Beginning Apologetics – How To Answer Tough Moral Questions 5/6 – Contraception

Audio of Classes:   Session 5
                                      Session 6

How to Answer Tough Moral Questions

Contraception

February 15/22. 2009

•I.Introduction

•A.  The controversy surrounding the Church’s teaching on contraception has created a great crisis in the Catholic Church.

•1.    Stubborn refusal on the part of many to accept Church’s absolute prohibition on all types of contraception.

•2.    Polls indicate the vast majority of the laity, and a large % of clergy, reject Church’s teaching on contraception.

•B.  Humanae Vitae (1968) was greeted by a chorus of dissent.

•1.    Secular media condemned HV as hopelessly out of date.

•2.    Response of many bishops = lukewarm; some openly opposed it

•3.    Public dissent weakened the Church at a time of fighting secularism and the sexual revolution

•4.    History will record that HV was one of the most important documents of all time; rebellion against it was one of greatest tragedies suffered by the Church.

•II.History

•A.  Humans have a strong sexual instinct. Not surprising that people would want to contracept to avoid responsibility.

•1.    Ancient Egyptian docs (1900 – 1000 BC) give recipes for contraceptives.

•2.    Onanism (premature withdrawal) common in ancient world. Gen 38:9-10 (1500 years BC)

•3.    Ancient Jewish Talmud mentions contraceptives, as do Aristotle (Greek) and Pliny (Roman historian)

•4.    Contraception was widespread in ancient world. And the Church condemned it

•a)     Didache

•b)    St. Hippolytus (Refutation of all Heresies): condemned women who take drugs to make themselves sterile

•(1)  St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom all condemned contraception.

•(2)  All Church Fathers who mention contraception condemn it. NOT ONE APPROVES IT.

•(3)  Likewise, NO Catholic Bishop or theologian condoned it until modern times.

•B.  Problem of contraception isn’t new; dates back to the beginning of the Church. Reasons for becoming so entrenched toady:

•1.    Birth control pill appeared on the market in the 1960’s.

•2.    Sexual revolution.

•3.    World-wide uprising against authority.

•4.    Governments began to lift restrictions against contraception.

•5.    Counterfeit moral systems were substituted to justify sexual sins.

•C.  A Deluge of evil influences drowned out the Church’s defense of the truth until she seemed like “a voice crying out in the wilderness”.

•III.Methods of Contraception

•A.  Barriers: condoms/diaphragms

•B.  Spermicides: kill a sperm cell before it can fertilize an egg

•C.  Birth Control Pills

•1.    Hormones (estrogen/progesterone) with three functions:

•a)     Prevent ovulation

•b)    Prevent fertilization

•c)     Prevent implantation (abortifacient)

•D.  Intra-uterine devices (IUDs)

Change the character of the uterine line to prevent implantation (abortifacient)

•E.  New products:

•1.    Depo-provera = injectable depot-forming progesterone

•2.    Norplant

•3.    RU-486 (abortifacient)

•F.   Sterilization

•1.    Vasectomy

•2.    Tubal ligation

•G.  Correction/Explanation

•1.    There may be some conditions for which a woman needs to take hormones found in birth control pills.

•2.    This use would fall under the principle of double effect; the INTENT has to be to ONLY to treat the medical condition, NOT to contracept. 

•3.    If ANY other means of treating condition are available, they should be chosen FIRST.

•IV.Church Teaching on Contraception

•A.  Church teaching is based on the natural law.; public revelation enriches/enlightens.

•B.  HV teaches the following:

•1.    Marriage and intercourse are by their nature designed for procreation and rearing children.

•2.    Our sexual instinct must be kept under control even in marriage.

•3.    Sexual acts are noble and worthy in marriage, even if couple infertile due to factors outside the will.

•4.    For legitimate reasons (physical/economic/social/psychological) a couple may limit the number of children through moral means.

•5.    The marital act (yuck!) has two essential meanings/purposes, both of which must be safeguarded/respected:

•a)     Unitive (love-giving)

•b)    Procreative (life-giving)

•c)     A spouse who pressures his partner to have intercourse without regard to her condition violates unitive/love-giving aspect.

•d)    A couple who engages in intercourse while contracepting attacks the procreative/life-giving aspect

•6.    Direct sterilization is prohibited.

•7.    No action taken before/during/after intercourse intended to render it infertile is permitted.

•8.    Both Direct sterilization AND contraception are intrinsically evil, always wrong, no matter the circumstances/intentions.

•9.    When a necessary medical treatment renders a person infertile, this is not immoral (double effect).

