The Catholic Church has once again been under fire as being against women's health care, anti-choice, and stuck in the dark ages. Feminist organizations have attacked it for its hard stance against contraception and abortion, and have questioned how a bunch of old men can sit there and make decisions for women.
The truth is, it isn't those "old men" making the decisions. In order to understand that statement you need to be able to accept that the Church is following teachings from Jesus Christ since the time he created the Church. The Church stands by it's teaching that nothing should stand in the way of the possibility of having a child every time the husband and wife have sexual relations. The reason God made us male and female was so that the parts went together and life is created. If you try to use the same parts, no baby can be had. I heard a statistic once that said that if all the people alive today were homosexual, in three generations mankind would vanish from the face of the earth.
As time has gone by, I have heard an even better way to explain why contraception should not be used. When a man and woman marry, they commit to each other 100%. In sickness and in health, richer and poorer, etc., but 100% nonetheless. If you now use contraception, you are no longer giving yourself to each other 100%. You are now keeping a part of yourself away from your spouse. What most of secular society fails to realize is that the Catholic Church places a very high honor on the sacrament of Marriage. It is not just a contract, something we conveniently do so that we can share medical costs or get tax breaks. That is what a civil union is for. Marriage is two people becoming one...forever. You cannot become one, share in each other in the richest of ways, if you have placed a barrier between you.
I will cover marriage and divorce in another blog...it deserves much more time than this.
So what about all the arguments for contraception? You know, the rather weak excuses given to allow promiscuity between unmarried couples...and selfishness between married couples. This statement is a bit judgemental, but often the truth hurts. The pill and other devices have allowed unmarried people to have carefree sex with little fear of repercussions. It has caused a huge drop in morality in our society. We now see an increase in premarital sex, infidelity, and numerous other issues. Married couples place their wants and desires ahead of what God intended marriage to be, the avenue for procreation. Natural Family Planning can do the same for a married couple as the pill can, with almost the same effectiveness.
One last reason the Church has against the use of contraception is that most of the methods out there today, other than a condom, are abortifacient. That is, when they do their job, a baby is aborted. To accept this, you must first agree with the Church's teaching that life begins at conception. By the way, science has, in the past couple of years, come to agreement with what the Church has taught all along. That being said, as soon as the egg is fertilized, a new life begins. The pill, keeps that fertilized egg from implanting in the woman and aborts it. If it does implant, it starves for lack of nourishment caused by the pill and aborts. The IUD, sponge, and other methods like those, have much the same effect. They either stop and kill the sperm, or keep the fertilized egg from implanting. Basically, every time these methods work as designed, a baby is aborted. Don't believe me? Do some research.
The usual defense against what I just wrote is that it is just a clump of cells, it isn't a baby until it implants in the woman. And then, it is still able to be aborted because it is only a fetus...the term baby seems to make it harder to abort. Personally, every time I have heard a woman say she is pregnant, she says she is having a baby, not a fetus.
Contraception is not a positive tool in a marriage. It divides and separates what is supposed to be a union created by God in which his intent for a marriage can be carried out.
No comments:
Post a Comment