Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
He got the local branch to do it.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
You're not even joking, are you? quote:What I've always wondered is why "artificial" birth control is such a bad thing when medical intervention to save life isn't. Shouldn't one be just as willing to accept God's will when God's will is that you die a miserable death as to accept God's will when God's will is that you get pregnant?
Originally posted by Justinian:
But what is the textbook Roman Catholic excuse? The post-facto justification that it's a violation of so-called Natural Law. Never mind that so-called Natural Law is merely a textbook example of the Naturalistic Fallacy, that you claim it here shows that you simply do not care even about this principle.
quote:I'm not. Most of the Catholic Laity in practice ignore the murderous teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, with the commonly quoted (but deceptive) stat being that 98% of Catholic women in America have use birth control, and a more accurate stat being that Sixty-eight percent of sexually active Catholic women use highly effective methods: sterilization, with a further fifteen percent using condoms. That's at least 83% of sexually active Catholic women in America and their partners I am not calling to hell here.
Originally posted by mousethief:
I don't think I've ever seen anybody call the whole Catholic Church to Hell.
quote:I was disappointed that rather than open a simmilar thread, Ken chose to commit (forum) Suicide-by-admin.
Originally posted by Apocalypso:
While I, on the other hand, have been waiting for this to happen since about p. 20 of the election thread in Purg.
quote:Why? And do you have anything actually useful to say?
Originally posted by IngoB:
If this thread had been started on the 22nd of February, it would have presented a rather useful exercise. Pity.
quote:So mark your calendar and wait a week. I have a feeling people will still be waiting here for your devastatingly insightful contribution.
Originally posted by IngoB:
If this thread had been started on the 22nd of February, it would have presented a rather useful exercise. Pity.
quote:Consider it an insider joke...
Originally posted by Justinian:
Why?
quote:Possibly, but not at 2 am.
Originally posted by Justinian:
And do you have anything actually useful to say?
quote:Not suicide; just an illness. He'll be back.
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:I was disappointed that rather than open a simmilar thread, Ken chose to commit (forum) Suicide-by-admin.
Originally posted by Apocalypso:
While I, on the other hand, have been waiting for this to happen since about p. 20 of the election thread in Purg.
quote:I looked it up. It's Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent...when people give things up.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:Consider it an insider joke...
Originally posted by Justinian:
Why?
quote:This looks like as good a place as any to put in a plea for the poor guy's name to be spelled properly. He's not some kind of cross between a cowshed and a double-decker.
Originally posted by Justinian:
Barnabus
quote:Barnabas, for misspelling your name I apologise unreservedly.
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:This looks like as good a place as any to put in a plea for the poor guy's name to be spelled properly. He's not some kind of cross between a cowshed and a double-decker.
Originally posted by Justinian:
Barnabus
quote:And if Catholic teaching were consequential (and assuming of course your figures are correct), you might even have a point.
Originally posted by Justinian:
2: Banning abortion does nothing to lower the abortion rate. I linked evidence for this.
3: Easy access to contraception lowers the abortion rate. No access to contraception increases it. I linked evidence for this.
4: Trisagion (and others) are trying to restrict access to contraception. This, combined with point 3 means that Trisagion is trying to take an action which will increase the abortion rate.
quote:Bollocks.
Originally posted by Yorick:
Trisagion.
quote:Ken was suspended for a C6 infraction, and the subject of the thread it happened on is irrelevant to that call. And any further discussion of it should take place in Styx, or not all all. OK?
Originally posted by Caissa:
Ken probably didn't deserve two weeks of shore leave
quote:What, are you suggesting we ban every Catholic Shipmate for two weeks because of a doctrine of the church they happen to be members of?
but the Roman Catholic church sure does for its position on contraception and abortion.
quote:Fuck off, shitbrain.
Originally posted by Caissa:
Did I say 2 weeks? The Roman catholic Church deserves two millenia to repent its misogyny.
quote:Better than a yawn, I suppose, but hardly persuasive.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
If you think I'm going to waste my time dealing with [stuff, ironically with which I deal herein] you are very much mistaken.
quote:Not only but also.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
even the bloody BBC refer to the Guttmacher Institute (an offshoot of the US government's abortionist of choice, the PPFA ) as 'a pro-choice reproductive think tank'
quote:Listen, cockfart - you don't often get away with questioning adminly rulings down here. Especially not rulings about C6 violations. And calling for people to be banned (especially as part of said questioning of an adminly ruling) isn't welcomed either, because that's our call not yours. I chose mockery over official censure, and you should be damn happy about that.
Originally posted by Caissa:
Fuck off you alliterative, Martian.
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
quote:This is Hell, darling, I don't have to be persuasive nor was I seeking to be.
Originally posted by Yorick:
Better than a yawn, I suppose, but hardly persuasive.
Bwaaark-bwark.
quote:Too bad for you the rules aren't the same in Purgatory.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
This is Hell, darling, I don't have to be persuasive nor was I seeking to be.
quote:Seconded Chesterbelloc, and thirded Erroneous Monk.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Make that "consequentialist". And what Erroneous Monk just said.
quote:Ah, yes. You can whine about "correlation does not imply causation" as much as you like.
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
The fact that there is inverse correlation between two variables does not mean that anyone who wishes A to decrease must also wish B to increase. The person who wishes A to decrease may wish that other factors would come into play that would affect the relationship between A and B.
quote:And there we have it. The Catholic teaching doesn't give a rats arse about the actual consequences of its teachings. What is important is that it keeps to its moral purity rather than helping the bleeding and dying.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
And if Catholic teaching were consequential (and assuming of course your figures are correct), you might even have a point.
quote:Disguise your moral and intellectual cowardice however you like, Trisagion. In some ways I have sympathy - it must be hard to be called on to defend the obviously indefensible.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
quote:Bollocks.
Originally posted by Yorick:
Trisagion.
If you think I'm going to waste my time dealing with a half-arsed argument that is neither logically consistent (see the posts of Chesterbelloc and Erroneous Monk) nor supported by respectable independent evidence - even the bloody BBC refer to the Guttmacher Institute (an offshoot of the US government's abortionist of choice, the PPFA ) as 'a pro-choice reproductive think tank' - then you are very much mistaken.
quote:And as you were writing that last post, Justinian, IngoB was already furnishing it with its P45.
The Catholic teaching doesn't give a rats arse about the actual consequences of its teachings. What is important is that it keeps to its moral purity rather than helping the bleeding and dying.
That it doesn't care about consequences at all as you are claiming, is yet another demonstration of quite how morally bankrupt the Catholic teachings are.
quote:Bollocks. What follows is that Roman Catholic "morality" is shown to not be suitable for dealing with this imperfect world. It's a way for the Roman Catholic Church to stay pure no matter how much evil happens in her name, washing her hands of the consequence of her beliefs.
Originally posted by IngoB:
Roman Catholic morality is both objectivist and absolutist, see here for an explanation. Furthermore, it strictly obeys the principle "never do evil that good may come of it". That principle is of course biblical, St Paul explicitly states it in Romans 3.8.
It follows that Justinian's argument against Trisagion / the RCC instantly crumbles.
quote:No. My argument isn't that the RCC is murderously inconsistent. It's that it is quite simply murderous, more than happy to sacrifice the lives of innocents for the sake of its own religious purity.
But that is not the argument of the OP, which tries to claim that Trisagion and the RCC at large are murderously inconsistent in their morals. They are not. EOD.
quote:Of course he was. He explicitely accepted that the Roman Catholic Church doesn't give a damn about consequences. And demonstrating that the Roman Catholic Church operates in opposition to the actions and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth that I had already cited on the thread.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:And as you were writing that last post, Justinian, IngoB was already furnishing it with its P45.
The Catholic teaching doesn't give a rats arse about the actual consequences of its teachings. What is important is that it keeps to its moral purity rather than helping the bleeding and dying.
That it doesn't care about consequences at all as you are claiming, is yet another demonstration of quite how morally bankrupt the Catholic teachings are.
quote:I.e., in the context of your OP, to sacrifice the lives of innocent pre-borns for the sake of not condoning marital contraception, right?
Originally posted by Justinian:
My argument isn't that the RCC is murderously inconsistent. It's that it is quite simply murderous, more than happy to sacrifice the lives of innocents for the sake of its own religious purity.
quote:So you can't distinguish between not being morally consequentialist and not giving a damn about consequences? Seriously?
Originally posted by Justinian:
He explicitely accepted that the Roman Catholic Church doesn't give a damn about consequences.
quote:And if you really think that's what you've done, I'd have another think if I were you.
Originally posted by Justinian:
And demonstrating that the Roman Catholic Church operates in opposition to the actions and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth that I had already cited on the thread.
![[Biased]](wink.gif)
quote:So do I. I can point to the consequentialist reasons why this would be wrong even before you get into the point that torture doesn't work.
Originally posted by Gildas:
Justinian, you are doing two things on this thread.
First of all you are ignoring the fact that it is perfectly possible to hold that whilst certain ends are desirable means to those ends may not be. I, personally, think that it is a rather good thing when the wiles of Al Qaeda are thwarted but I believe that it would be completely wrong for the fuzz to start torturing terrorist suspects in the course of their wile thwarting activities.
quote:In which case I want them to come out and say this. And they don't have a "it doesn't work" equivalent.
The Catholic Church views contraception as a means of preventing abortion as being akin to using torture as a means of preventing terrorism.
quote:Accessories to murder. I don't believe that they are themselves directly killing anyone.
I think that this is immensely silly but it is more intellectually coherent than accusing the Catholic Bishops of being murderers! murderers, I tell you!
quote:I've never got this argument, which goes thus: "The Catholic Church should encourage her faithful to use contraception in order to prevent them ignoring her existing teaching by procuring abortions." So people who are willing to flout the teaching of the Church on abortion are currently not contracepting because the Church forbids it? I mean, WTF?
Originally posted by Justinian:
If they are prepared to say openly and sincerely that they don't care how many babies would be killed, encouraging contraception would still be worse [etc.]
quote:Well, quite.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
Yawn.
quote:That isn't the argument. The argument is that the Catholic Church should get the fuck out of Public Health and stop sabotaging it.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
I've never got this argument, which goes thus: "The Catholic Church should encourage her faithful to use contraception in order to prevent them ignoring her existing teaching by procuring abortions." So people who are willing to flout the teaching of the Church on abortion are currently not contracepting because the Church forbids it? I mean, WTF?
quote:Oh piss right off, Justinian - I'm not letting you away with that. That was your argument - you've just bottled it, that's all.
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:That isn't the argument. The argument is that the Catholic Church should get the fuck out of Public Health and stop sabotaging it.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
I've never got this argument, which goes thus: "The Catholic Church should encourage her faithful to use contraception in order to prevent them ignoring her existing teaching by procuring abortions." So people who are willing to flout the teaching of the Church on abortion are currently not contracepting because the Church forbids it? I mean, WTF?
quote:But the RRC doesn't just think contraception is wrong for Catholics - it thinks it's wrong for people. It could be wrong, of course. But should it not be allowed to voice that opinion? Should it not be allowed to seek to persuade the government against what they think is wrong for the country? Any other groups you think should be silenced outside their own membership while we're at it?
Originally posted by Justinian:
If the Roman Catholic Church were to take the line that it didn't think that Roman Catholics should use contraception that would be one thing. Something I disagree with but could live with.
quote:That's pathetic, Justinian. Contraception is ubiquitously available and cheap - often free. Catholics are preventing no-one from having access to contraception - they just would rather not be made themselves to pay for someone else to contracept. Suppose the govenment were trying to force employers to cover the purchase of cheap firearms for the protection and safety of their employees. Would it be wrong for those who though there should be greater, not fewer, restrictions on access to firearms to protest against being made to pay for them?
Originally posted by Justinian:
It is the second that the Roman Catholic Church starts interfering to restrict the availability of contraception for non-Catholics that they cross the line from seriously misguided to outright evil. [...] when the RCC prevents them having access to contraception (as it was trying to do, triggering the hell call) then the Roman Catholic teaching on abortion is irrelevant.
quote:If the RCC doesn't recognize marriages not performed by its priests, then it shouldn't have any problem with paying for its non-Catholic employees' birth control. None of them are married in the eyes of the RCC.
Originally posted by IngoB:
I would like to make one specific point though. It is under-appreciated that the RCC has not outlawed contraception. She has officially outlawed only contraception in marriage. There are of course many conservatives who would like to generalize this, and often enough they will not make this distinction in their arguments. However, this is the actual situation. In consequence, it is for example possible by RC morals for a rape victim to use any means to avoid conception (but not to kill an already fertilized egg, which is in the moral realm of abortion). Indeed, the Church has apparently in the past allowed the use of the pill as preventive contraception for nuns operating in a war zone, where they were likely to be raped. Likewise, one can on current official RC doctrine argue that people should use contraception in extra-marital sex, and as it happens that is my opinion. Of course, people shouldn't have any extra-marital sex in the first place, as far as the RC is concerned. But if they do, one can validly suggest the use of contraceptives to reduce the harmful effects of the sin. [/QB]
quote:It might but I am not sure it would be a morally licit way of achieving the desired morally licit end. Added to which, it couldn't be justified under the principle of double-effect because suffocation - always an intrinsically moral evil - would be a foreseen likely end.
Originally posted by Think²:
If we put a condom on him, would it muffle the sound of his synthetic outrage ?
quote:But since the Catholic Church does recognise marriages not performed by her priests your argument falls at its first premise. As a matter of fact, in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, priests (or bishops or deacons) don't perform marriages at all: they are merely the official witnesses of the marriage.
Originally posted by RuthW:
If the RCC doesn't recognize marriages not performed by its priests, then it shouldn't have any problem with paying for its non-Catholic employees' birth control. None of them are married in the eyes of the RCC.
quote:You'd have been a bit bloody stuck in large parts of the US for any kind of health care, public or private, if it hadn't been for the Catholic Church. If it had been left to secular humanists, there'd have been fuck all. Unless and until the citizens of your republic are prepared to establish a system of public health care, you'd just better reconcile yourself to the fact that the price of that is that the Catholic Church is in that space. You want to sabotage healthcare in the US: close down Catholic hospitals.
Originally posted by Justinian:
The argument is that the Catholic Church should get the fuck out of Public Health...
quote:I would have it put on the record that I think this thread is silly and unproductive, but there are problems with this in particular, strictly from a legal stand point. I don’t agree with the bishop of Rome on contraception—specifically when it comes to contraception in the context of marriage, but I can hardly fault his Church for inconsistency.
That's pathetic, Justinian. Contraception is ubiquitously available and cheap - often free. Catholics are preventing no-one from having access to contraception - they just would rather not be made themselves to pay for someone else to contracept. Suppose the govenment were trying to force employers to cover the purchase of cheap firearms for the protection and safety of their employees. Would it be wrong for those who though there should be greater, not fewer, restrictions on access to firearms to protest against being made to pay for them?
![[Snore]](graemlins/snore.gif)
quote:I have to assume there is much public money which flows in and out of these so-called 'private' organizations. To me that makes it a bit murkier. And murkier still is my (possibly incorrect but strong nonetheless) perception that the bishops weren't nearly so outraged by decades of child sexual abuse as they are about some woman getting birth control on her work health insurance. Doesn't do much for my opinion of the institutional Roman Catholic Church – but it was pretty low anyway so this is just icing on the cake.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
Secondly, you are not talking about public health: you're talking about the funding of private healthcare.
quote:It might be worth pointing out that accessory to murder has a particular legal significance in the UK. See for example the section headed "England and Wales". There are also variations in other countries but the underlying principles appear to be just two.
Originally posted by Justinian:
Accessories to murder. I don't believe that they are themselves directly killing anyone.
quote:That's the way your argument looks right now. In tatters. Anything you'd like to modify, retract?
The other thing you are doing is sounding like a Jack Chick from an alternate earth who doesn't believe in God and who has a fairly good grasp of science but otherwise has retained all his prejudices intact. Given the fairly open goal that Catholic teaching and praxis so often presents to the hostile critic your track record of volleying the ball into Row G is distinctly impressive.
quote:The problem here is one of social engineering. Should the RCC be seen advertising the use of condoms under any circumstances? Hell no, say many, they will all just grab the condoms and forget all the fine arguments and conditions near instantly. Frankly, that's hardly an unrealistic assessment.
Originally posted by Think²:
If 1 is in fact the official teaching of the RC church it would good to see it get more air time.
quote:Last time I tried this I think we ended up with a dozen pages... Deciding when to have sex is not necessarily the same as altering what happens when one has sex, even if having sex at a particular times has the same altered outcome. Because in deontology we are not looking at the outcomes, but at the nature of the act and the intent behind it. Hence the same outcome does not imply the same moral status. Starting with the intent, the intent to "not have any more kids at the moment" can be good, though it need not be. But that's a different discussion. Let's just assume we can tick off this intent as not being the problem.
Originally posted by Think²:
I would be interested in an answer to 2.
quote:Well…if the weather forecast was for rain, you wouldn't plan a picnic, would you? The weather is out of your control, but you can plan your actions around it. As opposed to saying "We can't have a picnic because I just turned on the sprinkler in the backyard."
Originally posted by Think²:
I don't see how that intent is really different to fitting a coil.
quote:I'm trying wrap my head around this, but I can't see the difference between sex when a woman is temporarily naturally infertile, and having sex using a condom. Both are sex for fun/love only and deliberately intended to prevent sperm fertilising egg. Can it be because the rhythm method doesn't involve any extra equipment e.g. a condom?
Originally posted by IngoB:
What then is wrong with contraception? Not the intent to have less children, at least not necessarily so. Rather the means, since one then actively changes the nature of the sexual act, therefore becoming culpable of the induced lack. In summary: Contraception makes the sexual act less perfect than God has allowed it to be, and is hence evil. Natural family planning uses the imperfections God has permitted in the sexual act, and is hence licit (if used with good intent).
quote:Or in the case of this thread, rubber macs.
I mean, rain is a natural Good without which we'd all surely die, but we nevertheless use umbrellas.
quote:Wasn't macs planked some years back?
Originally posted by Pyx_e:
Or in the case of this thread, rubber macs.
AtB Pyx_e
quote:This does deserve a response. And you have very neatly outlined the problem with pure causistry. Pure consequentialism would work if and only if you had perfect knowledge.
Originally posted by IngoB:
Most Christian ethics is deontological. It looks at the nature of actions and the will of agents, not at the final outcome. This is a very humane position, since it does not measure deeds by their "success". If you tried to save someone, but failed, you are not therefore evil. You are good. Perhaps there was a better way, by which you could have succeeded. That still does not make you evil. You are then inept, but still good. Deontology concentrates on moral inputs, not outputs.
quote:Let me for simplicity's sake pretend that God can sin and contradict Himself. (May He forgive my boldness.)
Originally posted by Think²:
I think what I find odd is the "just happened" not to be fertile on that day. Well, it doesn't just happen though does it ? It is planned to be a non fertile day. I don't see how that intent is really different to fitting a coil.
quote:Your whole last post, this paragraph in particular, just shows that you simply fail to grasp the demandingness of moral prohibitions. Since you don't get it, ask yourself what consequences would justify raping someone. Get back to me when you've thought about that.
Originally posted by Justinian:
Rejecting deontology entirely is bad, agreed. But so is rejecting consequentialism entirely. You need the deontological rules most of the time, but just like following a map, if the map marks a bridge and by following it you end up in the river then the map is wrong. And if by following your code of ethics you end up increasing what you consider to be the number of murdered babies, the map you were using is almost certainly wrong.
quote:Context matters. I wasn't calling everyone to hell. I was calling Trisagion and Catholic Bishops to hell for a specific thing they were trying to do.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:Oh piss right off, Justinian - I'm not letting you away with that. That was your argument - you've just bottled it, that's all.
Originally posted by Justinian:
That isn't the argument. The argument is that the Catholic Church should get the fuck out of Public Health and stop sabotaging it.
quote:It should. But at the same time it should accept that every single additional abortion this causes is their responsibility.
But the RRC doesn't just think contraception is wrong for Catholics - it thinks it's wrong for people. It could be wrong, of course. But should it not be allowed to voice that opinion? Should it not be allowed to seek to persuade the government against what they think is wrong for the country?
quote:I wish I had such rose tinted spectacles. In America, 55% of Emergency Rooms in Roman Catholic hospitals refuse to provide Emergency Contraception even for rape. Contraception is not always freely available, despite the best efforts of benevolent organisations like Planned Parenthood. (Of course that's an old study - and numbers were significantly changing at the time).
That's pathetic, Justinian. Contraception is ubiquitously available and cheap - often free. Catholics are preventing no-one from having access to contraception - they just would rather not be made themselves to pay for someone else to contracept.
quote:No it wouldn't. Protest all you like. Speak up all you like. And underline how much of a moral vacuum Roman Catholic teaching is. I just hope you and your church do not succeed at this attempt to make the world a worse place.
Suppose the govenment were trying to force employers to cover the purchase of cheap firearms for the protection and safety of their employees. Would it be wrong for those who though there should be greater, not fewer, restrictions on access to firearms to protest against being made to pay for them?
quote:I can't think of any that would come unless I had perfect knowledge.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Your whole last post, this paragraph in particular, just shows that you simply fail to grasp the demandingness of moral prohibitions. Since you don't get it, ask yourself what consequences would justify raping someone. Get back to me when you've thought about that.
quote:It's not Vatican roulette but Vatican chess these days, as you have acknowledged. And the question who is more "open to the procreative aspect of sex" is not determined by the greater chance to get pregnant. One can have exactly zero chance of procreating and still be reckoned totally open to the procreative aspect of sex. The basic question is: if God switched the natural fertility of the couple to 100% (possibly miraculously), how likely is a pregnancy? It may well be the case that in the middle age couple this is close to 100% (since they thought they were doing this on an off day, and are making all the right moves), whereas it is close to 0% for the teenagers (because their fertility was full bore anyway, but their condom is working just fine).
Originally posted by Gildas:
It's a bit much claiming that a middle aged couple playing vatican roulette are somehow more open to the transmission of life than a pair of drunken teenagers wrestling with a condom.
quote:Not at all, of course. The whole moral discussion of NFP vs. contraception stops at the contradiction in moral terms of an "observant Catholic girlfriend having sex with me". It will probably not further your aim of getting into her pants if you point out that it is inconsistent bullshit to insist on NFP for fornication. But that's pretty much what that is. Well, it pretends a kind of respectability in the very midst of sin. I will not pretend that I have never calmed my conscience that way...
Originally posted by Tortuf:
Assume for a moment I am correct. (A stretch, I know) How does that affect the argument?
quote:You mena because there are next to fuck all secular humanists in America? Yes, once you get past the moral blindness that infects the Roman Catholic Church it does quite a lot of good.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
You'd have been a bit bloody stuck in large parts of the US for any kind of health care, public or private, if it hadn't been for the Catholic Church. If it had been left to secular humanists, there'd have been fuck all.
quote:Oh no. I don't want them closed down. I want them effectively nationalised. Single payer insurance at a minimum.
Unless and until the citizens of your republic are prepared to establish a system of public health care, you'd just better reconcile yourself to the fact that the price of that is that the Catholic Church is in that space. You want to sabotage healthcare in the US: close down Catholic hospitals.
quote:I suppose I shouldn't really expect you to understand medicine any more than you do ethics. You can manage Public Health through private provision. The Germans and Canadians do - and contraception (especially condoms) is very much a part of Public Health. (Abortion on the other hand is not a part of public health - and although I disagree with the RCC on the subject, it is not obviously morally wrong here).
Secondly, you are not talking about public health: you're talking about the funding of private healthcare.
quote:If you read the bible, God does contradict himself. See Jonah in which Jonah does preach what God commanded - "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown."
