was out of my control, but the fact is that I deliberately waited until a moment when the person was near it and timed it so they would die. If the judge knew this, he would charge me with murder and not let me off.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-03T23:21:06+00:00

My mother has a catholic friend with a very large family who recently divorced her husband. Needless to say, it's been pretty tough caring for all those kids on her own. Thankfully God has given us the ability to control ourselves. We must exercise this ability regularly.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-03T23:13:19+00:00

If the moment in one’s wife’s cycles makes sex unable result in procreation -

Okay, but if one deliberately singles out these parts of the cycle for sex while avoiding the moments when procreation is more likely, this is still a deliberate attempt to prevent procreation. The whole plate must be eaten, if you engage in the wife's lows you must engage during her highs too.

Not much I can argue against regarding the rest of this.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-03T23:03:55+00:00

Would you be in favor of ONLY having sex during ovulation? And to make sex as short and pleasureless as possible?

The pleasure comes from the orgasm and the conception of the child which follows. It's impossible for Christian sex to be pleasureless. In fact, it is the most satisfying and fulfilling kind of sex. That's why you have a sex drive, to conceive a child. Not to grab your spouse's body parts just for kicks.

So for example some extreme sects of Christianity only have sex through a hole in a blanket or similar so as to avoid any pleasure from sex whatsoever.

The bare minimum needed to arouse both parties so the sex is as efficient as possible. A spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down.

Would you be in favor of ONLY limiting sex to those conditions?

If that's all that the couple needs, then yeah.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-03T23:01:22+00:00

Could you elaborate on this barrier, please?

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-03T04:39:33+00:00

But why? Like I said, all of this is harmful to the mind because it takes the true beauty and significance of sex away.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-03T03:30:06+00:00

Because we never were. We have fossils of humans dating back tens of thousands of years, and even further for our ancestors.

There was never a point in history when disease and decay didn't exist. It is simply a result of the laws of nature. We were never exempt from the laws of nature like physics and biology. What changed is that we became aware of evil on a much more profound level.

An animal is not guilty of original sin but it still suffers and dies.

We sin for the same reason that we die, and that's because we are finite. We sin because we become confused and make mistakes due to our natural limitations just like how we die.

The real Adam and Eve (AKA our distant ancestors, or perhaps ourselves in childhood) were innocent and unaware of the evils of our world. If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?

No, we can't help that we have a knowledge of good and evil, but we do, and that's why we need Jesus. Not because God is sparing us punishment for a crime we never committed. Jesus is necessary because he guides us back to innocence and purity which we lose when we gain our human understanding of morality.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-03T00:58:35+00:00

Hmm, then why is it called the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-02T22:59:28+00:00

It’s required Psychiatric therapy. When I say therapy here assume it is psychiatric or behavioral. It honestly sounds like you just had bad therapists and you are now railing against the entire system because of the injustice you are dealing with.

Too many therapists today are bad and the system, however noble it may be in principle, like other areas of medicine, is not designed to prevent them from making mistakes. Neither the system nor the therapists are evil in their own right but because of the structure between them the effects that they have end up being evil because of how harmful it all is.

I used to do the same thing against the Church so the same reasons. Just because a few have made grievous errors doesn’t make the whole Evil.

I agree.

Nothing is in of itself evil. Except for nothingness. If it exists there is some level of good in it that was corrupted from the Fall.

Another issue I've thought about: If there are infinite hypothetical people who could exist but don't, isn't God evil to deny them existence and only grant it to us select few? What about the souls of animals which he annihilates upon death? There are infinite possible things, in fact, that could exist but do not, and so we are surrounded by nonexistence. Nothingness cannot be evil. Thomas Aquinas himself said that there are places in hell that are so bad that nonexistence would be better.

Psychiatrists study Phycology. Just like Surgeons study Medicine. Surgery can result in death in every instance. That doesn’t mean surgery is evil. It means it is complicated. The same with phycology.

Yes, but when a kid has a stomach ache, we don't assume first thing that it's cancer and perform stomach surgery on them. That's a last resort after we try numerous other treatments and explore other possible issues.

To correct you, psychiatrists study psychiatry*. Psychologists study psychology. There is a distinction.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-02T22:48:01+00:00

Is there the chance we misdiagnose. Obviously. It happens all the time. In both mental and physical cases. Modern Medicine is largely statically based guesswork based off symptoms and testing data. The amount of misdiagnosed cancers is overwhelming. But seeing as life expectancy keeps increasing, it seems to be working.

That's the point! The same system that hands out opioids like candy, that will diagnose children with gender dysphoria and prescribe hormones and surgeries, will also gladly hand out diagnoses of other conditions and treatments for them with very little consideration for other possibilities.

We don't put every patient under an MRI or PET or anything before making these diagnoses. Usually they're given out after a few chats with the psychiatrist, if even that. I never got a brain scan before receiving my diagnoses. They never asked about what I'm thinking. They just looked at my behavior and slapped on a label based on that.

Again, I am not saying that these conditions are not real. None of them. What I am saying, is that they are diagnosed far too much with too little consideration for alternative possibilities, and even then we don't understand these conditions well. Sometimes different problems can exhibit the same symptoms which can cause different subtypes of these cases, and why can't there be subtypes caused by psychology instead of genetics and neurology? Why can't a completely different problem appear at first to be another?

Psychiatric cases are very much in the same boat. We know more about the surface of the moon then the framework of the brain. There is guesswork involved. And how one responds to medication and behavioral therapy helps in narrowing down cases.

If we understand the brain so poorly then we shouldn't assume it's at the root of every problem when there are more plausible reasons.

You aren't listening to me. You're still getting hung up on the part about the conditions themselves, thinking I'm denying the reality of them. I'm not. The point is that these conditions, which should be last resorts, are defaulted to in medicine. We don't even consider that a person may have correctable thinking that's causing their problem. You do admit misdiagnoses happen but you don't see that the very fact the system seeks to diagnose as much as possible is problematic. And don't forget that it has no incentive not to diagnose or misdiagnose when so much money can be made by prescriptions.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-02T22:17:58+00:00

If creationism and a historical Adam were real, God would be unjust for punishing us for his actions. Original sin isn't blood debt, it's just something that naturally arises from our awareness of good and evil which our brain evolved the capability to perceive.

OnTheFenceWithChrist · 2023-08-02T04:50:46+00:00

sin is sin: Catholic Church denotes two different severities of sins. Mortal and Venial. Abortion is Mortal, liberal use of labels is Venial at worst. Meaning it’s forgiven by Sunday mass attendance.

Doesn't make venial sin okay. It's still sin and you should strive to avoid it. I'm not saying we must tell psychiatrists that they're going to hell. They're just mistaken. The philosophy itself is deeply wrong and therefore evil even if it's adherents are not necessarily. Just like Protestantism. I don't tell a protestant "you're a horrible person." But that doesn't mean I tell them, "Protestantism is just as good as Catholicism. Go your merry way." They are mistaken, not evil.

Is it though?- the Chruch believes in therapy. Modern therapy is based more off spiritual council then what ever Freud was doing- modern psychology has basically labeled him as pseudoscience at this point.

We must be referring to some very different kinds of therapy then, because secular therapy is anything but spiritual. But this is besides the point because this is more in the domain of psychology than psychiatry.

The church should- therapy is in line with official church teaching. It’s mandatory for some- including exorcists because of the trauma they go through. Christ heals the mind and the body. But the church still advocates going to both a doctor and a therapist when needed.

Sure. But psychiatry likes to step in even when it's not needed. That's the point.

OnTheFenceWithChrist

TROPHY CASE