•10. If spouses have legitimate reasons to limit number of children, NFP is permissible. (Explain NFP)

•11. There is an essential difference between NFP and contraception:

•a)     With contraception, intercourse is perverted from natural purpose/meaning by blocking the procreative aspect.

•b)    With NFP, intercourse takes place in an entirely natural way. Women are periodically infertile; couple chooses to have sex only during those times.

•c)     Nature eventually renders a woman infertile; sexual relations remain moral after that time.

•d)    Limiting family size only becomes evil when our intentions or our methods are evil in themselves.

•V.Answering Objections to the Church’s Teaching

•A.  Two Categories: Christian/Non-Christian

•B.  Christian objections break down further into Catholic and non-Catholic

•C.  Catholic objections

•1.    I accept the Church’s authority, but the teaching on contraception has never been proclaimed ex cathedra.”

•a)     Arises from a misconception that the only infallible doctrines are those proclaimed by the solemn Magesterium (general councils/ex cathedra definitions)

•b)    The Church also teaches infallibly through the ordinary Magesterium. (ref. CCC 891-892, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium 25); most infallible teachings come from here.

•c)     Church’s teachings against contraceotion have a 2000-year history; Bishops virtually unanimous in condemning contraception.

•d)    Vademecum for Confessors on Certain Aspects of the Morality of Conjugal Life, section 4, describes teaching as “definitive and irreformable”.  This means infallible.

•e)     Clear papal teaching is still always binding even if one does not accept HV as infallible. 

•2.    “I have a right to follow my conscience.”

•a)     Yep.

•b)    But before the right comes the duty to properly form one’s conscience.

•3.    “I am choosing the lesser of two evils.”

•a)     This only works when the only choices are BOTH evil.

•b)    There is a NON-evil choice available: Natural Family Planning.

•4.    “It might be wrong, but I am doing it for a good intention.”

•a)     Some pastors will misguide couples and tell them that it’s OK to contracept if both spouses agree.  It may lessen their subjective guilt – they really just didn’t know – but it’s still objectively evil. (example of murder)

•b)    Some pastors will say that we shouldn’t disturb couples who contracept “in good faith”. Quoting theological concept that it’s better to leave people alone if there is no hope they will accept the Church’s teaching, otherwise we turn an objective sin into a subjective one. Must be properly understood.

•(1)  MUST not presuppose that someone will not accept the Church’s teaching.

•(2)  A confessor may NEVER tell a penitent that contraception is OK. At most, he can defer the question until the penitent is more open.

•(3)  Even if he decides to leave someone “in good faith”, he must patiently catechize, exhort and admonish in hope of bringing the person to the truth.

•c)     Leaving someone “in good faith” (a valid concept) is frequently misapplied to let people who know better off the hook.  If a couple know the Church’s teaching, they cannot contracept “in good faith”.

•D.  Non-Catholic Christians

•1.    Non-Catholic Christians will not want to hear about the Magesterium, or about natural law.  But they accept the authority of the Bible.

•2.    History: 

•a)     Before 1930, not ONE Christian denomination accepted contraception. No theologian, no denomination supported it before the 20^th century.

•b)    All the Protestant reformers condemned contraception as unbiblical.

•c)     The Anglican Church was the first Protestant denomination to allow contraception in 1930.  Ask: Why would they follow the Anglican Church?

•3.    Sacred Scripture: There is only one Bible passage that explicitly describes a contraceptive act.  Gen 38: 6 – 10 (Onan is struck dead for contracepting with his dead brother’s wife)

•a)     Levirate law prescribes a mild punishment for not raising up children for a dead brother

•b)    Onan was KILLED.

•c)     Reasonable to conclude that he was killed for his contraceptive actions.

•4.    Fruits of Contraception:

•a)     Any reasonable person can look at the results of widespread contraception and see it isn’t in accord with God’s will.

•b)    Many are seeing the connection between contraception and rampant divorce/sexual immorality.

•c)     Many in the pro0life movement see that the contraceptive culture planted the seed for the abortion culture.

•E.  Conclusion

•1.    Once Protestants recognize the evil of contraception, their next step should be to abandon the error of “Bible-alone”.

•2.    It was the Magesterium that has held the line against the evil of contraception, infallibly interpreting Sacred Scripture, the natural law, and Sacred Tradition.

•3.    The fruits of the 20^th century :abortion, widespread homosexuality, pornography, genocide, world wars, and massive apostasy from Christianity, coincide with the prevalence of contraception. 

•4.    Contraception is no the product of enlightenment:  it’s simply the product of an evil age.