Originally posted by IngoB:
Let me for simplicity's sake pretend that God can sin and contradict Himself. (May He forgive my boldness.)
quote:Not proven. And IMO not even true. The primary goal of the sexual act is, as I have demonstrated, not procreation. If the primary goal of the sexual act in humans were procreation, humans would not have a number of adaptions that make procreation unlikely, such as the inability to easily tell when a woman is fertile.
Then in the case of natural family planning the situations is that God has sinned grievously by imposing a serious defect on the sexual act: frequently and indeed even regularly, it will fail to achieve procreation, its primary goal.
quote:This is rather fascinating, actually. And does tie in with things you've said earlier.
Originally posted by IngoB:
And the question who is more "open to the procreative aspect of sex" is not determined by the greater chance to get pregnant. One can have exactly zero chance of procreating and still be reckoned totally open to the procreative aspect of sex. The basic question is: if God switched the natural fertility of the couple to 100% (possibly miraculously), how likely is a pregnancy? It may well be the case that in the middle age couple this is close to 100% (since they thought they were doing this on an off day, and are making all the right moves), whereas it is close to 0% for the teenagers (because their fertility was full bore anyway, but their condom is working just fine).
quote:Italy, which is the Vatican's backyard, has a fertility rate of 1.33 per woman. Spain, Portugal, Chile and Brazil are fairly close. Argentina and Mexico are around 2 per couple and the Philippines is just over 3.
Originally posted by Sine Nomine:
Theory is all well and good, but I'd be interested in knowing the average number of kids western Roman Catholic families typically have today.
quote:It would be wonderful for the bishops to say that plainly and loudly and repeatedly. When I was younger, I had a fair number of friends who were Catholic and unmarried and sexually active. They didn't use contraception because they were Catholic, and everyone knows that it's sinful for Catholics to use contraception.
Originally posted by IngoB:
Furthermore, unless the drunken teenagers happen to be married, their using a condom is anyway compatible with RC morals. Their having sex is certainly not, but given that they will sin that way, the harm reduction afforded by the condom can very well be seen as the dominant consideration.
quote:More importantly, why they expect to be able to reap the tax benefits of providing health insurance to their employees while doing so in a gender discriminatory manner? If you cast your mind back to Bob Jones University v. United States, it was ruled that while certain religious institutions are allowed to behave in a discriminatory manner, the U.S. government is not obligated to give them the special tax breaks usually granted to publicly beneficial organizations.
Originally posted by Josephine:
And it would be wonderful for the bishops to explain why it's wrong for women to take the Pill to treat endometriosis, excessive menstrual bleeding, or premenstrual dysphoria disorder. If that's not wrong, they'd need to explain why they refuse to cover effective treatment for medical disorders that afflict women, but not men.
quote:Or that the particular point was so surrounded by the childish venting of your usual prejudices that it was lost on me. How stupid of me.
Originally posted by Justinian:
Of course you've already demonstrated that you don't understand healthcare by trying to claim that Roman Catholic opposition to contraception was about "the conscientious objection to killing other human beings" in reply to RuthW. And it was that post that caused me to call you to hell. I'm not sure whether this reflected ignorance or disingenuousness.
quote:Since the said RCC shipmates are part of the said RCC, what you are calling for amounts to the same. Since you claim you didn't mean that, what exactly did you attempt to mean?
Originally posted by Caissa:
I called for the banning of the Roman Catholic Church not Roman Catholic shipmates, M & M. Okay, you red planetted prick. Read often?
quote:I lived in Malta for a couple of years in the 1990's and I'm sure it was and probably remains more RC than Italy or Ireland.
Originally posted by ToujoursDan:
quote:Italy, which is the Vatican's backyard, has a fertility rate of 1.33 per woman. Spain, Portugal, Chile and Brazil are fairly close. Argentina and Mexico are around 2 per couple and the Philippines is just over 3.
Originally posted by Sine Nomine:
Theory is all well and good, but I'd be interested in knowing the average number of kids western Roman Catholic families typically have today.
Can't pull that off without loads of birth control.
quote:Riiight. Just as well for you that no-one can, like, go back and re-read your posts, eh?
Originally posted by Justinian:
Context matters. I wasn't calling everyone to hell. I was calling Trisagion and Catholic Bishops to hell for a specific thing they were trying to do.
quote:Just you go on asserting that, justinian, and maybe someone will forget that you've completely failed to establish it.
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:It should. But at the same time it should accept that every single additional abortion this causes is their responsibility.
But the RRC doesn't just think contraception is wrong for Catholics - it thinks it's wrong for people. It could be wrong, of course. But should it not be allowed to voice that opinion? Should it not be allowed to seek to persuade the government against what they think is wrong for the country?
quote:That's bloody rich coming from you, pal.
Originally posted by Justinian:
But you are trying to shift the ground here.
quote:Only, it isn't - it is just trying to avoid those who object in conscience being forced to provide it themselves. Others would remain completely free to provide it. It's not even trying to eliminate all access to contraception and abortifacient drugs to Catholics who want to use them.
Originally posted by Justinian:
It is trying to deny contraception even to those who don't.
quote:When the kind of contraception you are talking about is the flushing out of fertilised human eggs, and if you accept as the RCC does that life begins at that stage of conception, then that is exactly what it is. No-one's asking you to agree with us on this, just to not to force us to facilitate or participate in it. Killing human beings is a pretty big deal, for Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
Originally posted by Justinian:
This is underlined by people such as Trisagion who try to elide contraception and abortion by claiming that the problem with Roman Catholic Contraception amounts to "redefining the conscientious objection to killing other human beings as unlawfully standing in the way of preventative care"
quote:Except when it is. See above. If you happen to think that abortion should be or generally is defined in such a way as to exclude pre-implantation flushing out of fertilised human ova, that's fine. We can call it something else. But it won't change the moral nature of the act. And that is what matters.
Originally posted by Justinian:
That is complete and utter bollocks. Contraception is not abortion.
quote:55% of Catholic hospitals will not dish out drugs that effect a direct violation of Roman Catholic principles about the sanctity of life? I'm shocked, I tell you - shocked! If only Catholic hospitals were not the only providers of such drugs...
Originally posted by Justinian:
In America, 55% of Emergency Rooms in Roman Catholic hospitals refuse to provide Emergency Contraception even for rape. Contraception is not always freely available, despite the best efforts of benevolent organisations like Planned Parenthood.
quote:Just keep repeating it.
Originally posted by Justinian:
And yes, Emergency Contraception is contraception.
quote:Trisagion, I'm afraid that on this subject you are simply wrong. Which, if that is an argument that makes a difference to you, should come as a relief. Emergency Hormonal Contraception, better known as the "Morning After Pill" is not an abortifacient. It is a contraceptive. It acts, as the normal pill acts, by preventing ovulation, and thickening the mucus which prevents the sperm reaching the egg. It does not act in an abortifacient manner, although it might (and this is unproven either way) prevent implantation - statistical evidence suggests it does not prevent implantation.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
The expression "preventive care" is the euphemism of choice of the current US administration to cover not only barrier methods of contraception - which clearly do not involve the killing of another human being - bit also anovulent pharmaceutical methods - which can and do cause that through the prevention of the implantation - but more particularly the provision of what this side of the pond is called the "morning after pill", which acts in an abortifacient manner.
quote:How about reading the thread title. It says "Calling Trisagion and the Catholic Bishops". Not "calling every Catholic that ever lived".
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:Riiight. Just as well for you that no-one can, like, go back and re-read your posts, eh?
Originally posted by Justinian:
Context matters. I wasn't calling everyone to hell. I was calling Trisagion and Catholic Bishops to hell for a specific thing they were trying to do.
quote:And I see that you are suffering from the same misapprehension that Trisagion is. The Pill does not prevent implantation. It works by preventing ovulation and by creating a natural barrier that prevents the sperm travelling. The Morning After Pill works in the exact same way. The (copper) IUD does not work by preventing implantation. It works by creating a spermicidal (and ovicidal) environment, ensuring that the sperm and the egg never meet. (The (hormonal) IUS is merely a different mechanism for delivering progesterone and has the exact same mechanism as The Pill).
When the kind of contraception you are talking about is the flushing out of fertilised human eggs, and if you accept as the RCC does that life begins at that stage of conception, then that is exactly what it is.
quote:And no one I am aware of is asking you to participate in providing RU-486 or other forms of abortion. Killing human beings is indeed a big deal. Contraception prevents this.
No-one's asking you to agree with us on this, just to not to force us to facilitate or participate in it. Killing human beings is a pretty big deal, for Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
quote:I think contraception as practiced, to the best of medical knowledge available does not include pre-implantation flushing of fertilised human ova. The Progesterone Pill, including variations such as the hormonal IUS and the Morning After Pill, according to the best evidence we have available, doesn't do this. The (copper) IUD doesn't do this. The (copper) IUD used as emergency contraception might do this, but this is unproven.
Except when it is. See above. If you happen to think that abortion should be or generally is defined in such a way as to exclude pre-implantation flushing out of fertilised human ova, that's fine. We can call it something else. But it won't change the moral nature of the act. And that is what matters.
quote:Since you insist:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:Just keep repeating it.
Originally posted by Justinian:
And yes, Emergency Contraception is contraception.
quote:I'm sure it'll be a stretch for him, after all what else has he to do with his grace and mercy
Originally posted by IngoB:
Let me for simplicity's sake pretend that God can sin and contradict Himself. (May He forgive my boldness.)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
. quote:Procreation is the primary goal of human sex? Is this the Catholic Church's de facto understanding? I realize that Aristotelian ethics originally influenced many of the Church Fathers in their definition of the 'proper' and 'good' use of sex. But haven't we learnt a few more significant things about biology and humanity since then.
Then in the case of natural family planning the situations is that God has sinned grievously by imposing a serious defect on the sexual act: frequently and indeed even regularly, it will fail to achieve procreation, its primary goal.
quote:Heck, your own citations above make that sufficiently clear. You're doing my job for me.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
No, Justinian - there is real ongoing doubt amongst the scientific experts about whether the m-a pill sometimes prevents implantation of fertilized ova. See the citations linked to on this page make that sufficiently clear.
quote:The citations linked at your page make things incredibly clear. Did you actually read them before posting the link?
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
No, Justinian - there is real ongoing doubt amongst the scientific experts about whether the m-a pill sometimes prevents implantation of fertilized ova. See the citations linked to on this page make that sufficiently clear.
quote:Why do I want to shoot into a barrel?
The principle of moral caution fully justifies refusal to condone a treatment that has this level of uncertainty of effect from those who consider moral significance to begin at fertilisation. Would you shoot into barrel you thought had even 1% chance of concealing a dozing hobo in it?
quote:Nothing like as well as you just did mine for me. My citations showed that the scientific community directly involved in research on the mechanisms hadn't completely ruled every possibility of implantation being slightly inhibited out. Mostly because proving a negative is almost impossible.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:Heck, your own citations above make that sufficiently clear. You're doing my job for me.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
No, Justinian - there is real ongoing doubt amongst the scientific experts about whether the m-a pill sometimes prevents implantation of fertilized ova. See the citations linked to on this page make that sufficiently clear.
quote:Dude, I'm a traditional Christian as in church fathers, councils and scholastics, not as in fundamentalist, YECcie and bible belt. If you are not pulling my leg here, then I suggest that you look at this document by the Pontifical Biblibal Commission. The sort of naively literalist "argument" from the bible you are advancing here is dealt with in the section "F. Fundamentalist Interpretation", and none too kindly as you will notice.
Originally posted by Justinian:
If you read the bible, God does contradict himself. See Jonah in which Jonah does preach what God commanded - "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." Jonah Chapter 3 verse 10: 10And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not. How much more explicit do you want?
quote:You have, of course, demonstrated nothing of that sort. We are not talking here about the actual intentions of people having sex, but about what sex is good for in principle. And the primary purpose is then that without which sex would not exist. Clearly this is procreation. If we would reproduce asexually, would we still have evolved genitals and use them in something resembling the sexual act? No, we would not. The whole design of the genitals clearly serves the purpose of joining gametes from both parents. This is as easy to discern as that the purpose of the heart is to pump blood through the body. It is risible to claim that such highly complicated organs and the complex physiology and behaviour governing their function could have arisen for any other purpose than the obvious one of procreation. Testicles do not produce massive amounts of sperm for the unity of spouses. The lining of the uterus is not refreshed monthly to provide pleasure. Etc.
Originally posted by Justinian:
Not proven. And IMO not even true. The primary goal of the sexual act is, as I have demonstrated, not procreation. If the primary goal of the sexual act in humans were procreation, humans would not have a number of adaptions that make procreation unlikely, such as the inability to easily tell when a woman is fertile.
quote:This has nothing to do with Aristotelian ethics or social engineering in antiquity / the middle ages or whatever. It is an utterly inescapable conclusion from observing the anatomy, physiology and biology of humans just as much as of any other sexually reproducing animal. Really and truly, sex is primarily about reproduction, just as heart beating is primarily about pumping blood around and lung breathing is primarily about getting oxygen into the body.
Originally posted by Anselmina:
Procreation is the primary goal of human sex? Is this the Catholic Church's de facto understanding? I realize that Aristotelian ethics originally influenced many of the Church Fathers in their definition of the 'proper' and 'good' use of sex. But haven't we learnt a few more significant things about biology and humanity since then.
quote:So any act which doesn't result in a child doesn't count as "sex"? Do you think such acts don't exist in the sense of not being sex, or in the sense of never having really occurred?
Originally posted by IngoB:
We are not talking here about the actual intentions of people having sex, but about what sex is good for in principle. And the primary purpose is then that without which sex would not exist. Clearly this is procreation.
quote:Only if you have reached a stage where you accept that you have to act and believe in accordance with long and convoluted interpretations mostly arrived at in committee. And AFAIK, no committee has ever taken any of the sacraments.
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
There are some awfully long posts on this thread. One of the reasons I don't become a Roman Catholic is that if I did, I'd have to spend the next twenty years finding out what I believed. And I don't have that kind of time.
quote:Well, quite. How is that supposed to count against my caution that it might indeed, as other experts in the field have suggested it in fact may?
Originally posted by Justinian:
My citations showed that the scientific community directly involved in research on the mechanisms hadn't completely ruled every possibility of implantation being slightly inhibited out.
quote:You think that paper conclusively rules out every possibility that LNG-EC acts to prevent implantation of fertilized ova in women? How does it do that, precisely?
Originally posted by Justinian:
To do that, I needed one of the citations you told me to read, thank you.
quote:I was struck by this part of the argument, that the secondary nature of the non-procreative aspects of sex is demonstrated by the fact that they can be absent without sex ceasing to exist.
Originally posted by IngoB:
We are not talking here about the actual intentions of people having sex, but about what sex is good for in principle. And the primary purpose is then that without which sex would not exist. Clearly this is procreation....
snip
...This is not to claim that sex has no other purposes. It does, certainly in humans. But these are secondary to the primary purpose (and as it turns out, ordered to it). This is easily demonstrated by the fact that they can be absent without sex ceasing to exist.
quote:I think your argument pretty much reduces to admitting that the effect claimed is so small or infrequent that it cannot be observed scientifically. This is quite different than Trisagion's original claim that:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:You think that paper conclusively rules out every possibility that LNG-EC acts to prevent implantation of fertilized ova in women? How does it do that, precisely?
Originally posted by Justinian:
To do that, I needed one of the citations you told me to read, thank you.
quote:Note the claim of definite, clinical knowledge and the assertion that such knowledge is strong enough to base public health policy on.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
The expression "preventive care" is the euphemism of choice of the current US administration to cover not only barrier methods of contraception - which clearly do not involve the killing of another human being - bit also anovulent pharmaceutical methods - which can and do cause that through the prevention of the implantation - but more particularly the provision of what this side of the pond is called the "morning after pill", which acts in an abortifacient manner.
quote:I rather believe the point is that sex in the animal kingdom evolved for the purpose of procreation. No question about that.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:So any act which doesn't result in a child doesn't count as "sex"? Do you think such acts don't exist in the sense of not being sex, or in the sense of never having really occurred?
Originally posted by IngoB:
We are not talking here about the actual intentions of people having sex, but about what sex is good for in principle. And the primary purpose is then that without which sex would not exist. Clearly this is procreation.
quote:Hey, if I'm going to engage in any obsequium religiosum*, I want to know in advance exactly what it is I'm being obsequious about.
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:Only if you have reached a stage where you accept that you have to act and believe in accordance with long and convoluted interpretations mostly arrived at in committee. And AFAIK, no committee has ever taken any of the sacraments.
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
There are some awfully long posts on this thread. One of the reasons I don't become a Roman Catholic is that if I did, I'd have to spend the next twenty years finding out what I believed. And I don't have that kind of time.
quote:Seriously? That? That is your "evidence"? An op-ed saying "well, one possibility has been ruled out. But we don't want to change our ideas, so let's come up with a few other random hypotheses rather than changing our theory."
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:Well, quite. How is that supposed to count against my caution that it might indeed, as other experts in the field have suggested it in fact may?
Originally posted by Justinian:
My citations showed that the scientific community directly involved in research on the mechanisms hadn't completely ruled every possibility of implantation being slightly inhibited out.
quote:You think that paper conclusively rules out every possibility that LNG-EC acts to prevent implantation of fertilized ova in women? How does it do that, precisely?
Originally posted by Justinian:
To do that, I needed one of the citations you told me to read, thank you.
Here (a response to this paper) are the opinions of some who do not consider it settled.
quote:Actually, I've stupidly allowed myself to become sidetracked into only discussing one of the covered options, "Plan B". My bad. But since Justinian brought RU-486 up, "Ella" (the "week after pill" which closely resembles it) which is considered an abortifacient (see here and here for starters) is definitely covered by the Obama mandate.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:I think your argument pretty much reduces to admitting that the effect claimed is so small or infrequent that it cannot be observed scientifically.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:You think that paper conclusively rules out every possibility that LNG-EC acts to prevent implantation of fertilized ova in women? How does it do that, precisely?
Originally posted by Justinian:
To do that, I needed one of the citations you told me to read, thank you.
quote:First off, you shouldn't consider the Weekly Standard or some anti-abortion website as a decent source for medical data. Any citations from primary research you'd care to offer on this one?
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Actually, I've stupidly allowed myself to become sidetracked into only discussing one of the covered options, "Plan B". My bad. But since Justinian brought RU-486 up, "Ella" (the "week after pill" which closely resembles it) which is considered an abortifacient (see here and here for starters) is definitely covered by the Obama mandate.
quote:Thank you for this information and for the other links. I will readily refrain from engaging further on this particular point unless and until I have acquainted myself with all the evidence you have adduced.
Originally posted by Justinian:
Trisagion, I'm afraid that on this subject you are simply wrong. Which, if that is an argument that makes a difference to you, should come as a relief. Emergency Hormonal Contraception, better known as the "Morning After Pill" is not an abortifacient. It is a contraceptive. It acts, as the normal pill acts, by preventing ovulation, and thickening the mucus which prevents the sperm reaching the egg. It does not act in an abortifacient manner, although it might (and this is unproven either way) prevent implantation - statistical evidence suggests it does not prevent implantation.
For that matter, the argument that any major contraceptive method prevents implantation, let alone is an abortifacient, is unproven. I've linked evidence on what actually happens on Josephine's thread in Dead Horses. (The single exception being the copper IUD when used specifically as a means of emergency contraception - if used as regular contraception it does indeed inflame the lining of the uterus, but both this inflammation and the presence of the copper itself make the uterus both spermicidal and ovicidal).
quote:"Lifenews". Right. And the Neo-conservative Weekly Standard. I think I can see how accurate your news sources are. Of course given how badly you did when you actually went for scientific evidence I'm not surprised you're going for tabloids and shifting drugs.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Actually, I've stupidly allowed myself to become sidetracked into only discussing one of the covered options, "Plan B". My bad. But since Justinian brought RU-486 up, "Ella" (the "week after pill" which closely resembles it) which is considered an abortifacient (see here and here for starters) is definitely covered by the Obama mandate.
quote:And thank you. That is all I can ask.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
Thank you for this information and for the other links. I will readily refrain from engaging further on this particular point unless and until I have acquainted myself with all the evidence you have adduced.
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
quote:Tackle the issues, not the sources, Crœsus. The Weekly Standard piece was almost entirely composed of sources and links (including medical info ones) from elsewhere. Did you follow any of them? Perhaps you could tell me what factual criticisms you have of either of the pieces I linked to in re Ella's modus operandi.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
First off, you shouldn't consider the Weekly Standard or some anti-abortion website as a decent source for medical data. Any citations from primary research you'd care to offer on this one?
quote:Beg the question much? It covers Ella. Under "contraception". Ella seems to lead to the rejection of fertilised ova, (perhaps even after implantation). Do you know different? Let's hear it.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Second, the "Obama mandate" does not cover abortifacients.
quote:What they're arguing is that Catholics should not be made to cover products like Ella to which they conscientiously object. Would you be happy to cover insurance for what you considered to be destruction of the innocent?
Originally posted by Crœsos:
What Catholic institutions are arguing here is that they should be able to provide insurance in a manner that's gender-discriminatory and still reap the tax benefits thereof.
quote:Sigh. No, rather even sexual acts that do not result in a child, including those clearly not even aiming at procreation like solo masturbation, do occur only because sexual acts are intended by nature to produce offspring. These organs have evolved primarily to fulfill a specific biological function, reproduction, whether that function is in fact realized in any particular instance of their operation or not.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
So any act which doesn't result in a child doesn't count as "sex"?
quote:Sure. A good argument can be made that a couple should refrain from sex entirely rather than merely executing the physiological mechanics.
Originally posted by anne:
My first reaction was that marital sex without these 'secondary' characteristics (reinforcing pair bonds, the 'delight and tenderness of sexual union' to quote someone or other) sounds - well I want to say barren.
quote:Well, the basic reason why the RCC condemns IVF etc. is because these methods separate procreation from sex. So yes, that connection is highly relevant, but the RCC thinks it says something moral about these methods, rather than about sex.
Originally posted by anne:
I also wondered whether the fact that today procreation can occur without sex, affects the argument that the 'point' of sex is procreation?
quote:I've already cross-posted an answer (and thanks for the concession). But for what it's worth (I may have some medical research to my name - but as a statistician, not a medical person so this is a layman's opinion), my guess would be that Ella is an abortifacient if and only if the envelope is pushed in terms of when it is taken.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Tell you what, Justinian, I'll concede defeat-by-medical-consensus over the morning-after pill discussion we've just been having if you will address the "Ella" issue.
quote:Thank you for this information and for the other links. I will readily refrain from engaging further on this particular point unless and until I have acquainted myself with all the evidence you have adduced.
Originally posted by Justinian:
Trisagion, I'm afraid that on this subject you are simply wrong. Which, if that is an argument that makes a difference to you, should come as a relief. Emergency Hormonal Contraception, better known as the "Morning After Pill" is not an abortifacient. It is a contraceptive. It acts, as the normal pill acts, by preventing ovulation, and thickening the mucus which prevents the sperm reaching the egg. It does not act in an abortifacient manner, although it might (and this is unproven either way) prevent implantation - statistical evidence suggests it does not prevent implantation.
For that matter, the argument that any major contraceptive method prevents implantation, let alone is an abortifacient, is unproven. I've linked evidence on what actually happens on Josephine's thread in Dead Horses. (The single exception being the copper IUD when used specifically as a means of emergency contraception - if used as regular contraception it does indeed inflame the lining of the uterus, but both this inflammation and the presence of the copper itself make the uterus both spermicidal and ovicidal).
quote:The trouble is they are also arguing to not cover Plan B. Or The Pill. Single out Ella as part of the campaign and directly accept Plan B and other definitively contraceptive methods and this stops looking like grasping at straws.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
What they're arguing is that Catholics should not be made to cover products like Ella to which they conscientiously object. Would you be happy to cover insurance for what you considered to be destruction of the innocent?
quote:Ok, just tell me where they're wrong on this issue.
