Birth Control, a serious sin?
Questions and Answers on Sex and Marriage, Natural Fertility and Responsible
Parenthood, Luton Good Counsel, Catholic Truth Society, London, 2007
Page 9 Argument
The Church forbids contraception not because sex is dirty or bad but because it
is really good and a gift from God for our enjoyment and making babies
Refutation
Would you believe somebody that told you that you are not allowed a nice meal
except maybe once a month because it is really good? Every religion has its
taboos and uses a similar excuse to the Catholic Church for them. For example,
the Jew will believe that it is wrong to eat a pig because God values him so
much.
The claim that contraception is forbidden because sex is so good implies that
using it will bring bad consequences. The Church teaches that God has attached
bad consequences to certain actions. For example, if you steal a lot you will
have no friends and people will despise you. This is how God punishes. So it
follows that even if you don't intend to sin by using contraception and you
think it is right the bad consequences will still occur. It would follow that
you should see from the consequences that it must be bad and can be held to be
morally accountable if you do not see for you do not want to see.
Doctrines such as that contraception will have bad results because it is bad
imply that God will punish those who use contraception. Virtue should be its own
reward. The religious tendency to be more interested in appeals to divine
sanctions and rewards than in teaching virtue to be its own reward is plainly
vindictive and another example of how belief in God offers counterfeit morality.
Suppose that God sets it up so that your sins will have bad consequences.
Suppose he doesn't punish you in this indirect way but makes you suffer
directly. The former suggests more hatred for the sinner than the latter. A
person who pulls their punishment on themselves can expect no sympathy at all
while a person who is punished at the free will of another might. It is foolish
how liberal Christians teach that God does not punish but evil punishes itself
by having bad consequences that God has created in the hope of making God seem
nicer. It does not work.
Page 11 Argument
The Church doesn’t ban contraception because it wants more Catholic babies but
because sex is a beautiful language that says, “I love you totally bodily and
mentally and your ways and your fertility”
Refutation
Jesus said that the love of God comes first. Love of others comes second. Of
course the Church is more interested in making more Catholics. It believes that
expanding the Church by making babies for God is more important than loving
another person. Natural Family Planning is about religion not the couple or
respecting sex.
All believers in God will hold that we should produce babies to glorify God by
their religious lives and the more of such children the better. The belief is
disgraceful.
The idea of loving somebody as completely as the Church suggests, is unrealistic
and idealistic and crass. Could a husband love his wife sexually if she erupted
in boils all over or aged 50 years in one night? If he hates sin, and she
becomes a great sinner, he must hate her too in so far as she sins. We hate our
enemies in so far as they offend us. If we hate them intensely though they are
not that bad then we hate them as much as we think they offend us - we see
faults where there are none. The language of sex is totally hypocritical if we
take the Church's understanding of it to be correct.
Is the husband to love his wife’s acne even if she wants the acne and thinks it
is a gift from God? Just because something is his wife’s doesn’t mean he should
love it. The best love is between persons who generally love each other but who
occasionally drive one another up the twist. A bit of hate is necessary.
The Church says contraception is always very seriously wrong. Yes I love you so
much I would not use contraception to save your life! That is loving fertility
more than the person.
If it is gravely sinful to have sex with your wife if you do not love her
fertility then why it is not a grave sin to live with her? Living with her is
more important than sex. What about the language of living together? Why is it
not gravely sinful to sleep with your wife after you have beat her up? The
doctrine that it is gravely sinful to sleep with your wife and use contraception
is simply an incitement to hatred against people who use it. If that is not hate
then what is?
Catholicism teaches that contraception is not bad because it has bad results. It
teaches that it is bad in itself regardless of whether the results are good or
bad. Such an idea plainly cares about doctrine not people.
If person x wins money, you may feel annoyed about it because you wish you had
got half of it or some of it. The Church puts this down as the sin of envy
despite the fact that don't want to take it all from the person and want the
person to have a happy and fulfilled life and that you just think you should
have a share too. But if wanting the same benefits as somebody else is bad then
clearly other people come first and you don't matter. Church condemnations are
related to the hidden hatred the Church bears towards people.
We know that we are surer that the Holocaust was wrong than we are that any
theory of morality be it Catholicism or Utilitarianism (the doctrine that
morality is about promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number
possible) is true. If God exists, what God wants and commands comes first. So we
have to callously turn away from the knowledge that the Holocaust was wrong.
Instead of that we have to condemn it on the basis of faith in God. God is a
hateful doctrine. To loathe contraception because of faith in God is only for
the twisted.
Loving your wife's fertility does not necessarily mean that you have to use her
fertility this year. Maybe you and she have agreed not to have a baby for a
while. Loving your girlfriend does not mean you have to marry her as soon as
possible.