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Go take a look, please, and let me know when you’d like me to add you to the list!

Homily for the First Sunday of Lent – Repent and Believe!

Gospel Audio

Homily Audio 

Repent and Believe!

Repent…and believe. “Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the Gospel of God: ‘This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” That’s what He said in to today’s Gospel reading.

“To turn from sin and dedicate oneself to the amendment of one’s life.” This is how the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines the word, repent.

“Believe in the Gospel”. To believe (Also from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary) is “to accept as true, genuine, or real”.

So by textbook definition, Jesus’ call as He returns form the desert is pretty easy to understand: “Turn from sin. Amend your life. And accept God’s Gospel as real and true.”

This is all God asks of us as Christian men and women: “Be good. And believe Me.” That’s it!

But if that’s it…then why’s it so hard? And how are we supposed to do it?

Well…the forty days of Lent can help us to get our arms around that.

Today’s readings give us a push in the right direction. The first reading reminds us of the promise God made after the Great Flood was over; God had just finished “rebooting” the Earth because of the evil of the people. He only saved eight, according to the story; Noah and his family had been the only people on Earth to avoid sliding into the evil of the times. The Flood punished the sin of the people, and washed that sin away through forty days of rain, so that humanity could start over with God.

In the second reading, Peter tells us that God renewed His relationship with humanity again with Jesus: “Christ suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that he might lead you to God.” Christ’s death gave us a chance for a new life in God. And Peter tells us that the baptism we receive is not just a bath for the body: that baptism saves us: we make “an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ”.

The Gospel brings back the forty days with Jesus’ time in the desert being tempted by Satan. When Jesus returns from the desert, He goes to Galilee and proclaims that “the kingdom of God is at hand.” Then what does He tell the people? “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”

The forty days of Lent begin with these readings because they set the tone. Lent should be all about two things: repentance, and belief; turning from sin, and believing in Jesus Christ and His saving work on the cross. This is the constant call of Lent: Repent…and believe.

All of us who are baptized have promised these things before, or had them promised for us. The Rite of Baptism recalls the time of the Flood as a sign of our baptism. And after the prayer over the baptismal font, those to be baptized are asked to do two things: to renounce Satan, and to profess their faith in Jesus. Repent…and believe.

This baptismal call to repentance is the same call we hear during Lent. Lent is a reminder for us that we have already been cleansed and reborn to life in Christ, but that we often fall short of living out the new life we received through baptism. Lent calls us to recall what God has done for us through Jesus; Lent calls to us make a return to the faith we professed at our baptism. We are called to repent…and believe.

But what do we need to repent for? What is it that we’ve done that’s so bad, so serious, that we need to turn away from it and do something different?

That answer is different for each one of us, I think. And no, the vast majority of us aren’t running around committing mortal sin after mortal sin, guaranteeing us a place in Hell. But Lent gives us a chance to really examine our lives, to ferret out those places where we are being less faithful than we ought. Lent gives us a chance to look at our choices in life, and to decide if we’re where we should be. And it’s a chance to take on some of the hard things in our lives, not just to give up chocolate for six weeks!

Lent gives us a chance to try to expose the lies that the Evil One sows throughout our culture: the lie that we can do whatever we like, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else; the lie that the Church is hopelessly out of touch in some of its teachings, and that we can ignore those that cause us discomfort; the lie that we are ultimately in control of our bodies and our lives, and that God is OK with it.

Is there an abortion in your past that you haven’t healed from? (Men, I am addressing this to you, too.) Pray about it; God wants to heal you and set you free! Contracepting in your marriage? Pray about it, and consider attending at least one Natural Family Planning class with the Diocese, to see if God is calling you to something different, something new. Consider using this Lent to work with the big things in our lives that hold us back from full union with God.

Will it be tough? If we’re going in the right direction, yes it will be tough! The last thing Satan wants is for us to catch on to his lies! But if we really open ourselves up to the grace God freely offers us, we can see past the lies, to the truth: that God has already given us everything we need to live as He calls us to, if we will only use it!

Jesus’ call as He returns from the desert is pretty easy to understand: “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” Turn from sin. Amend your life. And accept God’s Gospel as real and true.

This is a challenging call, to be sure. And much of what the world throws at us turns us away from that call.

But Lent can give us a chance to turn back. Lent can help us to make a break with anything in our lives that holds us back from repentance…and belief.

There is something in every one of our lives that is holding us back. And Jesus’ call as he came from the desert still has meaning for us. Repent…and believe.
Repent…and believe. And accept the grace God freely offers us to help our unbelief.

Then…stand back and see what happens in our lives!