Originally posted by Justinian:
"Lifenews". Right. And the Neo-conservative Weekly Standard. I think I can see how accurate your news sources are.
quote:Gracious of you. I pointed to competent medical opinion that doubted the complete absence of abortifacient effect of LNG-EC. There wasn't as much as I had thought, and I conceded that the medical consensus was on your side.
Originally posted by Justinian:
Of course given how badly you did when you actually went for scientific evidence I'm not surprised you're going for tabloids and shifting drugs.
quote:So what? Can Ella cause fertilised eggs to be ejected or can it not? That is the pertinent question. It has been recorded as "embryolethal" in animal tests and the manufacturers themselves, as well as clinicians, admit "alterations to the endometrium that may affect implantation may also contribute to efficacy."
Originally posted by Justinian:
As for Ulipristal Acetate, better known as ellaOne or Ella, it indeed is a "sister drug" to RU-486. In that RU-486 contains two active ingredients which combine to have an abortive mechanism, and Ella contains something a bit like one of them. At 5% of the dosage.
quote:It is.
Originally posted by Justinian:
And, for the record, even if Ella is covered,
quote:What does that mean? Who can prescribe it? If Ella is covered, it can be prescribed.
Originally posted by Justinian:
you can simply prescribe Plan B.
quote:Thank you.
Originally posted by Justinian:
But this one, although there is no definitive evidence, you do at least have a case especially as unlike Plan B the NHS says the already pregnant are not to take it.
quote:Yes, indeed they are. But Catholics fully admit that that (potentially) abortifacient drugs are a much more serious issue than (non-abortifacient) contraceptives. In terms of political savvy, maybe singling out Ella and giving way on the contraceptives would be sucessful. But singling out Ella would still leave Catholics with an issue of conscience over the lesser evil of the contraceptives: an issue of conscience is an issue of conscience. Why force Catholics to cover such services against their religious principles at all when they are generally accessible, cheap and freely available otherwise? What is the actual point of that?
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:The trouble is they are also arguing to not cover Plan B. Or The Pill.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
What they're arguing is that Catholics should not be made to cover products like Ella to which they conscientiously object. Would you be happy to cover insurance for what you considered to be destruction of the innocent?
quote:As noted above, no one is forcing Catholics to do anything. There is no requirement under U.S. law to provide a prescription drug benefit to your employees. There is, however, a standard for what must be included for something to be considered a prescription drug benefit.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Yes, indeed they are. But Catholics fully admit that that (potentially) abortifacient drugs are a much more serious issue than (non-abortifacient) contraceptives. In terms of political savvy, maybe singling out Ella and giving way on the contraceptives would be sucessful. But singling out Ella would still leave Catholics with an issue of conscience over the lesser evil of the contraceptives: an issue of conscience is an issue of conscience. Why force Catholics to cover such services against their religious principles at all when they are generally accessible, cheap and freely available otherwise? What is the actual point of that?
quote:Actually, they are. Twenty-eight states (containing approximately 58% of the U.S. population) already require prescription contraceptives to be covered by any insurance plan purporting to include a prescription drug benefit. For whatever reason, the Catholic Church has not seen fit to make an issue of this until now.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
The RCC is not asking for something special they've never had before: they are just asking for the status quo wrt contraceptive cover (in the case of Catholic employers and insurers who so object) to be maintained.
quote:This Catholic suggests that its because the bishops see that their political power is waning because of the clerical sexual abuse scandal and want to shore it up. I suspect there may be something to that.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
For whatever reason, the Catholic Church has not seen fit to make an issue of this until now.
quote:So, you would rather encourage Catholics not to offer their employees coverage for potentially extremely expensive and life-saving drugs than allow them not to have to fund some generally very cheap and non-essential products that most people would expect to pay for themselves anyway? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face...
Originally posted by Crœsos:
As noted above, no one is forcing Catholics to do anything. There is no requirement under U.S. law to provide a prescription drug benefit to your employees. There is, however, a standard for what must be included for something to be considered a prescription drug benefit.
quote:I doubt if there has never been opposition to this on a diocese-by-diocese basis as and when those states mandated that coverage. However, I don't know enough about the specifics of it to comment further. But since this is a massive rolling out of such a requirement across the whole country at once it should come as no surprise that was seen as a must-act-now by the bishops. They certainly have reason to "make an issue of it" now.
quote:Actually, they are. Twenty-eight states (containing approximately 58% of the U.S. population) already require prescription contraceptives to be covered by any insurance plan purporting to include a prescription drug benefit. For whatever reason, the Catholic Church has not seen fit to make an issue of this until now.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
The RCC is not asking for something special they've never had before: they are just asking for the status quo wrt contraceptive cover (in the case of Catholic employers and insurers who so object) to be maintained.
quote:I certainly don't know, and wouldn't expect to know, whether Gingrich's bishop or pastor has had anything to say about his marital conduct - do you? I don't even know whether he has sought an annulment/s, or if he approaches to receive Holy Communion, do you? His conversion to Catholicism is pretty recent.
Originally posted by RuthW:
If it weren't, the bishops might have something to say about Newt Gingrich's being on his third marriage.
quote:The problem lies in drawing unwarranted conclusions from that fact. Such as that there's something wrong with sex that isn't "open" to procreation. As Justinian has shown, sex in humans is about more than procreation now, since the females developed permanent estrus. The whole "open to procreation" thing is a laughable attempt to fudge the untenable position that sex should only be undertaken for the purpose of procreation.
Originally posted by Sine Nomine:
I rather believe the point is that sex in the animal kingdom evolved for the purpose of procreation. No question about that.
quote:And yet, the church hasn't come out against driving cars, despite the risk of death it carries.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
No, Justinian - there is real ongoing doubt amongst the scientific experts about whether the m-a pill sometimes prevents implantation of fertilized ova. See the citations linked to on this page make that sufficiently clear.
The principle of moral caution fully justifies refusal to condone a treatment that has this level of uncertainty of effect from those who consider moral significance to begin at fertilisation. Would you shoot into barrel you thought had even 1% chance of concealing a dozing hobo in it?
quote:Who says Catholics need encouragement? That kind of "take our ball and go home" thinking has been a consistent theme with the Church in other areas where it wasn't successful in imposing its dogma on non-believers. (Adoption by same-sex couples comes to mind, but there are doubtless other areas that escape me at the moment.)
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:So, you would rather encourage Catholics not to offer their employees coverage for potentially extremely expensive and life-saving drugs than allow them not to have to fund some generally very cheap and non-essential products that most people would expect to pay for themselves anyway? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face...
Originally posted by Crœsos:
As noted above, no one is forcing Catholics to do anything. There is no requirement under U.S. law to provide a prescription drug benefit to your employees. There is, however, a standard for what must be included for something to be considered a prescription drug benefit.
quote:That's because in the fantasy world you occupy it is clear that the only people who are entitled to the presumption of acting in good faith are your fellow 'liberal "peace first" hankie squeezers'.
Originally posted by RuthW:
I suspect there may be something to that.
quote:So you build a logically flawed argument based on a completely erroneous premise, your error is pointed out to you and yet, rather than display a shred of intellectual honesty, you simply reassert the original argument in more aggressive and less logically coherent form, with a little ad hominem attack on a straw man thrown in to attempt - unsuccessfully, as it turns out - to score a cheap political point. I don't know what that's called where you come from but around here we call that being a four-fisted fuckwit.
The discussion has moved on considerably since Chesterbelloc and Trisagion addressed my post about the RCC not recognizing marriages not contracted under its aegis. However, I still want to say that I stand by my earlier remark about hairsplitting, and I would add that the RCC's track record in regards to how it treats marriage in the US is crap. You can talk all you want about the differences between a civil marriage and a sacramental one and about how various "impediments" render marriages invalid or non-sacramental or whatever, and you can wax rhapsodic about "one flesh" all day long -- it's still all horseshit. If it weren't, the bishops might have something to say about Newt Gingrich's being on his third marriage. Tell me, which woman is he "one flesh" with?
quote:First, there is no evidence on this thread - or elsewhere on the Ship - that you are capable of thought at all let alone sufficient thought to link together cause and effect in any cogent way in respect of even simple physical phenomena. That you would claim to be able to do so in something as complicated as the factors affecting the beliefs of a global body as large, long-lasting and complex as the Catholic Church, is just simply laughable.
Finally, the reason I think the RCC's bullshit about marriage is relevant to a discussion of contraceptives is because it's all part and parcel of one of the biggest problems in that church: a huge institution with a lot to say about personal details of many people's lives is run entirely by men.
quote:Oh absolutely. If I believed that I just guess I wouldn't be having any, would I? Thank God for free will – that's what I always say. Well, sometimes that's what I say.
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:The problem lies in drawing unwarranted conclusions from that fact. Such as that there's something wrong with sex that isn't "open" to procreation. As Justinian has shown, sex in humans is about more than procreation now, since the females developed permanent estrus. The whole "open to procreation" thing is a laughable attempt to fudge the untenable position that sex should only be undertaken for the purpose of procreation.
Originally posted by Sine Nomine:
I rather believe the point is that sex in the animal kingdom evolved for the purpose of procreation. No question about that.
quote:Oh, but there is such information. It is reported that he attends church regularly, and no mention is made of his not approaching to receive communion, so it seems a fair assumption that he does. His pastor says his current marriage is valid. His second wife has said that she received a notice about having her marriage annulled. His first wife apparently isn't talking, but she's still alive, so one way or another that marriage has been dealt with to the church's satisfaction.(Source)
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:I certainly don't know, and wouldn't expect to know, whether Gingrich's bishop or pastor has had anything to say about his marital conduct - do you? I don't even know whether he has sought an annulment/s, or if he approaches to receive Holy Communion, do you? His conversion to Catholicism is pretty recent.
Originally posted by RuthW:
If it weren't, the bishops might have something to say about Newt Gingrich's being on his third marriage.
In the absence of such information, how do you know the bishops are being, as you suggest, hypocrites over this?
quote:Aw ... he called me sweetie.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
sweetie
![[Axe murder]](graemlins/lovedrops.gif)
quote:Let's say that I'm an employer, and I decide that taking blood pressure medication is a manifestation of the sins of sloth and gluttony, and I don't want to participate in those sins, even by allowing a portion of my money to go to subsidize the products that people use to allow them to engage in it. Should I be able to refuse to cover blood pressure medication? It's non-essential, and it's cheap; surely folks who want it can buy it for themselves.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
So, you would rather encourage Catholics not to offer their employees coverage for potentially extremely expensive and life-saving drugs than allow them not to have to fund some generally very cheap and non-essential products that most people would expect to pay for themselves anyway?
quote:You know, I thought we were past the era when accusing someone of believing women should have the same political rights as men is considered an insult, but I guess I was wrong.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
Second, your argument reveals all too clearly the fact that you are, in fact, nothing more than a cheap feminist, sexist bigot.
quote:What could possibly be less true?
First, there is no evidence on this thread - or elsewhere on the Ship - that you are capable of thought at all let alone sufficient thought to link together cause and effect in any cogent way
quote:Wronger than a wrong thing in Wrongville! The heart is not 'primarily' about keeping breath in the body; it is ONLY about keeping breath in the body. Whereas sex is not ONLY about reproduction.
Originally posted by IngoB:
This has nothing to do with Aristotelian ethics or social engineering in antiquity / the middle ages or whatever. It is an utterly inescapable conclusion from observing the anatomy, physiology and biology of humans just as much as of any other sexually reproducing animal. Really and truly, sex is primarily about reproduction, just as heart beating is primarily about pumping blood around and lung breathing is primarily about getting oxygen into the body.
![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
quote:I often appreciate Trisagion's contributions on the boards, but I have to say I was surprized with this little case of the brain-staggers!
Originally posted by Sine Nomine:
Trisagion's response was so spittle-flecked, over-the-top and irrational one can only assume invective is his only remaining weapon.
I must say this cracked me up though:
quote:What could possibly be less true?
First, there is no evidence on this thread - or elsewhere on the Ship - that you are capable of thought at all let alone sufficient thought to link together cause and effect in any cogent way
quote:Thank you.
Originally posted by Anselmina:
I often appreciate Trisagion's contributions on the boards, but I have to say I was surprized with this little case of the brain-staggers!
quote:Difficult to say really: somewhere between exasperation of the sheer predictability of the argument, the denial of the presumption of good will on the part of one's interlocutors, the shoddiness of the argumentation, the failure to understand that sexism works both ways and my own concupiscence.
I mean, what was the final straw?
quote:Now now, let's not confuse the poor man by suggesting that the body is capable of having parts with multiple functions.
Originally posted by Anselmina:
quote:Wronger than a wrong thing in Wrongville! The heart is not 'primarily' about keeping breath in the body; it is ONLY about keeping breath in the body. Whereas sex is not ONLY about reproduction.
Originally posted by IngoB:
This has nothing to do with Aristotelian ethics or social engineering in antiquity / the middle ages or whatever. It is an utterly inescapable conclusion from observing the anatomy, physiology and biology of humans just as much as of any other sexually reproducing animal. Really and truly, sex is primarily about reproduction, just as heart beating is primarily about pumping blood around and lung breathing is primarily about getting oxygen into the body.
quote:Lots of people -- maybe even most people, if I'm not feeling too misanthropic -- deserve to be presumed to be acting in good faith. The Catholic bishops just don't fall into that category at the moment.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
quote:That's because in the fantasy world you occupy it is clear that the only people who are entitled to the presumption of acting in good faith are your fellow 'liberal "peace first" hankie squeezers'.
Originally posted by RuthW:
I suspect there may be something to that.
quote:The only particularly fuckwitted thing I'm guilty of here is trying to argue about what the RCC does and does not do with a Catholic canon lawyer. But hey, I'll probably learn something.
So you build a logically flawed argument based on a completely erroneous premise, your error is pointed out to you and yet, rather than display a shred of intellectual honesty, you simply reassert the original argument in more aggressive and less logically coherent form, with a little ad hominem attack on a straw man thrown in to attempt - unsuccessfully, as it turns out - to score a cheap political point. I don't know what that's called where you come from but around here we call that being a four-fisted fuckwit.
quote:I made no claim about cause and effect. I wouldn't have said "part and parcel of" if I had meant to made a more precise causal argument. But having only men making important decisions that affect the lives of over a billion people is obviously problematic.
quote:First, there is no evidence on this thread - or elsewhere on the Ship - that you are capable of thought at all let alone sufficient thought to link together cause and effect in any cogent way in respect of even simple physical phenomena. That you would claim to be able to do so in something as complicated as the factors affecting the beliefs of a global body as large, long-lasting and complex as the Catholic Church, is just simply laughable.
Finally, the reason I think the RCC's bullshit about marriage is relevant to a discussion of contraceptives is because it's all part and parcel of one of the biggest problems in that church: a huge institution with a lot to say about personal details of many people's lives is run entirely by men.
quote:I'm not cheap, I'm thrifty. On my wage, it's necessary. I'm a feminist, certainly; thank you for noticing. I doubt I'm a sexist; I certainly try not to be. If I am, my liberal boyfriend is cool with it. I may very well be a bigot. Again, I try not to be, reminding myself that without the Catholic Church and without the presence of certain Catholics in my life, I might not be a Christian today.
Second, your argument reveals all too clearly the fact that you are, in fact, nothing more than a cheap feminist, sexist bigot.
quote:I have my prejudices. We all do. And Christianity is by no means coterminous with liberal politics. Christianity is radically far beyond both liberalism and conservatism is ways that are exciting and scary. Liberalism is unfortunately the best I can do most of the time. But since liberalism has given us such things as child labor laws, civil rights, women's suffrage, and the end of chattel slavery, I sleep okay at night.
Third, if you displayed even an ounce of self-knowledge, you might begin to consider when your 'liberal "peace first" hankie squeezing' prejudices are ever subject to any kind of critical engagement with anything even faintly resembling a second-cousin to Christianity.
quote:If having this crazy idea that women should have some political power, makes me a doctrinaire liberal ideologue, I'm fine with it.
Admit it, sweetie, you are doctrinaire liberal ideologue who claims for her half-baked prejudices an infallibility that would have made even the most purple Ultramontanist blush with embarrassment.
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Oh, but there is such information. It is reported that he attends church regularly, and no mention is made of his not approaching to receive communion, so it seems a fair assumption that he does. His pastor says his current marriage is valid. His second wife has said that she received a notice about having her marriage annulled. His first wife apparently isn't talking, but she's still alive, so one way or another that marriage has been dealt with to the church's satisfaction.(Source)
Where in any of that, even in the shabby opinion piece you cite, is there any evidence that the Catholic hierarchy are hypocrites for not publicly taking issue with Gingrich's marital status or eligibility to receive the Blessed Sacrament? It looks to me as if they've gone to the trouble of investigating it, and have concluded that he is currently married according to the criteria of their own Church. What, exactly, is the issue here?
quote:Actually, I don't - I just think one shouldn't assume such stuff hasn't been looked into just because we don't know about it. The fact that we don't know the ins and outs of process doesn't tell us anything, except perhaps that the details themselves may be confidential.
Originally posted by RuthW:
You imply that we shouldn't be privy to such information
quote:Right. If, that is, they not only don't practise but actually publicly dissent from the Church's teaching on a matter of the utmost seriousness - the right to life itself. Not keeping the Church's teaching on marriage is one thing - and may be enough to excommunicate oneself anyway - but the equivalent to what Kerry did would be not just to receive Communion when in an adulterous state but to dispute that the Church had got marriage teaching right in the first place. What's that evidence that Gingrich has done either of these things? If you can point to where Gingrich has publicly disssented from the Church's teaching since his conversion, or has flouted any ruling issued by the Church just say so and we can talk about that.
Originally posted by RuthW:
but in the midst of the 2004 presidential campaign, the man who is now pope issued a memo saying Catholic politicians who support legal abortion should be denied communion.
quote:
Where in any of that, even in the shabby opinion piece you cite, is there any evidence that the Catholic hierarchy are hypocrites for not publicly taking issue with Gingrich's marital status or eligibility to receive the Blessed Sacrament? It looks to me as if they've gone to the trouble of investigating it, and have concluded that he is currently married according to the criteria of their own Church. What, exactly, is the issue here?
quote:That the trees of formally correct marriage are blinding you to the wood of adultery.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Genevieve, what is your point?
quote:Chesterbelloc's wasn't correct either. Marriages between baptised persons, whether Catholic or not, are sacramental marriages if the are between individuals who are free to marry (i.e not impeded), capable of entering into the married state, do not exclude the ends of the married state, intend to keep the marital vows and are not coerced. Sacramental marriages are incapable of dissolution.
Originally posted by RuthW:
...Chesterbelloc said it considers them actual marriages but not sacramental ones...
quote:I couldn't agree more - although Id rather not comment on the process for Mr Gingrich as I have no idea of the grounds on which he was granted the decree of nullity.
It seems to me that if the Catholic Church took non-Catholics' marriages seriously -- whether you think that falls into the definition of "recognizing" them or not -- it wouldn't disregard them so easily, as it apparently has in Gingrich's case. (I'd argue furthermore that it doesn't even take American Catholics' marriages very seriously, or expect them to take their own marriages seriously, considering the way it hands out annulments.)
quote:Absent the divine constitution of the Catholic Church and the dominical guarantee of her teaching authority, that would be an undeniable statement.
But having only men making important decisions that affect the lives of over a billion people is obviously problematic.
quote:Claiming these as wins for your own particular brand of liberalism has more than a hint of anachronism. Heigh Ho, you get to sleep at night. So that must be fine then.
Liberalism is unfortunately the best I can do most of the time. But since liberalism has given us such things as child labor laws, civil rights, women's suffrage, and the end of chattel slavery, I sleep okay at night.
quote:I have NO IDEA, from a Catholic point of view, whether Gingrich is an adulterer or not. I'm neither defending not criticising him, because I don't know enough to do either. I'm healthily sceptical, but I stop short of judging without evidence of the pertinent facts. What do you want me to say?
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:That the trees of formally correct marriage are blinding you to the wood of adultery.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Genevieve, what is your point?
quote:Cute but off-beam.
Originally posted by Sine Nomine:
Apparently if it wasn't Catholic adultery it doesn't count.
quote:Absolutley - apologies for that. What I meant to say was that non-Catholic marriages were not necessarily considered sacramental by the Church. For reasons that needn't detain us here, I have good personal reasons for knowing this sort of stuff.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
quote:Chesterbelloc's wasn't correct either. Marriages between baptised persons, whether Catholic or not, are sacramental marriages if the are between individuals who are free to marry (i.e not impeded), capable of entering into the married state, do not exclude the ends of the married state, intend to keep the marital vows and are not coerced.
Originally posted by RuthW:
...Chesterbelloc said it considers them actual marriages but not sacramental ones...
quote:Why? The only grounds for nullity that would exclude is non-consummation. It's seven years since I saw a petition on those grounds and in our little diocesan tribunal we see up to sixty petitions per year.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Given that Ginrich has 2 children from his first marriage and they were together 18 years, the proposition that they might not have been validly married is a fairly startling one.
quote:Not reminiscent in any way. Henry VIII's petition wasn't on grounds of non-consummation but that the putative marriage was forbidden on the ground that he was not free to marry his deceased brother's widow.
Somewhat reminiscent of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, and we all know how well that declaration of nullity went.
quote:Um, no, reminiscent in the sense that a powerful political figure can probably get a church to reach the desired ruling.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
quote:Not reminiscent in any way. Henry VIII's petition wasn't on grounds of non-consummation but that the putative marriage was forbidden on the ground that he was not free to marry his deceased brother's widow.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Somewhat reminiscent of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, and we all know how well that declaration of nullity went.
quote:Why yes I do. He was an adulterer. That's what we normally call it when you're married and you run around on your wife. Adultery. In the common parlance. That may not be Catholic Adultery According to Canon Law or whatever, but us peons knows it when we sees it.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
I don't know whether he was or not. Do you?
quote:Forgive me, but I'm struggling to see how the powerful political figure of Mr Gingrich getting the Catholic Church to reach the desired ruling is, in any way, reminiscent of the powerful political figure Henry VIII being singularly unable to get the Catholic Church to reach the desired ruling.
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:Um, no, reminiscent in the sense that a powerful political figure can probably get a church to reach the desired ruling.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
quote:Not reminiscent in any way. Henry VIII's petition wasn't on grounds of non-consummation but that the putative marriage was forbidden on the ground that he was not free to marry his deceased brother's widow.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Somewhat reminiscent of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, and we all know how well that declaration of nullity went.
quote:He got the local branch to do it. The local branch gets to, yes? Or do you send all those petitions you get to Rome?
Originally posted by Trisagion:
quote:Forgive me, but I'm struggling to see how the powerful political figure of Mr Gingrich getting the Catholic Church to reach the desired ruling is, in any way, reminiscent of the powerful political figure Henry VIII being singularly unable to get the Catholic Church to reach the desired ruling.
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:Um, no, reminiscent in the sense that a powerful political figure can probably get a church to reach the desired ruling.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
quote:Not reminiscent in any way. Henry VIII's petition wasn't on grounds of non-consummation but that the putative marriage was forbidden on the ground that he was not free to marry his deceased brother's widow.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Somewhat reminiscent of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, and we all know how well that declaration of nullity went.
quote:Now now Sine, he might not have been an adulterer. He might just have been fathering children out of wedlock.
Originally posted by Sine Nomine:
quote:Why yes I do. He was an adulterer. That's what we normally call it when you're married and you run around on your wife. Adultery. In the common parlance. That may not be Catholic Adultery According to Canon Law or whatever, but us peons knows it when we sees it.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
I don't know whether he was or not. Do you?
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
He got the local branch to do it.