If loving fertility is so great and it is so wrong to not love it in the
Catholic style, why isn’t it a serious sin to want a nose-job or a lip
augmentation? Is that not refusing to love yourself as you are? The Church
teaches that having some imperfection is an essential part of being human and
should be accepted but it doesn’t disapprove deeply.
Why isn’t it a mortal sin (a sin that implies rejection of God for all eternity)
for a husband to give his wife money because she wants a nosejob though there
isn’t anything wrong with her nose except that she doesn’t like it? If the
husband has to love his wife's fertility by being open to life, and the wife has
to love his by being open to life, what about self-love? If the wife asks the
husband to accept her totally by having sex with her, then should she not accept
herself totally as well? Of course she should. The Church thinks lies are not
necessarily mortal sins and it sees having contraceptive sex as a lie and its
designation of it as a mortal sin is simply arbitrary. It hates the so-called
sinners who use contraception by accusing them of mortal sin arbitrarily and
therefore unfairly. A man who believes that his wife should be judged by God as
a mortal sinner if she goes on the pill is lying to her that he loves her when
he has sex with her. That would certainly be a vicious and very evil lie. It is
that that should be a mortal sin!
The Church forbids a man to have sex with his wife if she is using contraception
without his consent and takes all responsibility for it. For the Church to say
that contraception is wrong even then for the husband for sex is him saying, “I
love you totally bodily and mentally and your ways and your fertility” is just a
plain lie. He is not going against the Church’s only real argument against
contraception.
If a man really loves his wife’s fertility he will have sex with her in the time
she can get pregnant. If you really love your wife’s fertility, what are you
using the natural method for? You cannot love your wife’s fertility – it is her
you love. There is a smoker who has lost the taste for curry. If he eats the
curry and neglects food that he can taste, is it really true to say he respects
and loves his sense of taste?
To accuse a husband of failing to love his wife if they use contraception is a
vicious form of bullying.
Page 12
Argument
It is mutilation to try and stop fertility with drugs etc. Fertility and babies
are not diseases to be avoided and you don’t use drugs to stop yourself seeing.
We disapprove of drug addicts using drugs to stop their brains being normal.
Contraception makes fertility and babies seem to be malfunctions when they are
not so contraception is wrong.
Refutation
Then why is it not mutilation to drink alcohol? Why all the fuss about
contraception? Why is it not considered serious mutilation to let yourself have
a pot belly? Fertility is a disorder when the wife can die if she gets pregnant.
Eating is natural but if it can kill you it must be stopped and a tube must be
put in you to feed you. Strength is a good thing. But it is bad if the strong
man is going to beat somebody to a pulp. Then you can fire a dart at him to
weaken him. The Church simply and deliberately refuses to admit that sometimes
fertility is bad. This messing about with people’s lives and relationships is
deplorable.
The Church does not believe "contraception is bad for it is trying to fix what
isn’t broken". It says it does and that is one of its lies. It teaches that
suffering is a gift from God and you are to love suffering for it makes you
depend on God and not yourself or anybody else. So it doesn’t believe that
fixing only what is bad is intrinsically good. So then fixing what isn’t broken
cannot be wrong either. It is worse to hold that it is good not to fix what is
causes suffering than to hold that it is good to fix what is good.
It must be mutilation to try and stop a rape victim getting pregnant. You cannot
say the sperms of the attacker are unjust aggressors because they are only cells
and it was the attacker who was the unjust aggressor and now he is gone. Nature
decrees that there is nothing wrong with her being fertile at this time or even
getting pregnant. So you cannot do anything to stop her getting pregnant if the
Church is right.
If a girl makes a mistake when drunk, are the sperms in her unjust aggressors?
The Church says they are not and she cannot be taken to hospital to prevent
conception even if she is Down’s Syndrome or unmarried.
The Church says a wife must expose herself to AIDS rather than use condoms with
her AIDS stricken husband. It cannot accept the unjust aggressor idea though
some theologians do.
Page 12 Argument
The Catholic Church refuses to marry couples who say they intend to use
contraception or who vow never to have children. This is because children are so
important in marriage and a great source of happiness for the parents.
Refutation
It is not up to the Catholic Church to tell couples they must have children.
Besides if she is so concerned about their happiness then why does she make
celibacy obligatory for priests?
The teaching of the Church that it can marry an old couple because they would
have children if they could is total madness. They wouldn’t have children at say
seventy years of age even if they could.
Page 15 Argument
Natural Family Planning isn’t right in itself. It is wrong is used for selfish
reasons. If you don’t want to conceive because you want to go on holiday that
would be bad.
Refutation
Natural Family Planning is really about blackmailing the couple on pain of Hell
into having children unless there is a serious reason not to. Postponing
conception until the holiday is past is not selfish. There is plenty of time.