You're not even joking, are you?
quote:See, I said I might learn something.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
quote:Chesterbelloc's wasn't correct either. Marriages between baptised persons, whether Catholic or not, are sacramental marriages if the are between individuals who are free to marry (i.e not impeded), capable of entering into the married state, do not exclude the ends of the married state, intend to keep the marital vows and are not coerced. Sacramental marriages are incapable of dissolution.
Originally posted by RuthW:
...Chesterbelloc said it considers them actual marriages but not sacramental ones...
Marriages between the baptised and non-baptised and marriages between the non-baptised are natural marriages. They can only by dissolved where the Pauline or Petrine privileges apply.
quote:I only seized on the example of Newt Gingrich because he is a public figure. Since we are in agreement on the general point, all I'll add is that since the Catholic Church in the US does not take the sacrament of marriage seriously, I think it's hypocritical of the American RCC bishops to try to prevent married people in the employ of Catholic-affiliated institutions from obtaining birth control from their health insurance companies.
quote:I couldn't agree more - although Id rather not comment on the process for Mr Gingrich as I have no idea of the grounds on which he was granted the decree of nullity.
It seems to me that if the Catholic Church took non-Catholics' marriages seriously -- whether you think that falls into the definition of "recognizing" them or not -- it wouldn't disregard them so easily, as it apparently has in Gingrich's case. (I'd argue furthermore that it doesn't even take American Catholics' marriages very seriously, or expect them to take their own marriages seriously, considering the way it hands out annulments.)
quote:A divine constitution and guarantee which of course you know I don't think exist. And you could argue that it doesn't matter whether I think they exist or not, because the truth of the claim does not depend on my opinion of it, and because I'm not Catholic.
quote:Absent the divine constitution of the Catholic Church and the dominical guarantee of her teaching authority, that would be an undeniable statement.
But having only men making important decisions that affect the lives of over a billion people is obviously problematic.
quote:Women's suffrage is of course a win for my brand of liberalism, and I'd say the others are as well, because what I'm arguing for is the right of all people to be regarded equally as free people.
quote:Claiming these as wins for your own particular brand of liberalism has more than a hint of anachronism. Heigh Ho, you get to sleep at night. So that must be fine then.
Liberalism is unfortunately the best I can do most of the time. But since liberalism has given us such things as child labor laws, civil rights, women's suffrage, and the end of chattel slavery, I sleep okay at night.
quote:And, like I said to Justinian earlier in the thread, if the Catholic Church taught anything like that, you might have a point.
Originally posted by orfeo:
So long as he was only shagging non-Catholic women without marrying them, there's no problem. We can ignore THAT kind of pre-marital sex. It's just young Protestant hijinks.
quote:Sorry for the double post but its late.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Also, with your extreme focus on grounds of invalidity (you little canon lawyer, you), you've missed the rather obvious point that the alternative is the man was having sexual relations outside of marriage for a very long period of time. Is THAT a good look for a moral values campaign?
quote:Well no, I'm not. It gets into all sorts of very complicated questions about how the new governance arrangements in the church of England were considered on all sides, but the point is that a person with sufficient political power can go a long, long way to get the result they want.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
He got the local branch to do it.
quote:You're not planning on running for POTUS whilst taking a high moral tone, by any chance are you?
Originally posted by Trisagion:
Thank God, for his sake - but chiefly for mine - that the merciful living God has given us the Sacrament of Confession, in order to allow us the assurance of His forgiveness and the gift of His grace, without which I, for one, would be surely lost.
quote:I also don't understand why a Catholic couple can't be regarded as being open to having children when all they want is to not have them right after they're married or to space them a bit. Someone's going to say "make me holy, Lord, just not yet," but I don't see why God would be offended at them wanting to build the strength of their marriage for a few years before introducing the unbelievably life-altering phenomenon that is a child.
Originally posted by RuthW:
What I've always wondered is why "artificial" birth control is such a bad thing when medical intervention to save life isn't. Shouldn't one be just as willing to accept God's will when God's will is that you die a miserable death as to accept God's will when God's will is that you get pregnant?
quote:Ted Kennedy's annulment comes to mind.
Originally posted by orfeo:
I just find it highly disingenuous to suggest that when dealing with a powerful figure, political interests don't come into a church ruling.
quote:But Henry VIII couldn't get the local branch to do anything of the sort because it didn't have competent jurisdiction. Since his petition relied upon setting aside a prior dispensation granted by the Pope, jurisdiction belonged to the Pope and not to the local branch - hence all that legatine court business. When Henry VIII couldn't get the desired result, he separated the local branch from the Church and suborned it into giving him the appearance of the desired result - a power which that self-same local branch did not possess. What's worse, he attempted to marry Anne even before the local branch purported to give him the desired result. Gingrich - like him or loathe him - isn't I the same league and his case isn't remotely reminiscent of Henry VIII's.
Originally posted by orfeo:
He got the local branch to do it. The local branch gets to, yes? Or do you send all those petitions you get to Rome?
quote:High moral tone? I dont think I could carry that one through until the first Tuesday after the first Monday in last November let alone this one. Thankfully, I fail under Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution and can.285 of the Code of Canon Law of the Latin Church.
Originally posted by Sine Nomine:
You're not planning on running for POTUS whilst taking a high moral tone, by any chance are you?
quote:No shit. Disposing of four wives, two by behaving, really does put Henry VIII is a class by himself.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
Gingrich - like him or loathe him - isn't I the same league and his case isn't remotely reminiscent of Henry VIII's.
quote:That is quite the funniest typo/auto-correct I have seen since my Church History Prof's name was auto-corrected in my licentiate thesis by my Amstrad 9512 (this was 1988) from Fr Fenlon to Fr Felon.
Originally posted by RuthW:
No shit. Disposing of four wives, two by behaving, really does put Henry VIII is a class by himself.
quote:The reflexively conservative Tory in me can't help but rejoice that the UK's constitutional arrangements remain, in this regard at least, gloriously and discriminatorily unaltered.
The doctrinaire feminist ideologue in me can't help but point out that if the society of the day would have accepted his first-born child as queen more readily, Henry would only have had lust as a motivator instead of also needing a son. And they still eventually got Mary as queen, not to mention her younger sister.
quote:I was using irony. My point is that because the Catholic Church doesn't teach anything like that, spending time trying to prove that Marriage No.3 is really Marriage No.1 strikes me as a futile and meaningless exercise. It involves trading one form of wrong for another, arguably much bigger one purely for the sake of form. People would be much better off just accepting that Marriage No.3 is Marriage No.3 and deciding how to deal with that fact.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:And, like I said to Justinian earlier in the thread, if the Catholic Church taught anything like that, you might have a point.
Originally posted by orfeo:
So long as he was only shagging non-Catholic women without marrying them, there's no problem. We can ignore THAT kind of pre-marital sex. It's just young Protestant hijinks.
quote:Ha! I did not see that. Though I'm not sure it's as amusing as your citation of Canon Law (I had to look it up, of course, but did get a giggle when I did).
Originally posted by Trisagion:
quote:That is quite the funniest typo/auto-correct I have seen since my Church History Prof's name was auto-corrected in my licentiate thesis by my Amstrad 9512 (this was 1988) from Fr Fenlon to Fr Felon.
Originally posted by RuthW:
No shit. Disposing of four wives, two by behaving, really does put Henry VIII is a class by himself.
quote:Perhaps you are being ironic. I'm American, I wouldn't know. If William's first child is a girl, she will be queen. I read it in the Telegraph, so it must be true.
quote:The reflexively conservative Tory in me can't help but rejoice that the UK's constitutional arrangements remain, in this regard at least, gloriously and discriminatorily unaltered.
The doctrinaire feminist ideologue in me can't help but point out that if the society of the day would have accepted his first-born child as queen more readily, Henry would only have had lust as a motivator instead of also needing a son. And they still eventually got Mary as queen, not to mention her younger sister.
quote:Except that, if Marriage No. 1 wasn't a marriage because it simply wasn't valid, it would be unjust to bind the parties with the sacramental obligations that would have flowed from that marriage had it been valid. Put very, very simply: why should a party to an invalid marriage be obliged to behave as if it had been valid?
Originally posted by orfeo:
People would be much better off just accepting that Marriage No.3 is Marriage No.3 and deciding how to deal with that fact.
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Ha! I did not see that. Though I'm not sure it's as amusing as your citation of Canon Law (I had to look it up, of course, but did get a giggle when I did).
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
But see section 4 of the canon.quote:The key line in The Torygraph article is the one that goes "Mr Cameron intends to introduce the legislation in the next session of Parliament." It hasn't happened yet.
Perhaps you are being ironic. I'm American, I wouldn't know. If William's first child is a girl, she will be queen. I read it in the Telegraph, so it must be true.
![[Cool]](cool.gif)
quote:An issue of long-standing not lost on those at
Originally posted by RuthW:
And again, because the American RCC hands out annulments like candy when compared to the practice of the rest of the church, we simply don't believe them when they say his first two marriages weren't valid by their own criteria. They might actually be truthful in this particular case, but they have undermined their own moral authority too thoroughly to be believed in general on this kind of thing.
quote:Well, I'm sure it will be a great comfort to his putative wife and family (whoever they happen to be at the time).
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Sine, I don't know what else to say.
Yes, prima facie, he was an adulterer in that he was apparently married to one woman whilst having sex with another. That's a fair assumption. Whether he was actually married to the first (or second, or third...) woman is something which Catholics have specific criteria for deciding for themselves. But cheating on anyone putatively one's wife is wrong.
Will that do?
quote:She wouldn't have needed a declaration of nullity to keep her job, unless she proposed to remarry. Since she believed she was already married what made your friend think she was free to marry someone else. Did she believe it is possible to be married to more than one person at the same time?
Originally posted by Geneviève:
an example of the American RC church on marriage/adultery/annulments. A friend of mine who lived in a northeast state was married for 20+ years, had two children and grandchildren (a good RC marriage). After this her husband got pretty crazy, sometimes violent and left her to live with another woman. Much nastiness. My friend decided to get a divorce, rather than an annulment, because in her eyes they had been married (had been legally competent, etc. when they entered the marriage). She did not want to declare her children bastards, if you will, in the ordinary person's understanding.
So she did. But here's the rub. She was employed by the RC diocese. She was forced to get an annulment if she wanted to keep her job, which she desparately needed. So she had to go through all the expense, the hassle, the lies, to declare that she had never been sacramentally married for 20+ years. What horseshit. She hated it.
quote:I doubt that very, very much. The climate of litigation within which US dioceses have to operate, especially in areas of employment, make the chances of anyone in any authority making the kind of threat, implicit or explicit, suggested by Genevieve's post vanishingly small.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
You might want to consider, too, that not every employing individual/group in a church actually FOLLOWS that church's teaching and/or policies in employment matters. It's entirely possible that a pompous supervising jackass or three might have demanded such a thing of her, even though the RC church itself would not.
quote:Because absolutely everybody behaved for many many years as if it WAS valid. Are you familiar with the concept of estoppel?
Originally posted by Trisagion:
quote:Except that, if Marriage No. 1 wasn't a marriage because it simply wasn't valid, it would be unjust to bind the parties with the sacramental obligations that would have flowed from that marriage had it been valid. Put very, very simply: why should a party to an invalid marriage be obliged to behave as if it had been valid?
Originally posted by orfeo:
People would be much better off just accepting that Marriage No.3 is Marriage No.3 and deciding how to deal with that fact.
quote:He went through the business of getting the explicit consent of the other realms and territories. Canada/Australia/New Zealand et al are not likely to be pleased with him, in the least, if -- having done this -- he now reneges on something they all support. Cameron -- and the UK -- are going to look more than slightly out of touch with the modern world if they are the only ones standing in the way of this reform, especially as he/it is the one who brought it up in the first place.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
quote:The key line in The Torygraph article is the one that goes "Mr Cameron intends to introduce the legislation in the next session of Parliament." It hasn't happened yet.
Originally posted by RuthW:
If William's first child is a girl, she will be queen. I read it in the Telegraph, so it must be true.
quote:"For whom we are supposed to feel sorry"
Originally posted by Trisagion:
Third, so this friend of yours, for whom we are supposed to feel sorry, is prepared to lie under oath in order to obtain something to which she knew she wasn't entitled.
Fourth, any Tribunal in any diocese in America could have told her how to obtain a canonical separation (cans 1151 to 1155).
Either your friend was scandalously lacking in integrity or you know or have given us something short of the full picture. I suspect either the latter to be most likely.
quote:There is no chance of this not being enacted, John. I was being mischievous.
Originally posted by John Holding:
He went through the business of getting the explicit consent of the other realms and territories. Canada/Australia/New Zealand et al are not likely to be pleased with him, in the least, if -- having done this -- he now reneges on something they all support. Cameron -- and the UK -- are going to look more than slightly out of touch with the modern world if they are the only ones standing in the way of this reform, especially as he/it is the one who brought it up in the first place.
John
quote:The point, Malik, is that I don't believe the story as presented. Genevieve either doesn't know or isn't telling us key pieces of information. She was using the story to make a point but the point is entirely dependent in the factual matrix of the story. If the factual matrix doesnt stand up to scrutiny then the point falls.
Originally posted by malik3000:
Yes that's the attitude of the organization you are a "lawyer" for to a woman who was the victim of violent abuse. As was finally said to Joe McCarthy back in the day, "At long last, sir, have you no decency?"
quote:On the other hand, apparently God created Bonobos. I've never seen this satisfactorily explained.
Originally posted by IngoB:
But many animals have sex exclusively of them "wham bam thank you ma'am" type.
quote:I agree, actually. If, which would be news to me but I'm prepared to accept, the majority use of the pill is non-contraceptive then Catholic policies should cover it but only when prescribed specifically for those medical needs.
Originally posted by Josephine:
The primary reason that a majority of women who are taking the pill are taking it is not contraception; it's some other medical need. The contraceptive effect is secondary. [...]
The Catholic institutions should cover contraception, and instruct the faithful of the conditions under which it is licit to use it.
quote:There is another possibility - the husband wanted to "regularise" the position of his relationship with the woman he left her for, and the church was putting pressure on her to agree the annulment so that he could.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
If her friend had wanted to or had remarried then, subject to the religious discrimination laws in the state concerned, she might have needed to regularise the position of her second marriage in order to retain her job with the Church.
quote:Not at all. It simply means that the RCC should care more about people than the law. I seem to recall hearing about some itinerant Galilean preacher from 2000 years ago who had ideas along those lines...
...the sympathy due to her friend means that the Catholic Church should dismantle its belief in the indissolubility of marriage, that seeking to analyse the details of the case is simply indecent and that I should subject myself to a self-denying ordinance whereby my posts in shell should be subject to rules applying on other boards.
quote:I assume that is "lungs" not heart, unless there has been a bit of a medical revolution. I have been at pains to talk about the primary biological function of sex. If you care to look this up in a dictionary, you will find that it is not a synonym for "only", and in fact allows for or even implies other, secondary functions.
Originally posted by Anselmina:
Wronger than a wrong thing in Wrongville! The heart is not 'primarily' about keeping breath in the body; it is ONLY about keeping breath in the body. Whereas sex is not ONLY about reproduction.
quote:These are grave dangers indeed, since fornication and adultery are mortal sins. It is also terrible if this happens within a marriage, as I've already noted above, 2nd paragraph. However, the situation then is a bit different. The RCC does consider marriage to be a kind of contract by which the spouses grant each other "sexual access". Thus "loveless" sex within marriage violates the spirit, but not the letter, of the Divine regulation of sex. The falling short, i.e., the sins, involved in that are hence not really about the sexual act as such, but about the relationship.
Originally posted by Anselmina:
You talk about the Church vetoing IVF (for example) because the method separates sex from procreation. How about the dangers of separating sex from the formation of a spiritually and physically complete married relationship?
quote:That is a regrettable outcome. However, I have not been asked "What should sex in a Roman Catholic marriage ideally be like?" I've been asked to explain why natural family planning is morally licit, but using contraceptives is not. To answer this one has to make a series of careful distinctions largely concerning the sexual act itself. I think it would be only fair if people did not confuse an in-depth look at one specific aspect of RC teaching on sexuality with a definitive statement on married life as a whole.
Originally posted by Anselmina:
It really comes across as if the argument being put forward is: sex (within marriage, of course) is fine so long as the opportunity for conception is always there, and anything in addition to that ie, satisfaction, enrichment, relationship-building, comfort etc is just a bonus, and never to be mistaken for a justifiable reason for having sex.
quote:Frankly, I was aware of the non-sexual function of my penis long before the sexual one... My arguments have in no way or form relied on a claim that organs have only one function. I have rather made the claim that the primary biological function of sex is reproduction, and argued this largely from the anatomy and physiology of genitals, the organs used in sex. If you wish to refute that argument, you will need to address it.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Now now, let's not confuse the poor man by suggesting that the body is capable of having parts with multiple functions.
quote:To answer your unanswered question: Firstly, I consider it ill appropriate to compare pregnancy to a death-threatening illness. Any new human life, any child, is an occasion to rejoice as such. A fetus is no bowel cancer! That is not to deny that a pregnancy can mean terrible misery for a woman, or indeed even endanger her life. But that is saying something about how horrible this broken world can be. It is not saying that this child is a horrible entity. I utterly refuse to go there.
Originally posted by RuthW:
And since I'm busy learning things, no one ever answered this one:
quote:I also don't understand why a Catholic couple can't be regarded as being open to having children when all they want is to not have them right after they're married or to space them a bit. Someone's going to say "make me holy, Lord, just not yet," but I don't see why God would be offended at them wanting to build the strength of their marriage for a few years before introducing the unbelievably life-altering phenomenon that is a child.
Originally posted by RuthW:
What I've always wondered is why "artificial" birth control is such a bad thing when medical intervention to save life isn't. Shouldn't one be just as willing to accept God's will when God's will is that you die a miserable death as to accept God's will when God's will is that you get pregnant?
quote:The RCC has a problem with the means contraceptives, not necessarily with the end sought with them. (Though it also has to be said that total DINKdom is at odds with what the RCC considers sex and marriage to be for.)
With regard to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised by those who prudently and generously decide to have more children, and by those who, for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time.
quote:The RCC does not outlaw at all the use of the pill for non-contraceptive medical purposes. (There is however an unresolved debate about the "medical" use of contraceptives within marriage.) I do not really wish to get into the parallel debate about health care provisions. But if such "medical" uses of the pill can be distinguished sufficiently from "contraceptive" ones, then one cannot make any moral argument against financing the former.
Originally posted by Josephine:
It doesn't matter how many times you point out that oral contraceptives are used to treat endometriosis, PCOS, excessive menstrual bleeding, excessive menstrual pain, premenstrual dysphoria syndrome, and a long list of other disorders, that they're used to prevent pregnancy when pregnancy is contraindicated by another essential medication the woman is taking, to prevent ovarian cancer in high-risk women.
quote:Seriously? I would be surprised if that was the case. Do you have references to back this up?
Originally posted by Josephine:
The primary reason that a majority of women who are taking the pill are taking it is not contraception; it's some other medical need. The contraceptive effect is secondary.
quote:Genevieve doesn't mention that at all, but I suppose that's possible. It would be odd not to have mentioned that though, don't you think? The Church is not in the habit of pressuring people out of marriages they believ to be real. I've never even heard of the Church putting pressure on a wronged wife or husband to agree that a mariage was null when that person believed otherwise. What makes that seem likely to you?
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
There is another possibility - the husband wanted to "regularise" the position of his relationship with the woman he left her for, and the church was putting pressure on her to agree the annulment so that he could.
quote:But Genevieve says her frind was employed by the Catholic diocese itself, not by some hectoring ignoramus. Again, why raise this "posibility" when it is neither mentioned by nor is compatible with Genevieve's story?
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Also, it's perfectly possible that some trumped-up Catholic boss believed that divorce itself was sinful, and that unless the Church "officially" recognised the cessation of relationship through granting an annulment she could no longer be employed.
quote:You seem to find any explanation that is least flattering to the Church more believable than that Genevieve's story is straight - even though she herself admits "I'm likely giving you less than the whole picture, but it's the picture I know."
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I find both of those possibilities more believable than the idea that Genevieve is making the whole thing up.
quote:"Putting people before laws" sounds great, but what practically does that mean, if not that it should disregard the "rule" that under certain circumstances a marriage is indissoluble? The notion we have of the indissolubility of marriage comes from a certain "Gallilean preacher", by the way, and people accused him of teaching too harsh a doctrine too.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:Not at all. It simply means that the RCC should care more about people than the law.
...the sympathy due to her friend means that the Catholic Church should dismantle its belief in the indissolubility of marriage, that seeking to analyse the details of the case is simply indecent and that I should subject myself to a self-denying ordinance whereby my posts in shell should be subject to rules applying on other boards.
quote:Given that 'sex' is not part of my body, I don't exactly understand what it is I'm supposed to be refuting. That an activity primarily has a biological function? An activity has whatever primary function I decide when I choose to engage in the activity.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:Frankly, I was aware of the non-sexual function of my penis long before the sexual one... My arguments have in no way or form relied on a claim that organs have only one function. I have rather made the claim that the primary biological function of sex is reproduction, and argued this largely from the anatomy and physiology of genitals, the organs used in sex. If you wish to refute that argument, you will need to address it.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Now now, let's not confuse the poor man by suggesting that the body is capable of having parts with multiple functions.
quote:The two are not mutually exclusive. Religious heirarchies are full of hectoring ignoramuses.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
But Genevieve says her frind was employed by the Catholic diocese itself, not by some hectoring ignoramus.
quote:My point was that the diocese would know that the Church does not consider people in this woman's situation sinful simply for seeking a civil divorce. That's based on a misinformed prejudice. They would just know better than that.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:The two are not mutually exclusive. Religious heirarchies are full of hectoring ignoramuses.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
But Genevieve says her frind was employed by the Catholic diocese itself, not by some hectoring ignoramus.
quote:I think the example of eating actually supports IngoB's case rather than detracting from it. The primary function of eating is to take fuel on board. As you say, it has secondary functions - for one, eating good food is a pleasure.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Eating: biological function is fuel, so let's throw away pleasure, social interaction and everything else built up around eating.
quote:In the same way that a diocese would know that child abuse is wrong, and would "just know better than" to attempt to cover it up?
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
My point was that the diocese would know that the Church does not consider people in this woman's situation sinful simply for seeking a civil divorce. That's based on a misinformed prejudice. They would just know better than that.
quote:I think that you just argued wine tasting is sinful.
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
quote:I think the example of eating actually supports IngoB's case rather than detracting from it. The primary function of eating is to take fuel on board. As you say, it has secondary functions - for one, eating good food is a pleasure.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Eating: biological function is fuel, so let's throw away pleasure, social interaction and everything else built up around eating.
But if someone wants to enjoy the pleasure of good food without taking any fuel on board - for example by purging after eating, or abusing laxatives, we'd call that an eating disorder, wouldn't we?
quote:I didn't actually say having an eating disorder was sinful at all. Because I don't think it is - it is disordered.
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:I think that you just argued wine tasting is sinful.
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
quote:I think the example of eating actually supports IngoB's case rather than detracting from it. The primary function of eating is to take fuel on board. As you say, it has secondary functions - for one, eating good food is a pleasure.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Eating: biological function is fuel, so let's throw away pleasure, social interaction and everything else built up around eating.
But if someone wants to enjoy the pleasure of good food without taking any fuel on board - for example by purging after eating, or abusing laxatives, we'd call that an eating disorder, wouldn't we?
quote:I can well believe that it's a line that would be taken by an over-zealous diocesan manager. People who take things to extremes are prevalent in all religions, and many of them seem to get to management level.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
the "civil divorce by wronged partner is so bad that peole must resign form Catholic paid employ if they commit it" line is such a weird outlier that I'd never even heard of it before.
quote:According to research cited here, "more than half (58%) of all pill users rely on the method, at least in part, for purposes other than pregnancy prevention—meaning that only 42% use the pill exclusively for contraceptive reasons."
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:I agree, actually. If, which would be news to me but I'm prepared to accept, the majority use of the pill is non-contraceptive then Catholic policies should cover it but only when prescribed specifically for those medical needs.
Originally posted by Josephine:
The primary reason that a majority of women who are taking the pill are taking it is not contraception; it's some other medical need. The contraceptive effect is secondary. [...]
The Catholic institutions should cover contraception, and instruct the faithful of the conditions under which it is licit to use it.
quote:Of course they do. However, they would not be having any sex of any description for any purpose, if it were not for the simple fact that the primary biological function of sex is reproduction. Because this particular bit of human anatomy and physiology happens to have evolved for procreation. And I have already dealt with this particular misunderstanding above.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Sex: I've got news for you Ingo. People have sex for a variety of reasons and to achieve a variety of different goals.
quote:You are going on record with a slanderous lie there. I have neither said nor implied anything of this kind.
Originally posted by orfeo:
I'm going to sign off for the night, but I'd just like to put on record that the fact that Ingo, rather than some atheist, has managed to reduce the meaning of life to essential bodily functions - "eat, sleep, defecate, procreate" - is going to resonate in my mind for quite a while.
quote:If I grant that this is at least an imaginable scenario, will you admit that we have no reason to think this is what actually happened in the case Genevieve raised?
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I can well believe that it's a line that would be taken by an over-zealous diocesan manager. People who take things to extremes are prevalent in all religions, and many of them seem to get to management level.
quote:That's like saying that no-one would be using their hands to play the piano if it were not for the simple fact that hands evolved to grab things. What am I supposed to conclude? That playing the piano is 'unnatural'? (PS Listening to Beethoven right now, it was the first analogy to, erm, come to hand...)
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:Of course they do. However, they would not be having any sex of any description for any purpose, if it were not for the simple fact that the primary biological function of sex is reproduction. Because this particular bit of human anatomy and physiology happens to have evolved for procreation. And I have already dealt with this particular misunderstanding above.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Sex: I've got news for you Ingo. People have sex for a variety of reasons and to achieve a variety of different goals.
quote:You think what this thread needs is more lawyering?
Originally posted by Matt Black:
'Libellous', shurely, since written down?
quote:Just out of curiosity, do you see any possible problems with having employers micromanage their employee's medical treatment like this?
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:I agree, actually. If, which would be news to me but I'm prepared to accept, the majority use of the pill is non-contraceptive then Catholic policies should cover it but only when prescribed specifically for those medical needs.
Originally posted by Josephine:
The primary reason that a majority of women who are taking the pill are taking it is not contraception; it's some other medical need. The contraceptive effect is secondary. [...]
The Catholic institutions should cover contraception, and instruct the faithful of the conditions under which it is licit to use it.
quote:First, that's not why the teacher was sacked - she was sacked for contracting a marriage with a divorced man whose first wife was still living and for refusing to seek an annulment for that first marriage.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
There was a thread about three years ago about a similar employment situation. In that case a Catholic high school fired an English teacher because her fiancé was previously divorced.
quote:Only if you spit instead of swallowing
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:I think that you just argued wine tasting is sinful.
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
quote:I think the example of eating actually supports IngoB's case rather than detracting from it. The primary function of eating is to take fuel on board. As you say, it has secondary functions - for one, eating good food is a pleasure.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Eating: biological function is fuel, so let's throw away pleasure, social interaction and everything else built up around eating.
But if someone wants to enjoy the pleasure of good food without taking any fuel on board - for example by purging after eating, or abusing laxatives, we'd call that an eating disorder, wouldn't we?
quote:No reason at all. I'm just saying I find it more likely than either Genevieve made the whole thing up or she's deliberately missing out some putative misdeed on behalf of the woman to whom she referred.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
If I grant that this is at least an imaginable scenario, will you admit that we have no reason to think this is what actually happened in the case Genevieve raised?
quote:Which is, of course, how the pros do it.
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
quote:Only if you spit instead of swallowing
Originally posted by orfeo:
I think that you just argued wine tasting is sinful.
![[Snigger]](graemlins/snigger.gif)
quote:Not off the top of my head, no. What did you have in mind?
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Just out of curiosity, do you see any possible problems with having employers micromanage their employee's medical treatment like this?
quote:No. Not in the least. Paying a salary to an employee for a specific job which you have commissioned them to do is not the same as purchasing a particular product for them. What an employee does with her own salary is her responsibility. But if an employer buys insurance to cover specific medical treatments for an employee the employer bears some responsibility as the purchaser of that particular insurance product should the employee choose to use the services bought on their behalf.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
In a similar vein, if it's considered valid for a Catholic employer to forbid an employee to use their company-provided health insurance to obtain treatments the Church disapproves of, wouldn't it also be valid for them to forbid employees from using their company-provided salaries to do the same? If not, what's the distinction? And if so, doesn't this invalidate the "they can just pay out of their own pockets" argument that's been popular on this thread?
quote:It would be more along the lines of saying that if you want to stop a toddler from grabbing all kinds of things, then you shouldn't inject curare into his hands to shut down the muscles. Grabbing is what hands were made for, naturally. And if you have a problem with grabbing under certain circumstances, then the solution is not to simply remove the natural grabbing ability of hands with potent drugs.
Originally posted by orfeo:
That's like saying that no-one would be using their hands to play the piano if it were not for the simple fact that hands evolved to grab things. What am I supposed to conclude? That playing the piano is 'unnatural'?
quote:What I'm actually saying surely is contentious enough to feed the flames of Hell. It's an annoying distraction to have to to spit out words people put in my mouth.
Originally posted by orfeo:
PS It's Hell. You'll get over the slanderous lies.
quote:No-one's suggesting Genevieve made the whole thing up. It's just that the story as we have it doesn't merit us drawing any such conclusions. So why did that explanation trump the "incomplete story" one for you? We have evidence for the "incomplete story" hypothesis - Genevieve's own admission. What evidence do we have for the "hard-ass-on-divorce-even-without-remarriage boss" hypothesis?
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:No reason at all. I'm just saying I find it more likely than either Genevieve made the whole thing up or she's deliberately missing out some putative misdeed on behalf of the woman to whom she referred.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
If I grant that this is at least an imaginable scenario, will you admit that we have no reason to think this is what actually happened in the case Genevieve raised?
quote:No, I don't. And I never suggested I did.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I mean, come on. Do you really think it's so unlikely that there are small-minded zealots who enjoy going on power trips and forcing their own interpretation of holiness and morality onto others working for the RCC?
quote:Hey, I'm still stuck back on page 2:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I'm going to sign off for the night, but I'd just like to put on record that the fact that Ingo, rather than some atheist, has managed to reduce the meaning of life to essential bodily functions - "eat, sleep, defecate, procreate" - is going to resonate in my mind for quite a while.
quote:I know it's not what IngoB means, but it sure looks like "there ain't no miracles no more". The God that made a virgin conceive is apparently now stymied by condoms and imperfect sex acts. OliviaG
Originally posted by IngoB:
.... Still, a good rule of thumb is that sex is licit if God could make it result in a baby without having to overcome any "unnatural" factors (if God would not have to explode a condom, remove a coil, cleanse the chemicals released by a drug,...). ...
quote:For starters, using their ability to control their employees' (and their families') access to medical care as a lever to control their actions.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:Not off the top of my head, no. What did you have in mind?
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Just out of curiosity, do you see any possible problems with having employers micromanage their employee's medical treatment like this?
quote:The problem with this assessment is that the employer isn't buying "specific medical treatments" for an employee, they're paying (partially, in most cases) for general access to medical care, the details of which are worked out between the employee and her physician. As I noted before, this position seems to hold that employees are akin to serfs or slaves who need to have their personal decisions made for them by their masters.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:No. Not in the least. Paying a salary to an employee for a specific job which you have commissioned them to do is not the same as purchasing a particular product for them. What an employee does with her own salary is her responsibility. But if an employer buys insurance to cover specific medical treatments for an employee the employer bears some responsibility as the purchaser of that particular insurance product should the employee choose to use the services bought on their behalf.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
In a similar vein, if it's considered valid for a Catholic employer to forbid an employee to use their company-provided health insurance to obtain treatments the Church disapproves of, wouldn't it also be valid for them to forbid employees from using their company-provided salaries to do the same? If not, what's the distinction? And if so, doesn't this invalidate the "they can just pay out of their own pockets" argument that's been popular on this thread?
quote:"At least in part" - right. But for how many of them is the non-contraceptive use the primary reason for their taking it? Because wht you initally claimed was:
Originally posted by Josephine:
According to research cited here, "more than half (58%) of all pill users rely on the method, at least in part, for purposes other than pregnancy prevention—meaning that only 42% use the pill exclusively for contraceptive reasons."
quote:Which, with respect, is different from the claim you cite from Guttmacher.
The primary reason that a majority of women who are taking the pill are taking it is not contraception; it's some other medical need. The contraceptive effect is secondary.
quote:1) I'm in Edinburgh, Scotland, where this is not currently a hot topic for debate.
Originally posted by Josephine:
Based on this, I trust that you will be contacting your bishop today, and urging them to clarify that they do not in fact oppose the use of oral contraceptives for reasons other than contraception by anyone, and that they do not oppose the use of oral contraceptive for contraception as a form of harm-reduction by persons who are having sex outside of marriage.
quote:Trisagion flat out refused to believe that the story as told could possibly have happened.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
No-one's suggesting Genevieve made the whole thing up. It's just that the story as we have it doesn't merit us drawing any such conclusions.
quote:Hard-ass religionists exist in vast numbers, especially in churches which have very specific and rigorous moral laws. That's evidence enough for me to assume that the fault lies with such a person, in the absence of any reason to think otherwise.
So why did that explanation trump the "incomplete story" one for you? We have evidence for the "incomplete story" hypothesis - Genevieve's own admission. What evidence do we have for the "hard-ass-on-divorce-even-without-remarriage boss" hypothesis?
quote:You described it as "weird and rare", and it took several posts before you'd even accept it as an imaginable scenario.
quote:No, I don't. And I never suggested I did.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I mean, come on. Do you really think it's so unlikely that there are small-minded zealots who enjoy going on power trips and forcing their own interpretation of holiness and morality onto others working for the RCC?
quote:Nice how you've declared what the solution isn't. Now please declare what the solution IS. Having created a hypothetical situation where grabbing is a problem, I'd be fascinated to see how you deal with it without purposefully restricting the grabbing. Or will you just throw your appendages up in the air and say "there's nothing we can do, grabbing just happens"?
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:It would be more along the lines of saying that if you want to stop a toddler from grabbing all kinds of things, then you shouldn't inject curare into his hands to shut down the muscles. Grabbing is what hands were made for, naturally. And if you have a problem with grabbing under certain circumstances, then the solution is not to simply remove the natural grabbing ability of hands with potent drugs.
Originally posted by orfeo:
That's like saying that no-one would be using their hands to play the piano if it were not for the simple fact that hands evolved to grab things. What am I supposed to conclude? That playing the piano is 'unnatural'?
quote:That's just ridiculous. No-one's asking for a "blank cheque" for employers to decide what to cover. The Catholic bishops are asking for a single exception to be made - by the legitimate authorities, not by the employer on an ad hoc, autonomous basis - on the grounds of conscience.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
For starters, using their ability to control their employees' (and their families') access to medical care as a lever to control their actions.
"Well Johnson, you can either report our illegal toxic dumping to OSHA or your daughter can get her braces. Your choice."
quote:Effectively, buying coverage for specific treatments is precisely what employers are doing if there is an agreement to cover some options without co-pay and others not. Will nose-jobs or botox be covered under most schemes? No. Why not? Because most employers (I'd guess) have not agreed to fork out to cover that - but the employee is not thereby being told by the employer she can't pursue those treatments. The only "decision that is being made by the employer for the employee" is what treatments they will be able to avail themselves of free, and which they will have to pay for themselves.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
The problem with this assessment is that the employer isn't buying "specific medical treatments" for an employee, they're paying (partially, in most cases) for general access to medical care, the details of which are worked out between the employee and her physician. As I noted before, this position seems to hold that employees are akin to serfs or slaves who need to have their personal decisions made for them by their masters.
quote:"As told" is the key phrase here.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:Trisagion flat out refused to believe that the story as told could possibly have happened.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
No-one's suggesting Genevieve made the whole thing up. It's just that the story as we have it doesn't merit us drawing any such conclusions.
quote:But we did have another reason - Genevieve's admission that she may not have got the story straight or whole as it happened. But you discouted that.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Hard-ass religionists exist in vast numbers, especially in churches which have very specific and rigorous moral laws. That's evidence enough for me to assume that the fault lies with such a person, in the absence of any reason to think otherwise.
quote:You described it as "weird and rare", and it took several posts before you'd even accept it as an imaginable scenario. [/qb][/QUOTE]No: I called one paticular instance of that kind of assholishness weird and rare, because I had never myself enountered it before.
quote:No, I don't. And I never suggested I did.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I mean, come on. Do you really think it's so unlikely that there are small-minded zealots who enjoy going on power trips and forcing their own interpretation of holiness and morality onto others working for the RCC?
quote:It's more, "Since grabbing is the original and primary use of hands, you mustn't do anything that prohibits the possibility of grabbing." I would like to see some argument for why couples must always allow for the possibility for the original and primary use of sex, given that it has other uses which are admitted to be legitimate.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Nice how you've declared what the solution isn't. Now please declare what the solution IS. Having created a hypothetical situation where grabbing is a problem, I'd be fascinated to see how you deal with it without purposefully restricting the grabbing. Or will you just throw your appendages up in the air and say "there's nothing we can do, grabbing just happens"?
quote:First off, the kind of preferential government treatment you describe as "a single exception" isn't really consistent with American ideas about the law being equally applicable to everyone. If the Roman Catholic Church (or even just employers who are adherents of the faith) gets to provide substandard health coverage to their employees, why not others? Can an employer who claims to be a Christian scientist just pocket a chunk of company funds on the premise that his prayers for his sick or injured employees qualify him as a "health care plan"? Second, your claim that "No-one's asking for a "blank cheque" for employers to decide what to cover" is directly contradicted by your assertion that certain oral contraceptive prescriptions would be allowed by the Church, but not others.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:That's just ridiculous. No-one's asking for a "blank cheque" for employers to decide what to cover. The Catholic bishops are asking for a single exception to be made - by the legitimate authorities, not by the employer on an ad hoc, autonomous basis - on the grounds of conscience.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
For starters, using their ability to control their employees' (and their families') access to medical care as a lever to control their actions.
"Well Johnson, you can either report our illegal toxic dumping to OSHA or your daughter can get her braces. Your choice."
quote:Well the proposed Blunt amendment seems to come pretty darned close:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
That's just ridiculous. No-one's asking for a "blank cheque" for employers to decide what to cover.
quote:You know full well how legal precedence works.
That's just ridiculous. No-one's asking for a "blank cheque" for employers to decide what to cover. The Catholic bishops are asking for a single exception to be made - by the legitimate authorities, not by the employer on an ad hoc, autonomous basis - on the grounds of conscience.
quote:I think that's an excellent extension of their argument. Problem is I regularly did things to my toddler's hands that precluded her being able to grab. For instance, I would hold them still and try to calm her down, or when it was very cold, I put mittens and socks on her hands to keep them warm. By the Catholic thinking, that must have been sinful.
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:It's more, "Since grabbing is the original and primary use of hands, you mustn't do anything that prohibits the possibility of grabbing."
Originally posted by orfeo:
Nice how you've declared what the solution isn't. Now please declare what the solution IS. Having created a hypothetical situation where grabbing is a problem, I'd be fascinated to see how you deal with it without purposefully restricting the grabbing. Or will you just throw your appendages up in the air and say "there's nothing we can do, grabbing just happens"?
quote:Yes - on a case-by-case basis, decided by the courts.
Originally posted by Zach82:
quote:You know full well how legal precedence works.
That's just ridiculous. No-one's asking for a "blank cheque" for employers to decide what to cover. The Catholic bishops are asking for a single exception to be made - by the legitimate authorities, not by the employer on an ad hoc, autonomous basis - on the grounds of conscience.
Zach
quote:Why not others, indeed? I'm asking for coverage of the contraceptive and abortifacient elements not to be mandatory for anyone who objects on conscience grounds, not just Catholics. Let employers opt-in if they want to cover them, or let employers who object opt out.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
First off, the kind of preferential government treatment you describe as "a single exception" isn't really consistent with American ideas about the law being equally applicable to everyone. If the Roman Catholic Church (or even just employers who are adherents of the faith) gets to provide substandard health coverage to their employees, why not others?
quote:What? That's not a request for a blank cheque - that's a request for a particular, fixed, pre-specified sum. After that, any further amendments and concessions or exemptions would have to be argued for afresh.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Second, your claim that "No-one's asking for a "blank cheque" for employers to decide what to cover" is directly contradicted by your assertion that certain oral contraceptive prescriptions would be allowed by the Church, but not others.
quote:And you don't see a troublesome precedent in ceding to employers the right to decide what healthcare concerns they will or will not pay for?
Yes - on a case-by-case basis, decided by the courts.
quote:So just because racially segregrated schools are a violation of the U.S. Constitution in Topeka, Kansas (to use a well known example) that doesn't necessarily mean that racially segregated schools in Little Rock, Arkansas are also unconstitutional? That's a fairly . . . unique idea of legal precedence.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:Yes - on a case-by-case basis, decided by the courts.
Originally posted by Zach82:
quote:You know full well how legal precedence works.
That's just ridiculous. No-one's asking for a "blank cheque" for employers to decide what to cover. The Catholic bishops are asking for a single exception to be made - by the legitimate authorities, not by the employer on an ad hoc, autonomous basis - on the grounds of conscience.
Zach
The courts judge which cases are covered by the precedent.
quote:Then how do you feel about the principle of ceding to employers the right to decide what they will and will not pay for?
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:This: why not let there be a mandatory core health-care package which all employers must provide, but let that not include contraceptive and abortive treatment. Let those elements be optional. Don't "cede to employers the right to decide" everything. Make a fair and conscience-sensitive healthcare law in the first place, and there won't need to be special exemptions. No exemptions, no precedent.
Originally posted by Zach82:
quote:Then how do you feel about the principle of ceding to employers the right to decide what they will and will not pay for?
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:That is, however, an arbitrary exemption. It is only demanding "fair and conscience-sensitive healthcare law" that is acceptable to Roman Catholics. Why not exemptions based on Christian Science sensibilities? Why not an exemption for cancer treatment when Wal-Mart decides that chemotherapy is against its religious sensibilities?
This: why not let there be a mandatory core health-care package which all employers must provide, but let that not include contraceptive and abortive treatment. Let those elements be optional. Don't "cede to employers the right to decide" everything. Make a fair and conscience-sensitive healthcare law in the first place, and there won't need to be special exemptions. No exemptions, no precedent.
quote:And let the basic plan not include blood transfusions or organ donations, which Jehovah's Witnesses may object to. And let it not include any medications or treatments that were developed through the use of animal experimentation, which Jainists may object to. And let it not include any psychotropic medications or psychiatric treatments, which Scientologists may object to. And let it not include any allopathic treatments whatsoever, which Christian Scientists may object to. And let it not include any treatments provided by a male to a female, or vice-versa, which Muslims may object to. Let all those elements be optional.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:This: why not let there be a mandatory core health-care package which all employers must provide, but let that not include contraceptive and abortive treatment. Let those elements be optional. Don't "cede to employers the right to decide" everything. Make a fair and conscience-sensitive healthcare law in the first place, and there won't need to be special exemptions. No exemptions, no precedent.
Originally posted by Zach82:
quote:Then how do you feel about the principle of ceding to employers the right to decide what they will and will not pay for?
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:This translates as "if the health care standards make an exception for my preferred exception, it's not really an exception". You still haven't explained why your particular exceptions are so exceptional that they deserve a special legal carve-out while a Jehovah's Witness' objection to paying for their employee's blood transfusions, for example, isn't. Bear in mind that "my religion is right but they're a bunch of infidels and heretics" isn't considered a valid argument in the U.S. legal system.
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
This: why not let there be a mandatory core health-care package which all employers must provide, but let that not include contraceptive and abortive treatment. Let those elements be optional. Don't "cede to employers the right to decide" everything. Make a fair and conscience-sensitive healthcare law in the first place, and there won't need to be special exemptions. No exemptions, no precedent.
quote:Of course, they're not really paying for it. Any health insurance plan that's priced at all actuarially realistically that excludes contraceptives but includes prenatal care, birth, and minor dependents will cost a lot more than a similar plan that also includes contraceptive coverage. The objection, despite the way it's deceptively phrased, isn't that Catholic employers have to pay for contraceptives, the objection is that no one should have access to something as evil as contraceptives in the first place.
Originally posted by RuthW:
Another problem with the Catholic Church's whole "we shouldn't have to pay for something we think is wrong" argument is that paying health insurance premiums for employees is part of employee compensation. They shouldn't have the right to tell employees what parts of health care they will and will not cover any more than they should have the right to tell employees how to spend their paychecks.
quote:Relatedly:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
On contraception, it is more difficult because there are non-contraceptive therapeutic uses of the pill which I think should be covered as we have already discussed.
But in the absence of such reasons for use, it does seem to me that artifical contraception is a personal "how I want to live my life" issue rather than a strictly medical one - even though using them or not will have medical consequences. They are not in the same category as blood-transfusions, organ-transplants and the like because they are not (in themselves) life-saving and no-one's health impaired merely by not having access to them.
quote:An uncharitable person might note that someone like Chesterbelloc who, judging by his internet handle, seems unlikely to be at risk of dying of maternal hæmorrhage or similar complications of pregnancy or childbirth, is rather blithe about classifying such risks as a lifestyle choice rather than a real, legitimate health issue. And I have never felt particularly charitable towards those willing to put other people's lives and health into the hazard for the sake of their own intellectual purity.
Doubling of maternal deaths in U.S. 'scandalous,' rights group says
March 12, 2010 | From Stephanie Smith, CNN
Deaths from pregnancy and childbirth in the United States have doubled in the past 20 years, a development that a human rights group called "scandalous and disgraceful" Friday.
In addition, the rights group said, about 1.7 million women a year, one-third of pregnant women in the United States, suffer from pregnancy-related complications.
quote:In my estimation, after driving a car, getting pregnant is the single most dangerous thing a woman can do in her life, even in the modern western world. There's a reason why Ob-Gyns pay the highest insurance premiums. Avoiding pregnancy is just as important as wearing a seatbelt. Anyone who claimed to care about women's health should support the availability of contraception. But of course, we know it's not about the contraception, it's about the sex. Oh, sorry, the "lifestyle". OliviaG
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
.... But in the absence of such reasons for use, it does seem to me that artifical contraception is a personal "how I want to live my life" issue rather than a strictly medical one - even though using them or not will have medical consequences. ...
quote:Third most dangerous if she's a smoker, but the main point stands.
Originally posted by OliviaG:
In my estimation, after driving a car, getting pregnant is the single most dangerous thing a woman can do in her life, even in the modern western world.
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Vatican Roulette
quote:I think an organism undergoing reproduction by fission is more properly called a "dividual".
Originally posted by no_prophet:
It is for amoebas and other single cell organisms, but these usually reproduce by fission, which I suppose the RC old men are also not in favour of, given that this sort of sexuality is akin to masturbation (only one individual is involved).
quote:These various "the pill is cheap" arguments seem a bit vague. At what price level does an employer micromanaging his employees' medical treatment become overly intrusive? Is there a specific dollar per year value, or is it more along the lines of a percentage of salary thing?