And such selfishness doesn't do anybody any harm!
Page 15 Argument
It may be right to intend not to have a child and those who use contraception
use a bad way to do it and using Natural Family Planning would be the right way
to do it
Refutation
Contraception is bad for it treats fertility as something to be feared but the
natural method does that too. Is it wrong to take hormones to bulk your body up
if you are a weight-trainer instead of solely depending on the natural method of
hard graft?
Page 16 Argument
Natural Family Planning is safer than the other methods which can lead to
infections etc. The truly loving husband will want his wife to use Natural
Family Planning.
Refutation
Try saying that to a girl who was saved from HIV by using condoms. The insult to
most Catholic marriages is evident. What about women who suspect or know that
their husbands are having rendezvous with prostitutes? The Church has no problem
with women marrying men who had been very promiscuous and then exposing
themselves to whatever viruses these men were carrying on the wedding night.
Page 17 Argument
Natural Family Planning seems to stop husband and wife enjoying sex
spontaneously. This thought is wrong for it confuses spontaneity with slavery.
Self-control with sex is not deprivation but just the couple abstaining from sex
in self-denial for the good of each other.
Refutation
The husband then does the most self-denial for it is good for the wife to have
no pregnancy for it is not the most enjoyable experience in the world and the
man has the easy deal.
They are saying that to have sex whenever you want is slavery. This is totally
ridiculous. It must be slavery to drink water when you want it or to cuddle when
you want it. Is it not slavery to have sex when you want during the safe period?
How much sex must take place before it becomes slavery?
It is just a load of drivel to excuse how Natural Family Planning cares little
for the husband and wife or marriage. It is about control and power. Those who
promote it just want to inflict Catholicism on others because they feel trapped
in it themselves.
Page 17
Argument
Beware that you don’t think that having less spontaneous sex as with the Natural
Family Planning will lessen love. Many marriages have times when a spouse is
away working for long periods during which no sex happens.
Refutation
Some couples need regular sex to maintain love. Not all couples are the same.
The Church cares little for such couples.
Page 18 Argument
Overpopulation is not a concern for there is enough room and food in the world
to feed everybody in it and it is our greed that has led to famine in the Third
World
Refutation
One day it will be a concern even if this is true. And when that day comes the
Church will still be opposing contraception.
Page 18 Argument
Catholics believe that a person can go to Hell to suffer forever for using
contraception for God loves us so much that he lets us have what we choose even
if it is hell
Refutation
So you choose Hell when you choose contraception. This is Christian bullying of
the worst kind.
Page 19 Argument
If we use contraception we are offending against the proper use of sex and sex
is so good that this is a very serious sin. All sin is rejecting a gift of God.
For example, the gift of loving human life is rejected by murder. The gift of
loving sex is rejected by lust.
Refutation
It is not offending against the proper use of sex but the proper use of
fertility. What if a man used condoms for he didn’t like the feel of his wife’s
vagina against his skin and then emptied the sperm in the condom into her
afterwards?
The Church forbids coitus interruptus as a method of contraception. It follows
that if a man enters his wife and she hurts and she protests he must carry on
until ejaculation even if he leaves her bleeding and feeling raped.
Contraception is always wrong in the eyes of the Church. Nobody can say that he
can pull out for the intention is not to contracept but to spare her pain. Why?
Because it follows then that if a man and wife try for a baby and he ejaculates
and she decides it could do her grave harm if she got pregnant she can go to a
doctor and have the egg killed before it gets fertilized. The Church would
forbid that.
Page 21 Argument
Contraception is never right and always wrong for the same reason that one act
of rape is never right or one act of racism is never right.
Refutation
Yet this faith allows a lie to be told to save your brother from the hit squad.
Contraception even if bad cannot be as bad as racism or rape. You cannot rape or
be racist for a good purpose but you can use contraception for a good purpose.
It cannot be always wrong.
Page 21 Argument
Are contraception and losing virginity before marriage the worst sins in the
Catholic book? Our sins are so serious that Jesus had to be crucified to save us
from them but the worst sin is to refuse to go to him in repentance
Refutation
The question isn’t answered and the authors get evasive. Though they say
unrepentance is the worst sin it is clear that they shamefully don’t think that
the sins they mention are too far behind it. The sins killed Jesus.
Contraception nailed Jesus to the cross! This is heavy pressurizing stuff.
Page 27 Argument
Is it cruel to ask one to give away all ones money to the poor? No.
Refutation
This is what you would expect them to say if you tell them you think the
contraception ban is cruel. Hitler would have said it was not cruel to get rid
of the Jews and that it would be cruel to let them live for destruction was the
only answer where they were were concerned.