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
[Prescription contraceptives] are also the kind of thing that can be cheaply bought without help, or easily available free (because of their cheapness) by PP-type organisations - again, unlike blood-transfusions and organ transplants.
quote:That isn't actually, I believe, the reason Ob-Gyns pay the highest insurance premiums. It's that babies are small and easy to damage especially when they are being born. And a mistake has massive consequences that could last the rest of the unfortunate baby's life. Damages need to cover future costs - so damaging a baby means there are serious and expensive long term costs.
Originally posted by OliviaG:
In my estimation, after driving a car, getting pregnant is the single most dangerous thing a woman can do in her life, even in the modern western world. There's a reason why Ob-Gyns pay the highest insurance premiums. Avoiding pregnancy is just as important as wearing a seatbelt. Anyone who claimed to care about women's health should support the availability of contraception. But of course, we know it's not about the contraception, it's about the sex. Oh, sorry, the "lifestyle". OliviaG
quote:Nice!
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:I think an organism undergoing reproduction by fission is more properly called a "dividual".
Originally posted by no_prophet:
It is for amoebas and other single cell organisms, but these usually reproduce by fission, which I suppose the RC old men are also not in favour of, given that this sort of sexuality is akin to masturbation (only one individual is involved).
quote:That's exactly correct, mousethief! I cannot personally provide a "natural moral law" argument that tells me why all this is deemed so morally important. The best I can do there is to do some handwaving about how reproduction clearly is biologically important for the continuation of humanity, or perhaps point to the psychological and social importance we all in fact attach to sex. But I do not know of a conclusive argument for the particular importance of "getting sex right" that I could defend from sound "first principles". Perhaps it exists, but I have not heard it and I cannot think of one myself.
Originally posted by mousethief:
It's more, "Since grabbing is the original and primary use of hands, you mustn't do anything that prohibits the possibility of grabbing." I would like to see some argument for why couples must always allow for the possibility for the original and primary use of sex, given that it has other uses which are admitted to be legitimate.
Why must we be slaves to our bodies in this one area? We have evolved (or if reality isn't your bag, gifted with) the ability to use sex for other purposes. What does the original reason for the evolution (design) of sex have to do with prohibiting its use, now that it has other uses? Especially since this "open to the possibility" wording is so Jesuitical on the face of it. This doesn't prove it's wrong, but surely asking for an explanation of how it makes sense and why it's insisted on is hardly blameworthy.
quote:This amounts to: "The result is wrong, therefore somehow the argument must be wrong / irrelevant, and since I have no idea in what way, I'll just dismiss it by pretending that this is obvious."
Originally posted by Anselmina:
Thanks, IngoB, for your reply but as with others on this thread it can only be marked down as 'one for the theologicans' rather than anything that is actually applicable to the ordinary people who actually have to live with the reality of how life is.
I'm afraid your reply kind of confirms that the RCC seems not to have noticed the advance of medicine, human biology and physiology in the past 2000 years or so. At least not where married sex is concerned.
quote:How does this square with the existence of monozygotic twins? It would seem peculiar to insist such a fertilized egg is an individual human being.
Originally posted by IngoB:
(Epi-)genetically, there exists an identifiably individual human being from the moment that an egg gets fertilized.
quote:Easily, note the "epi" that I have included. Near instantly, the two separated parts will start biologically distinguishable development. In particular, chemical gradients will be disrupted by the separation, making formerly proximate cells experience a different environment and hence development. Not that this sophisticated view is actually needed, since we can of course distinguish the twins just as later in life: simply by their spatial separation. Prior to the separation, there is one individual human being, posterior there are two human individual beings. There's no particular problem with that. Twining is just a different biological mechanism for creating new human beings. (Before you ask: I do not know whether the individual that exists before the separation survives as one of the "parts". Perhaps yes, perhaps no - it matters greatly to that individual, of course, but not at all to our discussion.)
Originally posted by Dave W.:
How does this square with the existence of monozygotic twins? It would seem peculiar to insist such a fertilized egg is an individual human being. Identifiably dividual human being? (Croesos!)
quote:is where the teaching of the RCC (and several other religious traditions) and I part company.
Originally posted by IngoB:
The best I can do there is to do some handwaving about how reproduction clearly is biologically important for the continuation of humanity,
quote:Don't give up the day-job, IngoB. You're obviously not going to make it as a mind-reader
Originally posted by IngoB:
This amounts to: "The result is wrong, therefore somehow the argument must be wrong / irrelevant, and since I have no idea in what way, I'll just dismiss it by pretending that this is obvious."
.
quote:My point is that the RC hierarchy in some parts of the US acts with complete jackassery. I stand by my point.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
quote:I doubt that very, very much. The climate of litigation within which US dioceses have to operate, especially in areas of employment, make the chances of anyone in any authority making the kind of threat, implicit or explicit, suggested by Genevieve's post vanishingly small.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
You might want to consider, too, that not every employing individual/group in a church actually FOLLOWS that church's teaching and/or policies in employment matters. It's entirely possible that a pompous supervising jackass or three might have demanded such a thing of her, even though the RC church itself would not.
Frankly, I don't care a tinker's dam whether you think my post was pompous, Genevieve. If you dont want your anecdotes subjected to scrutiny, youve come to the wrong board. I think your example is so hopelessly incomplete as to be entirely worthless. Either you don't know or aren't telling us the whole story. If the former then you're a jackass for attempting to use the example to make a point: if the latter, clearly a lack of integrity is far from uncommon in the circles within which you move.
quote:And this is arguably the worst part of the Roman Catholic approach to contraception. I despise both groups of extremists in the abortion debate - neither side cares about quite literally condemning people to death. (Ban it entirely and you kill women, and the extreme pro-choicers explicitely do not care whether they kill babies). However both at least have moral principles they can fall back on - "Thou shalt not kill" and "No human shall enslave another". And neither principle is that easy to argue against.
Originally posted by IngoB:
That's exactly correct, mousethief! I cannot personally provide a "natural moral law" argument that tells me why all this is deemed so morally important. The best I can do there is to do some handwaving about how reproduction clearly is biologically important for the continuation of humanity, or perhaps point to the psychological and social importance we all in fact attach to sex. But I do not know of a conclusive argument for the particular importance of "getting sex right" that I could defend from sound "first principles". Perhaps it exists, but I have not heard it and I cannot think of one myself.
quote:It really seems like the sort of thing a well-developed theory of human individuality should have worked out already.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:(Before you ask: I do not know whether the individual that exists before the separation survives as one of the "parts". Perhaps yes, perhaps no - it matters greatly to that individual, of course, but not at all to our discussion.)
Originally posted by Dave W.:
How does this square with the existence of monozygotic twins? It would seem peculiar to insist such a fertilized egg is an individual human being. Identifiably dividual human being? (Croesos!)
quote:That might hold water if you had a fucking argument. You do not. You yourself just admitted that there was no underlying moral principle. The result you end up with is wrong and the argument is non-existent.
Originally posted by IngoB:
This amounts to: "The result is wrong, therefore somehow the argument must be wrong / irrelevant, and since I have no idea in what way, I'll just dismiss it by pretending that this is obvious."
quote:Would you have tied her hands? Or handcuffed her? I wouldn't have bound or cuffed my children for convenience or safety's sake (and I doubt you would either). We stick to using methods of restraint that feel loving and natural, even if they are less than perfect at preventing grabbing.
Originally posted by Gwai:
quote:I think that's an excellent extension of their argument. Problem is I regularly did things to my toddler's hands that precluded her being able to grab. For instance, I would hold them still and try to calm her down, or when it was very cold, I put mittens and socks on her hands to keep them warm. By the Catholic thinking, that must have been sinful.
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:It's more, "Since grabbing is the original and primary use of hands, you mustn't do anything that prohibits the possibility of grabbing."
Originally posted by orfeo:
Nice how you've declared what the solution isn't. Now please declare what the solution IS. Having created a hypothetical situation where grabbing is a problem, I'd be fascinated to see how you deal with it without purposefully restricting the grabbing. Or will you just throw your appendages up in the air and say "there's nothing we can do, grabbing just happens"?
quote:You are confused. I actually believe that the Roman Catholic Church has been put on earth to spread God's word. And that therefore she is infallible in matters of faith and morals, where she speaks definitely (and to be obeyed by faithful assent where she speaks merely strongly). That's my fundamental principle in this matter. Of course, it helps that I can argue much of RC morality from nature by reason, and that I can show that none of it is contrary to nature or reason. But I have no problem with admitting that my position on sexuality is fundamentally religious, not philosophical.
Originally posted by Justinian:
However even by your own admission, there is no fundamental principle underlying the Roman Catholic opposition to contraception. Merely that some people once thought it was a good idea, they gained power, and weren't successfully challenged. It's a pure fabrication. Evil out of thin air.
quote:You talk about features of human biology that nobody has used in argument or otherwise discussed, which are essentially irrelevant to this debate. We are not talking about what God may or may not do, but about what we may or may not do. God lets over a hundred thousand people die every day, many of them innocent, yet you may not kill any innocent person. And you are talking about the individuality of jelly fish, but we are not talking about the morality of jelly fish.
Originally posted by no_prophet:
None of these simple minded ideas have much connection to actual biological science. No biologist me, but do have some background.
quote:How? Short of Divine revelation, I see no way of tackling this question. I also see no particular reason why to worry about this. Unless somebody is trying to induce twining... I'm not aware that anyone is trying to do that currently.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
It really seems like the sort of thing a well-developed theory of human individuality should have worked out already.
quote:But I do have an argument, just not one which you would accept. I can argue what "natural" sex is like. I can, under the assumption of "natural moral law", argue that this is what sex should be like. But I cannot argue you into considering "natural moral law" as your standard of choice. And even if you agree to that standard, I cannot argue conclusively about precisely how wrong "non-natural" sex is. (Though there may be such an argument, and I just don't know it.) In the end, the evaluation scale of morals cannot really be anchored in argument.
Originally posted by Justinian:
However the principles that say that contraception is a good thing are really realy obvious. Public health. Prevention of abortion. Prevention of serious bodily harm to a woman (pregnancy being incredibly dangerous). Self-determination. And you oppose it despite not having an argument.
quote:Then perhaps you could have a little word in the Church's ear and point out, as Apocalypso has so nicely done, that the earth's current population is at a point where 'go forth and multiply' might no longer be QUITE so relevant that it needs to be a first order law?
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:You are confused. I actually believe that the Roman Catholic Church has been put on earth to spread God's word. And that therefore she is infallible in matters of faith and morals, where she speaks definitely (and to be obeyed by faithful assent where she speaks merely strongly). That's my fundamental principle in this matter. Of course, it helps that I can argue much of RC morality from nature by reason, and that I can show that none of it is contrary to nature or reason. But I have no problem with admitting that my position on sexuality is fundamentally religious, not philosophical.
Originally posted by Justinian:
However even by your own admission, there is no fundamental principle underlying the Roman Catholic opposition to contraception. Merely that some people once thought it was a good idea, they gained power, and weren't successfully challenged. It's a pure fabrication. Evil out of thin air.
quote:I'm afraid your naivete is showing. The denomination of which I am a part has the same climate of litigation, and has had for years, and that never put off two management twats (in different church agencies) from blatantly illegal and unchristian behavior contrary to the laws of the land and the practice of the Church. And that was in reference to me, a single ordinary person. If it's happened to me twice (and to others I've spoken with), I conclude that assholery is a) quite common b) tends to blithely ignore the dangers of its own misconduct, including possible litigation. Which is virtually the definition of assholery, isn't it?
Originally posted by Trisagion:
quote:I doubt that very, very much. The climate of litigation within which US dioceses have to operate, especially in areas of employment, make the chances of anyone in any authority making the kind of threat, implicit or explicit, suggested by Genevieve's post vanishingly small.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
You might want to consider, too, that not every employing individual/group in a church actually FOLLOWS that church's teaching and/or policies in employment matters. It's entirely possible that a pompous supervising jackass or three might have demanded such a thing of her, even though the RC church itself would not.
quote:I would not use that term anywhere from my experience of you on the Ship. Quite the opposite. Plain speaking should not be mistaken for something on that level. Ever. Someone who is direct may find themselves confronted with misbehaviour and say something, while others who've attracted the same behaviour do nothing.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
The alternative is, I suppose, that I am an asshole attractor* and that such things never happen to anyone else. Or that assholes in your church body are litigation conscious while those in mine are not.
Frankly, I find that kind of asshole self-sorting unlikely in the extreme.
* Yes, I have wondered about this occasionally
quote:I didn't take issue just now with following the church's teaching - in fact I said the exact opposite. I took issue with declaring that the church's teaching is perfect.
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Yes, yes, orfeo, but IngoB is a human being under authority, isn't he? As are all Catholics.
A stroppy nonco like me looks at these moral choices through dissenting protestant eyes. But I can hardly expect a good practising Catholic to do the same.
Because IngoB is very bright, I do expect him to follow Thomas Moore as far as he can, and serve God "wittily, in the tangle of his mind". Which from reading his stuff I reckon he does. But it would be immoral of me to expect him to ditch Catholic docrine when it doesn't suit my moral perceptions. I would be expecting him to disobey his calling, surely, if I expected that.
quote:"How?" Are you asking me how I think Catholic theology might determine where the extra person comes from when a fertilized egg ("individual human being") ends up producing two persons? I'm sure I wouldn't know, but it doesn't seem much more esoteric than a lot of other things the Church has very firm opinions of.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:How? Short of Divine revelation, I see no way of tackling this question. I also see no particular reason why to worry about this. Unless somebody is trying to induce twining... I'm not aware that anyone is trying to do that currently.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
It really seems like the sort of thing a well-developed theory of human individuality should have worked out already.
quote:I agree entirely but that isn't what Catholic theology holds. We don't know when ensoulment takes place and as our knowledge of the process of generation has developed the point at which it is reasonable to speculate that it might occur has moved back closer to that moment of, as you so neatly put it, the first tango. There is a principle in Catholic moral theology called the tutioristic principle according to which, when the consequences of an action might be gravely morally wrong - for example, the deliberate killing of a human being - then one should take the morally safest course. So here that would work, I propose, as follows:
Originally posted by mousethief:
If one is going to insist the moment of ensoulment is when the sperm and the egg have their first tango, then the question of twinning is either a reductio, or at the very least needs to be accounted for.
quote:If the Pill is trying to prevent the implantation of and thereby foreseeably bringing about the end of the immediate product of the first tango than it would not be morally licit on the grounds I set out. If it is attempting to prevent the first tango altogether, its use would not be morally licit for altogether different reasons adequately set out in this short document.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Wonderful. Then you'll agree that the pill is not trying to do f.
quote:Only you think it's adequate. As far as I can see it just asserts some positions fairly blindly. Refer to previous comments about 'go forth and multiply' being entirely appropriate when the world population is 2, and bloody stupid when the world population is 7 billion.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
quote:If the Pill is trying to prevent the implantation of and thereby foreseeably bringing about the end of the immediate product of the first tango than it would not be morally licit on the grounds I set out. If it is attempting to prevent the first tango altogether, its use would not be morally licit for altogether different reasons adequately set out in this short document.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Wonderful. Then you'll agree that the pill is not trying to do f.
The point I was making related specifically to the issue of twinning.
quote:We know that's not true because at least two other shipmates on this particular thread have explicitly used its reasoning. In any event, the description "adequate" referred to the fact that the reasoning was set out in the document not a comment on the quality of the argumentation.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Only you think it's adequate.
quote:Oh come on: either you haven't actually read the document, or you are entirely ignorant of its theological and historical hinterland or you don't wish to engage seriously with what it says. This is Hell, so I guess you don't have to.
As far as I can see it just asserts some positions fairly blindly.
quote:We have been hearing this sub-Malthusian horseshit now for 200 years. It wasn't true then and it isn't true now. My school masters told me thirty years ago that the world population could not possibly be fed at 5 billions: my father tells me that he was taught the same thing sixty years ago but the figure then was 3 billions.
Refer to previous comments about 'go forth and multiply' being entirely appropriate when the world population is 2, and bloody stupid when the world population is 7 billion.
quote:What a charming image. Unfortunately our discourse is likely to be very limited if it can be brought to an end at any point by an appeal to your imagination whenever it suits you.
I have this vision of God being the Sorcerer's Apprentice, desperately trying to stop the brooms and discovering the brooms aren't bloody well listening. They're wrecking the place instead.
He's even given them the TOOLS AND SCIENCE to stop, and they ignore Him.
quote:Casti Conubii
Originally posted by orfeo:
The bits of that 'short document' that are, in my view, complete bullshit are hidden behind some citations of earlier documents, written in the pre-pill days. Where might I find the links to those previous documents?
References 12 and 16 in particular.
quote:AHA!
Originally posted by Trisagion:
We have been hearing this sub-Malthusian horseshit now for 200 years. It wasn't true then and it isn't true now. My school masters told me thirty years ago that the world population could not possibly be fed at 5 billions: my father tells me that he was taught the same thing sixty years ago but the figure then was 3 billions.
quote:Looks pretty likely to me that it's true, even allowing for the discernible cooling in annual temperatures since 1998. It also seems pretty clear that a major component is human activity.
Originally posted by orfeo:
PS What are your thoughts on global warming, Trisagion? Given the hints of a 'the world is fine, we can't possibly be slowly destroying it, God would never allow such a thing' attitude, I see the potential for a whole new Hell thread.
quote:How nice to be so elegantly patronised.
Oh, and maybe you and your Daddy never learnt the meaning of the world 'sustainable'. There's a difference between being able to feed 5 billion people for now and being able to feed 5 billion people sustainably, without creating a net deficit and destroying resources faster than they can be recreated. Your teachers probably mentioned the idea of sustainability but you were too busy to notice.
quote:Where have I said ANYTHING about the need to force population control? The entire point is that women would actually do a pretty damn fine job of controlling the population all by themselves. If only you'd let them, instead of insisting that they keep having babies even after they personally think they have enough babies.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
You see, what is so thoroughly disingenuous about your position is that at one moment it masquerades as a manifestation of personal choice relating to your own fertility and just the next moment it's about population control. Which is it: is it the free control of Orfeo's reproductive choices which other people must be compelled under pain of law to fund or is it about Orfeo's getting to decide just who should be allowed to have children? Choice or coercion? Or is it both and if so who gets to make the free choice and who doesn't?
The truth is the population control arguments in favour of birth control were and always have been so closely connected to racist and eugenicist notions of who should and who should not be allowed to reproduce that it's stink can be detected in space.
quote:That is also taking issue with the Catholic Church's teaching. Here is IngoB making precisely that point.
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:I didn't take issue just now with following the church's teaching - in fact I said the exact opposite. I took issue with declaring that the church's teaching is perfect.
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Yes, yes, orfeo, but IngoB is a human being under authority, isn't he? As are all Catholics.
quote:Constructive dialogue with Catholics just needs to recognise such things. Otherwise we get into a lot of shouting past one another.
I actually believe that the Roman Catholic Church has been put on earth to spread God's word. And that therefore she is infallible in matters of faith and morals, where she speaks definitely (and to be obeyed by faithful assent where she speaks merely strongly). That's my fundamental principle in this matter.
quote:Your point completely missed the point in issue which is about the morality of the means and the fact that, despite the hitherto assumed presumed protection of the first amendment to the US Constitution, the HHS mandate appears to seek to compel my co-religionists in the US to fund means to which they are conscientiously opposed. As I have said elsewhere on this thread the second question seems likely to be settled by the SCOTUS: the first question, however, seems to be the one over which you and I have a disagreement.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Where have I said ANYTHING about the need to force population control? The entire point is that women would actually do a pretty damn fine job of controlling the population all by themselves. If only you'd let them, instead of insisting that they keep having babies even after they personally think they have enough babies.
My point wasn't that we have to force the population down, it's that you can stop forcing it to go UP.
quote:I'm sorry. I rather over-read you 0825 post.
Originally posted by orfeo:
PS A little newsflash Trisagion. Take a quick squiz at my profile. I think you'll find my own fertility is under control just fine!!
...you thought I needed the pill?
quote:I would be more sympathetic if you presented a moral alternative that actually worked. Telling women to avoid the fertile time of the month is a lovely theory, but it makes an awful lot of assumptions about being able to accurately keep track of that and/or being able to successfully fob off a husband for days at a time.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
quote:Your point completely missed the point in issue which is about the morality of the means and the fact that, despite the hitherto assumed presumed protection of the first amendment to the US Constitution, the HHS mandate appears to seek to compel my co-religionists in the US to fund means to which they are conscientiously opposed. As I have said elsewhere on this thread the second question seems likely to be settled by the SCOTUS: the first question, however, seems to be the one over which you and I have a disagreement.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Where have I said ANYTHING about the need to force population control? The entire point is that women would actually do a pretty damn fine job of controlling the population all by themselves. If only you'd let them, instead of insisting that they keep having babies even after they personally think they have enough babies.
My point wasn't that we have to force the population down, it's that you can stop forcing it to go UP.
quote:The big problem with this assertion, as has been previously noted, is that under the HHS mandate Catholics aren't funding contraception, nor are they being forced to. All that's being "forced" upon them is a principle that, just like you can't call the billiards table in the employee lounge "health insurance", you can't call a plan which doesn't cover prescription drugs a "prescription drug benefit". All this is about is the Church's desire for its adherents to get a tax break for something they're not providing.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
Your point completely missed the point in issue which is about the morality of the means and the fact that, despite the hitherto assumed presumed protection of the first amendment to the US Constitution, the HHS mandate appears to seek to compel my co-religionists in the US to fund means to which they are conscientiously opposed. As I have said elsewhere on this thread the second question seems likely to be settled by the SCOTUS: the first question, however, seems to be the one over which you and I have a disagreement.
quote:OMG, can you imagine the tax savings if you could??!!
Originally posted by orfeo:
... As to funding things that you oppose, that is pretty much a fact of life for every citizen of every country. I don't see why an objection couched in religious terms gets to be a trump card ..... None of that means that if I jump up and down say I object to detention centres because I am a Christian, I suddenly become exempt from paying for them.
![[Yipee]](graemlins/spin.gif)
A Christian could be exempt from the portion of taxes going to military spending and interest, just for starters. OliviaG
quote:They're not. Obama's compromise allows them not to fund it. The insurance companies fund it instead.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
despite the hitherto assumed presumed protection of the first amendment to the US Constitution, the HHS mandate appears to seek to compel my co-religionists in the US to fund means to which they are conscientiously opposed.
quote:But what we know now about twinning does exactly suggest otherwise. It fairly screams otherwise. And this you have not addressed.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
e. the safest moral course to follow, having regard to a. above is to treat as a human being the immediate product of that first tango, unless and until our scientific knowledge suggests otherwise;
quote:Likewise the existence of human genetic chimeras (where one human person results from two fertilized eggs).
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:But what we know now about twinning does exactly suggest otherwise. It fairly screams otherwise. And this you have not addressed.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
e. the safest moral course to follow, having regard to a. above is to treat as a human being the immediate product of that first tango, unless and until our scientific knowledge suggests otherwise;
quote:Not at all. What you and your co-religionists want to do is force insurance companies to make provision that is an average of 15-17% more expensive than it would be if they didn't follow your rules rather than medical advice.
Originally posted by Trisagion:
Your point completely missed the point in issue which is about the morality of the means and the fact that, despite the hitherto assumed presumed protection of the first amendment to the US Constitution, the HHS mandate appears to seek to compel my co-religionists in the US to fund means to which they are conscientiously opposed. As I have said elsewhere on this thread the second question seems likely to be settled by the SCOTUS: the first question, however, seems to be the one over which you and I have a disagreement.
quote:The key difference is this - Justinian is not trying to force everyone else to comply with his morality. Unless I've badly misunderstood him, he is happy to allow those who disagree to follow whichever reproductive morality they choose.
Originally posted by IngoB:
But I do have an argument, just not one which you would accept.
[snip]
All this applies to your standards as well.
[snip]
Moral argument runs out of steam once one comes to the foundations, and I do not believe in yours.
quote:Just on that statistic, I offered it in good faith. But having read the actual source material (I should know better than to trust journalists) the 15-17% figure includes time lost to medical leave as an expense to the employer. Despite this it is still cheaper for insurance companies to include contraception than to not.
Originally posted by Justinian:
Not at all. What you and your co-religionists want to do is force insurance companies to make provision that is an average of 15-17% more expensive than it would be if they didn't follow your rules rather than medical advice.
quote:Hey, that explains why Santorum is so gung-ho for a war with Iran. Population control without contraception!
Originally posted by Apocalypso:
With world population now standing at, what? Seven billion people? Any threats to human continuity appear now to stem largely from increasingly dangerous and nuclear-armed competition for increasingly scarce resources to support ever-reproducing humanity.
quote:And I believe that the above is as strong an example of the sin of pride as I've ever seen.
Originally posted by IngoB:
You are confused. I actually believe that the Roman Catholic Church has been put on earth to spread God's word. And that therefore she is infallible in matters of faith and morals, where she speaks definitely (and to be obeyed by faithful assent where she speaks merely strongly). That's my fundamental principle in this matter. Of course, it helps that I can argue much of RC morality from nature by reason, and that I can show that none of it is contrary to nature or reason. But I have no problem with admitting that my position on sexuality is fundamentally religious, not philosophical.
quote:And under the assumption of "natural moral law", I am arguing that sex is ordered to the social and pleasurable functions to the active detriment of procreation in a way seen in very few other species. Therefore even if you accept "natural moral law" has any relevance to the price of tea in China, claiming that sex is ordered to procreation simply because the first function of sex was procreation is like claiming that a computer is ordered to arithmetic or codebreaking. Yes, the first ones were designed for that and they can all do it. But we have many more uses for them now.
But I do have an argument, just not one which you would accept. I can argue what "natural" sex is like. I can, under the assumption of "natural moral law", argue that this is what sex should be like.
quote:One of my fundamental practical principles is that no human or organisation of humanity is morally omniscient - which means that it is a moral duty to be on guard against errors in your own morality. I further believe that when your moral principles lead directly to piles of dead bodies that's an incredibly large clue that it's time to reevaluate. (It may not mean that you change your morality - sometimes piles of dead bodies, as in WWII and the American Civil War are the least bad choice). But you need to be very sure of your ground. Which means examining it from all angles. Faith alone just isn't going to cut it.
Given your examples, we can make a fair guess that you have essentially utilitarian morals and believe that there is some kind of human right to "free sexual expression".
quote:Thanks, Barnabas. I think so, too, but I didn't want to argue it on faith and morals, because quite frankly, based on what the Catholic contributors here have said, I don't understand Catholic morals, and to the extent that I do understand them, I don't consider them particularly Christian. It seems to me that our Lord Jesus, when teaching about the keeping of the Law, thought that outcomes mattered. He acknowledged the commandments, acknowledged that God had given them, but said that the Pharisees had missed the entire point. Breaking the law was not in and of itself evil. The laws were ordered to bring about good results. If the law interfered with that, then according to Him, it was lawful to do things that brought about good results, even on the sabbath.
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Where these moral/utilitarian distinctions seem to me to get very murky is well illustrated by Josephine's fascinating post. There is the quite specific Romans 12 guideline "if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone" which seems to be well followed by what she describes as a "social compact". I think it is more than just a social compact. It looks to me to be following Christian understandings on faith and morals.
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
Thanks, Barnabas. I think so, too, but I didn't want to argue it on faith and morals, because quite frankly, based on what the Catholic contributors here have said, I don't understand Catholic morals, and to the extent that I do understand them, I don't consider them particularly Christian. It seems to me that our Lord Jesus, when teaching about the keeping of the Law, thought that outcomes mattered. He acknowledged the commandments, acknowledged that God had given them, but said that the Pharisees had missed the entire point. Breaking the law was not in and of itself evil. The laws were ordered to bring about good results. If the law interfered with that, then according to Him, it was lawful to do things that brought about good results, even on the sabbath.
Rules that exist and are to be enforced, not because of any evil results that anyone can point to if you don't follow them, and in the face of evil results that clearly result if you do, are not compatible with Christian morality as I understand it. All rules boil down to two: Love God, love your neighbor. And since we're really good at fooling ourselves about the former, we're told that we can't do the former unless we're doing the latter.
quote:Perhaps that should read the Catholic contributors who have an obligation to defend the official position.
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Pretty Purg-ish hereabouts. Reading recent posts suggests to me that the moral prohibition and socially utilitarian arguments have got very intertwined.
I think the Catholic position is that if we can point to socially useful consequences of disobeying what they believe is an absolute moral prohibition, that butters no parsnips. Socially useful consequences may be seen, I suppose, as a matter of human calculation, overlooking the possibility that the calculated "benefits" may be missing something more important further down the line. The apparently socially useful may in the end turn out to be counter-productive. In any case, a line has been drawn which should not be crossed.
Where these moral/utilitarian distinctions seem to me to get very murky is well illustrated by Josephine's fascinating post. There is the quite specific Romans 12 guideline "if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone" which seems to be well followed by what she describes as a "social compact". I think it is more than just a social compact. It looks to me to be following Christian understandings on faith and morals.
How do the Catholic contributors see that?
quote:I've always wondered what that idea does to couples who are too elderly to have children, or have fertility problems.
Originally posted by Josephine:
And the claim that sex produces mystical benefits only when you might have a baby, and if you use contraception then God can't give you a baby is one of the most totally bogus things I've ever heard. If God can give a virgin a baby, you think a condom is going to get in his way if he decides to give you one?
quote:The Abraham and Sarah argument, I suppose
Originally posted by Anselmina:
quote:I've always wondered what that idea does to couples who are too elderly to have children, or have fertility problems.
Originally posted by Josephine:
And the claim that sex produces mystical benefits only when you might have a baby, and if you use contraception then God can't give you a baby is one of the most totally bogus things I've ever heard. If God can give a virgin a baby, you think a condom is going to get in his way if he decides to give you one?
quote:Have you actually tried to understand Natural Law other than merely standing on the shoulders of philosophical dwarves and excitedly bleating about the "naturalistic fallacy"? The fact is that the so-called "fact/value distinction" (in the works of David Hume, G.E. Moore et al) is a fiction since it confuses the conceptual distinction between goodness and being with a supposed real distinction between them.
Originally posted by Justinian:
Never mind that so-called Natural Law is merely a textbook example of the Naturalistic Fallacy...
quote:Yes I have. I've tried hard. And the more I've looked the deeper down the rabbit hole I've gone. And the more Roman Catholic Philosophy has resembled Wonderland, complete with paying words to mean what you want them to.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Have you actually tried to understand Natural Law other than merely standing on the shoulders of philosophical dwarves and excitedly bleating about the "naturalistic fallacy"? The fact is that the so-called "fact/value distinction" (in the works of David Hume, G.E. Moore et al) is a fiction since it confuses the conceptual distinction between goodness and being with a supposed real distinction between them.
quote:In reality, nature is often red in tooth and claw*. Being is not the same as goodness unless you are defining goodness to be the same as being. Cancer is. And is almost certainly entirely natural. That doesn't make it good.
In reality, being and goodness are the same and this is what allows us to derive moral goodness in the natural moral law from goodness in general as applied to the good and being of human nature.
quote:This understanding of ontological goodness depends on the recognition of final causes - both intrinsic (in the case of bonum sibi) and extrinsic (in the case of bonum alteri) - in nature. If you deny final causes then there can be no talk of goodness being a transcendental of being.
When the thesis is formulated in the traditional scholastic statement, "Omne ens est bonum: All being is good"; it sounds a startling paradox. Surely it cannot be contended that everything is good? A cancer in the stomach is not good; lies are not good; yet these are actual realities; cancers exist and lies are told; therefore not every reality is good. This is unquestionably true. But it does not contradict the thesis rightly understood. The true meaning of the thesis is, not that every being is good in all respects, or possesses such goodness as would justify us in describing it as "good"; in the ordinary sense, but that every being possesses some goodness: every being in so far as it has actuality has formal, intrinsic goodness, or is, in other words, the term or object of natural tendency or desire. This goodness, which we predicate of any and every actual being, may be (i) the term of the natural tendency or appetite of that being itself, bonum sibi, or (2) it may be conceivably the term of the appetite of some other being, bonum alteri.
quote:The purpose of vaccination is to help the immune system fulfil its proper function. If I were deliberately to do something that was contrary to the finality of my immune system, which is health, then that would be immoral.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I don't see a way for the argument from natural law to work against contraception without it also working against vaccinations. Is there some particular reason it's okay to fiddle with the immune system but not the reproductive system?
quote:
Nor, in fact, should it be deemed a slight sin for a man to arrange for the emission of semen apart from the proper purpose of generating and bringing up children, on the argument that it is either a slight sin, or none at all, for a person to use a part of the body for a different use than that to which it is directed by nature (say, for instance, one chose to walk on his hands, or to use his feet for something usually done with the hands) because man’s good is not much opposed by such inordinate use. However, the inordinate emission of semen is incompatible with the natural good; namely, the preservation of the species.
quote:Except the proper "natural" function of the immune system is to not provide immunity to diseases which it has not yet encountered. Vaccinations do an unnatural end-run around this "natural good". Given that women are not constantly ovulating, I'm unconvinced that controlling the timing of ovulation is any more "evil" than controlling the release of antibodies.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:The purpose of vaccination is to help the immune system fulfil its proper function. If I were deliberately to do something that was contrary to the finality of my immune system, which is health, then that would be immoral.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I don't see a way for the argument from natural law to work against contraception without it also working against vaccinations. Is there some particular reason it's okay to fiddle with the immune system but not the reproductive system?
quote:Ah, the other version. The version I'd term as not "All is good." But "There is that of good in everything." This, if taken seriously leads straight to moral relativism as there is good in everything. Which means to reject anything you are rejecting good. (Note: I don't say that moral relativism is a bad thing. It isn't. It is a necessary thing to interact with the world on its terms rather than trying to force it into your mould).
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
From Ontology by Peter Coffey:
quote:This understanding of ontological goodness depends on the recognition of final causes - both intrinsic (in the case of bonum sibi) and extrinsic (in the case of bonum alteri) - in nature. If you deny final causes then there can be no talk of goodness being a transcendental of being.
When the thesis is formulated in the traditional scholastic statement, "Omne ens est bonum: All being is good"; it sounds a startling paradox. Surely it cannot be contended that everything is good? A cancer in the stomach is not good; lies are not good; yet these are actual realities; cancers exist and lies are told; therefore not every reality is good. This is unquestionably true. But it does not contradict the thesis rightly understood. The true meaning of the thesis is, not that every being is good in all respects, or possesses such goodness as would justify us in describing it as "good"; in the ordinary sense, but that every being possesses some goodness: every being in so far as it has actuality has formal, intrinsic goodness, or is, in other words, the term or object of natural tendency or desire. This goodness, which we predicate of any and every actual being, may be (i) the term of the natural tendency or appetite of that being itself, bonum sibi, or (2) it may be conceivably the term of the appetite of some other being, bonum alteri.
quote:Dude. There are over six billion of us. I live in a city of millions. The preservation of the species is not under threat. Overpopulation as a form of gluttony is a bigger threat. And even if it was, sperm grow and die. And replenish. This would only be an issue if sperm ejeculated outside the body would of necessity be enjeculated inside a female body without contraception. And honestly, with 50% of the population being men, you'd be looking at a baby boom the likes of which we've never seen.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
From Suma Contra Gentiles Book III Chapter 122:
quote:
Nor, in fact, should it be deemed a slight sin for a man to arrange for the emission of semen apart from the proper purpose of generating and bringing up children, on the argument that it is either a slight sin, or none at all, for a person to use a part of the body for a different use than that to which it is directed by nature (say, for instance, one chose to walk on his hands, or to use his feet for something usually done with the hands) because man’s good is not much opposed by such inordinate use. However, the inordinate emission of semen is incompatible with the natural good; namely, the preservation of the species.
quote:Whether there even is overpopulation is debatable. But let's for the sake of argument assume that we are in a situation where we have multiplied enough. Well, lo and behold, we now also have the right tool to limit reproduction: natural family planning. And yes, I practice what I preach there - for close to a decade now. As a matter of fact, my wife and I started that long before I became a Christian, for entirely non-religious reasons. NFP has been shown to work well in different cultures and for people of different educational backgrounds. It does require the cooperation of the spouses, but I think this is less of a problem in practice than often assumed, and where it is a problem, there it is a one that the pill does not really solve either.
Originally posted by orfeo:
That's what annoys me the most, probably. Context is important when spreading God's word. What God said when there were 2 people on Earth ought not to be blindly extrapolated into something that the Church claims God is continuing to say when there are 7 billion of us.
quote:Nobody has claimed that she does. It is regrettable that you feel neither the need to read carefully what I write (for I made the necessary distinctions) nor to look up what the RCC actually claims. In short, there are many "levels of truth" in the RCC. The highest one, where the Church teaches definitively on faith and morals, is protected by God Himself against error. Below these infallible truths, there are some where the Church has spoken clearly and insistently. There a good Catholic should typically obey even thought it is possible that the Church errs, simply out of respect for her authority. And then there's a lot of less certain stuff, where one typically can pick among several suggested alternatives or simply ignore the teaching. The teaching against contraception may not be quite infallible, but it sure is certain enough to demand obedience.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Okay, fine, so the church has been put on earth to spread God's word? How the hell does that lead to an implication that the church has perfect hearing and never makes a mistake while passing on the message?
quote:You likely think of theology as a near arbitrary selection of proposition. Theology instead is a highly connected logical web anchored in a largely fixed set of fundamental beliefs (the "deposit of faith") and to some extent the usual knowledge of the world. One hence can recognize that something probably is outside of the reach of this theological web, simply because the argumentative "links" to get there appear non-existent.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
"How?" Are you asking me how I think Catholic theology might determine where the extra person comes from when a fertilized egg ("individual human being") ends up producing two persons? I'm sure I wouldn't know, but it doesn't seem much more esoteric than a lot of other things the Church has very firm opinions of.
quote:My point was that this is not a pressing moral issue, not that this is not interesting as such.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
As to why - well, it is rather an obvious question to ask, isn't it? You've often likened theologians to scientists - but maybe not so much in the curiosity department, I guess.
quote:A full discussion of Catholic ecclesiology is off-topic here. Suffice to say that in my opinion the Church has the power to "bind and loosen" the faithful, with full eternal consequences. And Christ has not left her alone with this awesome power of deciding what is right by might, but has sent her the Holy Spirit to prevent major disasters.
Originally posted by orfeo:
It's hiding a leap between two assertions where the second doesn't follow from the first.
quote:As mentioned, twining does not represent a significant challenge at all. The claim is that the fertilized egg must be considered morally as a human being, not that the only way in which a new human being can come to be is the fertilization of an egg.
Originally posted by mousethief:
If one is going to insist the moment of ensoulment is when the sperm and the egg have their first tango, then the question of twinning is either a reductio, or at the very least needs to be accounted for.
quote:Again, why would this represent the slightest difficulty? It is an unusual death to have one's cells fused with that of another, but people die in all sort of strange ways.
Originally posted by Josephine:
Likewise the existence of human genetic chimeras (where one human person results from two fertilized eggs).
quote:Interesting interpretation. I think though that in the context of Romans 12 this is much more aimed at the individual, and is more about living humbly than about instituting a preferred social order. If it is not possible, because of God, to keep the peace, then one must disturb it. Neither the prophets nor Christ lived a life of appeasement.
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
There is the quite specific Romans 12 guideline "if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone" which seems to be well followed by what she describes as a "social compact". I think it is more than just a social compact. It looks to me to be following Christian understandings on faith and morals. How do the Catholic contributors see that?
quote:I'm not particularly following the health care side of things. It is entirely possible that the US RCC has a terrible position on this. Or not.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
The RCC, on the other hand, seeks to force everyone it has any kind of power over - non-RCC employees, in this case - to obey its strictures.
quote:I am actually aware of the concept of different levels of truth. I just personally think that the highest of those levels is conceptually flawed. Because it is still the church that is doing the categorising, and so a mistake as to whether a teaching has been protected by God in the way claimed is still a mistake.
Originally posted by IngoB:
It is regrettable that you feel neither the need to read carefully what I write (for I made the necessary distinctions) nor to look up what the RCC actually claims. In short, there are many "levels of truth" in the RCC. The highest one, where the Church teaches definitively on faith and morals, is protected by God Himself against error. Below these infallible truths, there are some where the Church has spoken clearly and insistently. There a good Catholic should typically obey even thought it is possible that the Church errs, simply out of respect for her authority. And then there's a lot of less certain stuff, where one typically can pick among several suggested alternatives or simply ignore the teaching. The teaching against contraception may not be quite infallible, but it sure is certain enough to demand obedience.
quote:Not an interesting interpretation, just a sound one. Read Romans 12:1.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:Interesting interpretation. I think though that in the context of Romans 12 this is much more aimed at the individual, and is more about living humbly than about instituting a preferred social order. If it is not possible, because of God, to keep the peace, then one must disturb it. Neither the prophets nor Christ lived a life of appeasement.
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
There is the quite specific Romans 12 guideline "if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone" which seems to be well followed by what she describes as a "social compact". I think it is more than just a social compact. It looks to me to be following Christian understandings on faith and morals. How do the Catholic contributors see that?
quote:See also v 4,5, 10. You have failed to read for context. Romans 12 is addressed to a whole church. Indeed, since the letter is generally reckoned to have been used as an encyclical, it was addressed to many churches.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
quote:"Near arbitrary"? I don't believe that's a fair conclusion from anything I've said.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:You likely think of theology as a near arbitrary selection of proposition.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
"How?" Are you asking me how I think Catholic theology might determine where the extra person comes from when a fertilized egg ("individual human being") ends up producing two persons? I'm sure I wouldn't know, but it doesn't seem much more esoteric than a lot of other things the Church has very firm opinions of.
quote:Really? All that speculation on Limbo, but nothing at all on how a single fertilization (an individual human being according to you) results in two people?
Theology instead is a highly connected logical web anchored in a largely fixed set of fundamental beliefs (the "deposit of faith") and to some extent the usual knowledge of the world. One hence can recognize that something probably is outside of the reach of this theological web, simply because the argumentative "links" to get there appear non-existent.
quote:And my point was that a theory of individual human nature purporting to be a sure guide to addressing pressing moral issues might be expected to answer a few obvious follow-up questions.
quote:My point was that this is not a pressing moral issue, not that this is not interesting as such.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
As to why - well, it is rather an obvious question to ask, isn't it? You've often likened theologians to scientists - but maybe not so much in the curiosity department, I guess.
quote:So you claim. But do not establish.
Originally posted by IngoB:
As mentioned, twining does not represent a significant challenge at all.
quote:Other than our Lord's miraculous Incarnation, what other ways are there?
The claim is that the fertilized egg must be considered morally as a human being, not that the only way in which a new human being can come to be is the fertilization of an egg.
quote:I can't see how that works, since it really is intended as a simple factual statement. It rather could be case of grand delusion. If I proclaim loudly that I am the best tennis player in the world, then I am deluded not proud. Well, I may have pride in my delusion, but that's a secondary consideration. If Djokovic would not shut up about how great his tennis is, then that would be more an example of pride.
Originally posted by Justinian:
And I believe that the above is as strong an example of the sin of pride as I've ever seen.
quote:And since you are undeniably wrong on purely biological grounds, your argument is stone cold dead. In case you haven't noticed, humanity represents arguably the most successfully breeding mammal (and indeed higher animal other than insects) on the planet to the point where most people are worried about humans overpopulating the world, rather than facing extinction. Perhaps cows, pigs, chicken or indeed rats rival our success, but only because they depend on us breeding them (unintentionally). Human sexuality is tailored to maximize the survival probability of offspring that requires many years of active care and significantly impedes the capabilities of the pregnant female for several months. We are rather special concerning our prolonged development inside and outside of the womb, hence our sex life is, too.
Originally posted by Justinian:
And under the assumption of "natural moral law", I am arguing that sex is ordered to the social and pleasurable functions to the active detriment of procreation in a way seen in very few other species.
quote:There is no morality without faith in something. I'm not saying that atheists have no morality. I'm saying that they must have faith in something in order to make their moral claims. Faith is the only thing that can cut an "ought" from "is", we merely get to choose in what way that happens.
Originally posted by Justinian:
Faith alone just isn't going to cut it.
quote:That's hardly a conclusive counterargument. It could be merely an instance of one right clashing with another. In which case you are simply saying which right gets priority in a clash. And it looks by your further comments as if this is the case.
Originally posted by Justinian:
As for a right of free sexual expression, bollocks. I don't believe that anyone has the right to fuck kids.
quote:I think this is an overly simplistic view of Jesus' approach. Jesus also said "For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished." (Matt 5:18) Jesus acknowledged the power of religious authority (even when they were less than exemplary themselves) "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice." (Matt 23:2) and he explicitly installed such authority "Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." (Matt 18:18) And of course he does quite a bit of tightening the existing rules in the "You have heard that it was said, ... But I say to you" (Matt 5) style.
Originally posted by Josephine:
I think so, too, but I didn't want to argue it on faith and morals, because quite frankly, based on what the Catholic contributors here have said, I don't understand Catholic morals, and to the extent that I do understand them, I don't consider them particularly Christian. It seems to me that our Lord Jesus, when teaching about the keeping of the Law, thought that outcomes mattered. He acknowledged the commandments, acknowledged that God had given them, but said that the Pharisees had missed the entire point. Breaking the law was not in and of itself evil. The laws were ordered to bring about good results. If the law interfered with that, then according to Him, it was lawful to do things that brought about good results, even on the sabbath.
quote:Firstly, it is nonsense to involve the virgin birth in discussion of regular human reproduction in general, since the very point of that miracle was that it wasn't regular human reproduction. Secondly, the claim is not that God cannot possibly overcome a condom. The claim is that God has to act differently. In natural infertility, God has to overcome Himself, so to speak: the way He has made human beings, or perhaps, the fate He has assigned a particular human being. In artificial infertility, God has to overcome the actions of (one of) the spouses. "Man puts on a condom, God has to pop it." vs. "God does something unusual, contrary to man's expectations."
Originally posted by Josephine:
And the claim that sex produces mystical benefits only when you might have a baby, and if you use contraception then God can't give you a baby is one of the most totally bogus things I've ever heard. If God can give a virgin a baby, you think a condom is going to get in his way if he decides to give you one?
quote:But thinking of it in the most basic biological terms, would human males stick around and help with the offspring if they weren't getting regular, enjoyable, NON-PROCREATIVE sex? Even in the biggest, most Catholic family, for every sex act that results in a pregnancy, there are dozens, hundreds, thousands more acts that didn't. Non-procreative, pleasurable sexual activity is one of the elements that makes this reproductive strategy work, and in terms of sheer numbers, is overwhelmingly the most common or popular form of sex. Having fewer children in order to maximize resources devoted to each is also part of human reproductive strategy. So it's kind of looking like "naturally", a human couple should be having as much sex as possible but few* children, exactly what contraception allows. OliviaG
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:... Human sexuality is tailored to maximize the survival probability of offspring that requires many years of active care and significantly impedes the capabilities of the pregnant female for several months. ...
Originally posted by Justinian:
And under the assumption of "natural moral law", I am arguing that sex is ordered to the social and pleasurable functions to the active detriment of procreation in a way seen in very few other species.
quote:The difference being? Who expects a condom to pop? Why couldn't God make it pop? Hell of a lot easier than making a baby inside a woman who has had a hysterectomy for life-saving reasons, and yet such a woman is allowed to have sex.
Originally posted by IngoB:
In artificial infertility, God has to overcome the actions of (one of) the spouses. "Man puts on a condom, God has to pop it." vs. "God does something unusual, contrary to man's expectations."
quote:This would explain so much.
Originally posted by orfeo:
I mean, seriously, Ingo, that is one of THE dumbest things I've ever heard coming out of your mouth. Suddenly God isn't Lord of all, he's just Lord of the bits he made directly? And if his own creations go ahead and create something themselves, with the innate sense of creativity he gave them, God goes "Holy Shit! I hadn't thought of that!! I'm in trouble now!"???
quote:In complete agreement.
Originally posted by Think²:
All this crap can't happen in Dead Horses or Purg for what reason ?
quote:My sympathies, but I'm glad the thread is still open so I can post this:
Originally posted by PeteC:
quote:In complete agreement.
Originally posted by Think²:
All this crap can't happen in Dead Horses or Purg for what reason ?
quote:That's the RCC's peculiar slant on sexual morality for you. The Church depends on the logical sophistry of people like IngoB and the minority of bishops who opposed the findings of Paul VI own appointed study on sexuality. The rest is handled by Catholics who just shrug: "The RCC is always right and when it's wrong, it's still always right. Just get me to Mass on time".
Originally posted by orfeo:
God apparently has better control over our bodies than over things we manufacture.
I mean, seriously, Ingo, that is one of THE dumbest things I've ever heard coming out of your mouth. Suddenly God isn't Lord of all, he's just Lord of the bits he made directly? And if his own creations go ahead and create something themselves, with the innate sense of creativity he gave them, God goes "Holy Shit! I hadn't thought of that!! I'm in trouble now!"???
That is just hilarious.
quote:That made no sense at all. Obviously one can address the whole Church about how individual Christians should live their lives.
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Read Romans 12:1. ... See also v 4,5, 10. You have failed to read for context. Romans 12 is addressed to a whole church. Indeed, since the letter is generally reckoned to have been used as an encyclical, it was addressed to many churches.
quote:Yes, one can speculate about Limbo easily from the actual deposit of faith, but about twining not so much.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Really? All that speculation on Limbo, but nothing at all on how a single fertilization (an individual human being according to you) results in two people?
quote:But as far as moral issues are concerned, the answers are all there. The life of any innocent human being must be protected, and this includes human beings still developing, even from their very beginnings. The details of these beginnings are interesting, but morally essentially irrelevant.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
And my point was that a theory of individual human nature purporting to be a sure guide to addressing pressing moral issues might be expected to answer a few obvious follow-up questions.
quote:False. I have argued, in my opinion conclusively. You now make the claim that I did not establish my point. Hence you must now support your claim with argument, or have it dismissed as a mere assertion.
Originally posted by mousethief:
So you claim. But do not establish.
quote:Twining. Pay attention.
Originally posted by mousethief:
Other than our Lord's miraculous Incarnation, what other ways are there?
quote:The goal of contraception is, or at least can be, good. It is as a means that it is fails. Other means are available.
Originally posted by OliviaG:
So it's kind of looking like "naturally", a human couple should be having as much sex as possible but few* children, exactly what contraception allows.
quote:If God wants to make every woman on this planet pregnant in this instance, He of course can. The difference is not in impeding His omnipotence, but in the question whether He "overcomes" His own actions or ours. (Scare quotes because He only overcomes His own actions in a manner of speaking.) A hysterectomy is a bit of a special case. In the context here, God would still be "overcoming" His own action if He made such a woman pregnant. While the hysterectomy was performed by a surgeon, it was performed in reaction to the woman's life being threatened, which was according to God's will (at least in the sense that He allowed it to happen "naturally"). If one could imagine that a woman would have a hysterectomy in order to avoid further pregnancy, then God would have to overcome her actions and this would be a crass form of "contraception" (sterilization).
Originally posted by mousethief:
The difference being? Who expects a condom to pop? Why couldn't God make it pop? Hell of a lot easier than making a baby inside a woman who has had a hysterectomy for life-saving reasons, and yet such a woman is allowed to have sex.
quote:This is not about what God can do. He can do whatever is possible. This is a thought experiment about who is responsible in a moral sense.
Originally posted by mousethief:
I mean, seriously, Ingo, that is one of THE dumbest things I've ever heard coming out of your mouth. Suddenly God isn't Lord of all, he's just Lord of the bits he made directly? And if his own creations go ahead and create something themselves, with the innate sense of creativity he gave them, God goes "Holy Shit! I hadn't thought of that!! I'm in trouble now!"???
quote:Why? (Unless this is simply intended as random insult.)
Originally posted by RuthW:
I feel sorry for IngoB's wife.
quote:Oh, right, that thing about "evil" means for good ends. Crucifixion is evil. And yet Jesus was crucified for you and all your fellow Christians. Or how about asking a father to kill his son to prove his faith (oh, but lookie here! a sheep - just kidding!). Don't make me drag out the Bible and start pointing to all the other places where God uses some pretty awful means to accomplish Her ends. OliviaG
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:The goal of contraception is, or at least can be, good. It is as a means that it is fails. Other means are available.
Originally posted by OliviaG:
So it's kind of looking like "naturally", a human couple should be having as much sex as possible but few* children, exactly what contraception allows.
quote:I don't know about RuthW, but all I can say is that it must be really great to be married to someone who's always right.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:Why? (Unless this is simply intended as random insult.)
Originally posted by RuthW:
I feel sorry for IngoB's wife.
OliviaG
quote:Oh no, not random at all. I feel sorry for her because your attitude toward sex as presented on this thread is such a mess and because you always come off as such an ass on these boards. (I also feel a little sorry for those who think they'll have fun with your Minecraft endeavor, but since they aren't married to you they can just quit.)
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:Why? (Unless this is simply intended as random insult.)
Originally posted by RuthW:
I feel sorry for IngoB's wife.
quote:So people who practice NFP are responsible in a moral sense for preventing pregnancy. Got it.
Originally posted by IngoB:
This is not about what God can do. He can do whatever is possible. This is a thought experiment about who is responsible in a moral sense.
quote:If I claim I'm the best tennis player in the world and then try swaggering in and claiming that everyone should follow my views on tennis then I'm proud. You swagger around actively boasting about the moral teachings of a church that simply doesn't care how many women it kills. You are claiming that you are a better tennis player than Djokovitch when you don't even qualify for the first round at Wimbledon.
Originally posted by IngoB:
I can't see how that works, since it really is intended as a simple factual statement. It rather could be case of grand delusion. If I proclaim loudly that I am the best tennis player in the world, then I am deluded not proud.
quote:And you are making an obvious logical fallacy. That humans are the most successful mammal in the world has little directly to do with sex. We just need to be fertile enough to procreate at above replacement rate. What makes us successful is our ability to alter our environment to suit us. And one part of controling our environment is controlling our procreation.
And since you are undeniably wrong on purely biological grounds, your argument is stone cold dead. In case you haven't noticed, humanity represents arguably the most successfully breeding mammal (and indeed higher animal other than insects) on the planet to the point where most people are worried about humans overpopulating the world, rather than facing extinction.
quote:In short sex without fertility is natural. Right. Now we've established that even you think that then can you stop objecting?
Human sexuality is tailored to maximize the survival probability of offspring that requires many years of active care and significantly impedes the capabilities of the pregnant female for several months. We are rather special concerning our prolonged development inside and outside of the womb, hence our sex life is, too.
quote:I said faith alone. Faith without works is dead. You are trying to substitute faith for discernment and throwing out discernment when it doesn't give you the answer you want.
There is no morality without faith in something.
quote:And the two are not in direct contradiction. The Law was developed for a purpose. The Sabbath has a purpose. But the Sabbath was made for man. You seek to fit man to the Sabbath.
I think this is an overly simplistic view of Jesus' approach. Jesus also said "For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished." (Matt 5:18)
quote:Right. Now tell me what they were. Starter for ten - any sort of sex that involves an abuse of power. Paedophillia, bestiality, rape.
That's quite a list, and sexual immorality is explicitly included. Presumably then there were sexual acts that Jesus considered "unlawful", or these words become meaningless.
quote:This sounds a lot like "we can speculate about things which have already been speculated about."
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:Yes, one can speculate about Limbo easily from the actual deposit of faith, but about twining not so much.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Really? All that speculation on Limbo, but nothing at all on how a single fertilization (an individual human being according to you) results in two people?
quote:There's no shortage of people with certain answers to moral issues, IngoB, and I never doubted you were one of them. People with answers whose vaunted theoretical foundations can satisfy a little poking around seem to be a rather harder to find.
quote:But as far as moral issues are concerned, the answers are all there.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
And my point was that a theory of individual human nature purporting to be a sure guide to addressing pressing moral issues might be expected to answer a few obvious follow-up questions.
quote:Well you know what Bette Midler said about her German husband.
Originally posted by RuthW:
I feel sorry for her because your attitude toward sex as presented on this thread is such a mess
quote:I'll take it to Kerygmania, IngoB. I think you're wrong to limit the meaning this way, both by reference to context and supporting scriptures, but it shouldn't clutter up this thread.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:That made no sense at all. Obviously one can address the whole Church about how individual Christians should live their lives.
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Read Romans 12:1. ... See also v 4,5, 10. You have failed to read for context. Romans 12 is addressed to a whole church. Indeed, since the letter is generally reckoned to have been used as an encyclical, it was addressed to many churches.
quote:Oh, I wish you hadn't told him that. I was quite enjoying all this stuff about twining. I'm not sure what the morality about twine as opposed to string is though, can't follow the argument, it seems a distinction without a difference.
By the way, it's "twinning", not "twining."
quote:And it seems that, to the RCC hierarchy (but hopefully not to Ingo!!), that it's more important to protect embryos than to protect children who are actually here from sexual abuse. Keep women from having abortions, keep them from non-abortively limiting their pregnancies, excommunicate them if they fail those rules. Never mind if a girl or woman is pregnant due to rape or incest, and can’t cope with 9 more months of suffering at their abuser’s will.
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:Right. Now tell me what they were. Starter for ten - any sort of sex that involves an abuse of power. Paedophillia, bestiality, rape.
That's quite a list, and sexual immorality is explicitly included. Presumably then there were sexual acts that Jesus considered "unlawful", or these words become meaningless.
quote:That's what I thought and that's why I asked. I'm still curious what specific conclusions you think you can draw about my "attitude toward sex", other than the obvious one that we do not use contraception (but rather natural family planning).
Originally posted by RuthW:
I feel sorry for her because your attitude toward sex as presented on this thread is such a mess
quote:This is getting a bit random now, isn't it? Minecraft is a huge sandbox game. People will have to do with me as much as they want, and no more. There are no rules to enforce, other than that one shouldn't mess with other people's buildings. And the only thing I intend to pre-build is an area around spawn secured against hostile mobiles, so that people can log in safely for a chat without having to play the game as such.
Originally posted by RuthW:
(I also feel a little sorry for those who think they'll have fun with your Minecraft endeavor, but since they aren't married to you they can just quit.)
quote:Yup.
Originally posted by PeteC:
Feel better now? Let it all out. Bile poisons.
quote:More anger than hatred, I think.
"Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love is healed."--Buddha (found somewhere on the web)
quote:That is true for all of us. But if you want to carry on the discussion, go somewhere else.
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Strangely, I think kids (and grownups!) should be protected from sexual abuse.
quote:Based on what I see in my garden, I'd say that that title goes to the mice.
IngoB: In case you haven't noticed, humanity represents arguably the most successfully breeding mammal (and indeed higher animal other than insects) on the planet
quote:He was crucified, He did not crucify Himself. He did not do evil to achieve good, He worked good out of an evil others were responsible for. He did not avoid or prevent their evil, rather He used it to achieve His aims fully conscious when, where and how it would occur, but still it was not His evil but theirs. Incidentally, this does map onto the discussion of why NFP is licit but a condom is not.
Originally posted by OliviaG:
Oh, right, that thing about "evil" means for good ends. Crucifixion is evil. And yet Jesus was crucified for you and all your fellow Christians.
quote:I'm sure that you can convince me that you are a de facto Marcionist. Many Christians nowadays are heretic that way, even if few of them realize it.
Originally posted by OliviaG:
Or how about asking a father to kill his son to prove his faith (oh, but lookie here! a sheep - just kidding!). Don't make me drag out the Bible and start pointing to all the other places where God uses some pretty awful means to accomplish Her ends.
quote:Nope.
Originally posted by mousethief:
Got it.
quote:I guess it is understood that I reject your claim about my Church. But I'm really intrigued by this claim of pride. It is both not entirely wrong and totally risible. A bit as if analysed something with Newton's laws and in response was accused of swaggering around actively boasting about the natural laws of physics. Except of course that there is a faith component involved here. Really, quite fascinating.
Originally posted by Justinian:
You swagger around actively boasting about the moral teachings of a church that simply doesn't care how many women it kills.
quote:Well, in the sense of having survival rates well above replacement rate in pretty much any circumstances pretty much everywhere pretty much all the time. Not in the sense of simply putting offspring into the world in great numbers. If these offspring die before they can reproduce themselves, that does not lead to population growth. Humans, for rather obvious reasons, do not follow the strategy of pumping out a massive amount of offspring given next to no care, in the hope that some survive. The human reproductive strategy is pretty much the opposite extreme, having relatively few offspring but providing an insane amount of care to keep them alive. And it is highly successful.
Originally posted by Justinian:
That humans are the most successful mammal in the world has little directly to do with sex. We just need to be fertile enough to procreate at above replacement rate.
quote:I've never objected morally to naturally infertile sex.
Originally posted by Justinian:
In short sex without fertility is natural. Right. Now we've established that even you think that then can you stop objecting?
quote:And then any sort of sex at odds with the function God intended for it. Homosexual acts. Masturbation. Contraceptive sex. Any sort of sex that occurs outside of the setting God intended for it. Adultery. Fornication. Incest. You know what, I think it might actually be easier to say what is allowed, rather than trying to draw up a comprehensive list of what is forbidden?
Originally posted by Justinian:
Right. Now tell me what they were. Starter for ten - any sort of sex that involves an abuse of power. Paedophillia, bestiality, rape.
quote:All you want to do here is to pretend that because theology cannot answer all questions, it must be generally incompetent. It is however really quite simple. If you want to know whether theology can answer X, you have to ask whether authoritative sources (scripture, Church fathers, ...) spoke about X, or whether they at least spoke about something else, from which one can draw conclusions about X, or whether there exists sound knowledge of the world which in combination with some authoritative religious statements allows some speculation about X. This is the case for Limbo (marginally - Limbo is after all known for being a disputed theological subject), it is to the best of my knowledge not the case for the question when and how precisely God "ensouls" human beings. Mind you, that He "ensouls" them can be theologically argued with ease, and a strong case can be made that a soul must be present from the earliest development. But all that does not allow one to say how twinning (thanks for the spelling correction!) rearranges "soul distribution".
Originally posted by Dave W.:
This sounds a lot like "we can speculate about things which have already been speculated about."
quote:You expect that wherever you poke a ready answer must be forthcoming, or it is all nonsense. That's simply a totally unrealistic expectation. Theology is a human endeavour.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
People with answers whose vaunted theoretical foundations can satisfy a little poking around seem to be a rather harder to find.
quote:Rabbits. Hmm. Fair enough. Maybe humans do not top the mammal list on accumulated biomass after all, even if one ignores those animals that clearly profit from human success (like mice and cows). Anyway, humans do pretty damn well in the reproductive stakes, that was my real point.
Originally posted by PeteC:
And rabbits. And feral cats. Don't leave anyone out.
quote:Oh, nonsense. No one wants to force people to follow Newton's Laws. And Newton's Laws are on a sound empirical footing (except up near the speed of light). It doesn't matter who does the test, keep speeds less than 300,000 m/s and Newtonian physics will be supported to a very high degree of precision.
Originally posted by IngoB:
I guess it is understood that I reject your claim about my Church. But I'm really intrigued by this claim of pride. It is both not entirely wrong and totally risible. A bit as if analysed something with Newton's laws and in response was accused of swaggering around actively boasting about the natural laws of physics.
quote:There is a faith component. There are also dead and crippled bodies.
Except of course that there is a faith component involved here. Really, quite fascinating.
quote:Indeed. It's at the extreme of limited reproduction. And with modern medicine it is even more extreme than it has been historically.
The human reproductive strategy is pretty much the opposite extreme, having relatively few offspring but providing an insane amount of care to keep them alive. And it is highly successful.
quote:Oh, rubbish. It simply depends what you mean by interference. And believe it or not, with modern medicine, the situation has changed. Historically, women have had a dozen children just to maintain the population. With modern medicine we can do it with 2.1
It was your claim that the primary purpose of sex can be ignored because secondary purposes interfere with it anyway. This claim is complete bollocks. Firstly, there cannot be any serious interference there, or we would not be so incredibly successful at reproducing.
quote:And one of the ways it does that is regular non-procreative sex. With the survival rate having changed massively, regular baby production is not a desired end. We need a birth rate of about one sixth of historical levels. A birth rate at historical levels would be catastrophic.
Secondly, the secondary purposes of human sex are biologically speaking nothing but part of the human reproductive strategy, which in particular requires binding the male to the female for many years in order to provide continuous care to highly vulnerable offspring.
quote:And this is what I mean by pride. You have the arrogance to claim to know the mind of God with complete certainty.
And then any sort of sex at odds with the function God intended for it.
quote:I.e. anything a celibate priest might possibly consider icky.
Homosexual acts. Masturbation. Contraceptive sex. Any sort of sex that occurs outside of the setting God intended for it. Adultery. Fornication.
quote:Incest is the only one of those I'd actually call unnatural. And that's because we know what the direct mechanism preventing it is. The Westermark Effect. (Which involves close physical proximity at a young age).
Incest.
quote:And I consider this a sad reflection on the state of your thought and sex life, and where you see Light in the world.
You know what, I think it might actually be easier to say what is allowed, rather than trying to draw up a comprehensive list of what is forbidden?
quote:If that's what happens, which of the individuals is the one that died? Or did they both die and a third "person" come into existence at that point?
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:Again, why would this represent the slightest difficulty? It is an unusual death to have one's cells fused with that of another, but people die in all sort of strange ways.
Originally posted by Josephine:
Likewise the existence of human genetic chimeras (where one human person results from two fertilized eggs).
quote:This pretty much summarizes everything wrong with the Catholic posturing on this issue.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:I'm not particularly following the health care side of things. It is entirely possible that the US RCC has a terrible position on this. Or not.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
The RCC, on the other hand, seeks to force everyone it has any kind of power over - non-RCC employees, in this case - to obey its strictures.
quote:I wish it was just that. Instead it's
Originally posted by Crœsos:
This pretty much summarizes everything wrong with the Catholic posturing on this issue.
Fair treatment of workers: meh
Determining when a ghost starts haunting a cluster of cells: CRITICAL!!!1!
quote:Reading comprehension is not your strength, is it? Anyway, apparently accidentally, you've hit upon something interesting.
Originally posted by Justinian:
Your attempted claim about the superiority of Roman Catholic morality being akin to that of Newtonian Physics is just plain wrong.
quote:It was modern medicine that has taught us how to efficiently limit the number of our children by making informed use of the natural cycle of female fertility.
Originally posted by Justinian:
Now would you kindly tell me whether you want to give up modern medicine, or whether you would prefer to stick to the natural cycle.
quote:Let me get this straight, your marriage is in grave danger if you have to wait two weeks for sex?
Originally posted by Justinian:
You seek to either retain the historical birth rate while we have modern medical science, thus making the Baby Boom seem like a blip until we return to a Malthusian society or to loosen the bonds between parents which are a consequence of physical intimacy.
quote:Not really. Rather I trust sufficiently in Divine assistance to the Church to follow her rules on the matter.
Originally posted by Justinian:
You have the arrogance to claim to know the mind of God with complete certainty.
quote:Yes it is. You're claiming faith as your justification. Homeopaths have faith in their medicine working. It happens to be wrong. Just because you have faith in something doesn't make it either true or unverifiable.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:Reading comprehension is not your strength, is it? Anyway, apparently accidentally, you've hit upon something interesting.
Originally posted by Justinian:
Your attempted claim about the superiority of Roman Catholic morality being akin to that of Newtonian Physics is just plain wrong.
quote:And how to do things efficiently.
It was modern medicine that has taught us how to efficiently limit the number of our children by making informed use of the natural cycle of female fertility.
quote:
Let me get this straight, your marriage is in grave danger if you have to wait two weeks for sex?
No. Of course I don't. No one factor like that is going to destroy a relationship. It is merely one of the purposes of sex - and a purpose you seek to deny.quote:OK. You claim the Church to know the mind of God which gives you effectively infalliable insight. And you can safely discard your conscience to the strictly deontological ethics of that Church.
Not really. Rather I trust sufficiently in Divine assistance to the Church to follow her rules on the matter.
quote:I don't know. I don't know how to find out. I don't know why that would make a moral difference to anything we can do.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
If that's what happens, which of the individuals is the one that died? Or did they both die and a third "person" come into existence at that point?
quote:I live in Europe. We have had universal health care here, secularly managed, since long before I was born. The health funds in all countries where I have lived pay for contraceptives and abortion. An individual generally has no say whatever in determining the way their contributions to the health funds are spent, on reproductive health or anything else, other than indirectly through electing politicians. And that's by and large OK with me. The way forward on contraceptives and abortion is to win over people. Politics and eventually law will then follow. We certainly do not need a "prohibition" type of scenario for laws about sexual matters.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
This pretty much summarizes everything wrong with the Catholic posturing on this issue. Fair treatment of workers: meh Determining when a ghost starts haunting a cluster of cells: CRITICAL!!!1!
quote:Why would I seek to deny other purposes? I haven't and I won't. Of course, if I choose not to have sex for a while in order to avoid additional offspring, then I'm also denying myself the uniting benefits of sex. But it happens quite often in relationships that one has to set priorities and forego one good for another. Such is life.
Originally posted by Justinian:
It is merely one of the purposes of sex - and a purpose you seek to deny.
quote:The Church only rarely claims infallibile insight. To make a moral decision, we must follow our best insight. Absolute certainty is not required. And you seem to think of conscience here as some sort of independent entity generating moral truth. That's of course nonsense. There is a kind of innate moral sense (technical term in scholasticism: synderesis). But that is really basic. For most practical moral decision we must rely heavily on a conscience that has been formed and informed by input from others. I've simply decided that the Church will feature prominently in forming and informing my conscience, you have other inputs forming and informing yours (whether you are conscious of that or not).
Originally posted by Justinian:
You claim the Church to know the mind of God which gives you effectively infalliable insight. And you can safely discard your conscience to the strictly deontological ethics of that Church.
quote:But that is exactly what you do do. You claim that sex is ordered to procreation and therefore that any form of sex that can't directly lead to procreation is wrong.
Originally posted by IngoB:
Why would I seek to deny other purposes? I haven't and I won't.
quote:And yet even the overwhelming majority of Roman Catholics have a strong enough moral sense to tell the Roman Catholic Church to shove it on this case. "Don't prevent medical care" is the level of basic that innate moral sense can handle. And the Roman Catholic Church is on this point in complete violation of that.
The Church only rarely claims infallibile insight. To make a moral decision, we must follow our best insight. Absolute certainty is not required. And you seem to think of conscience here as some sort of independent entity generating moral truth. That's of course nonsense. There is a kind of innate moral sense (technical term in scholasticism: synderesis). But that is really basic.
quote:You have decided that the Church will not only feature in informing your conscience, it will override your innate moral sense - which means that you are abdicating your own responsibility to check your ethics to the Roman Catholic Church. Yes, I believe it is that obvious that the Roman Catholic Church is wrong, and wrong with tragic consequences.
I've simply decided that the Church will feature prominently in forming and informing my conscience, you have other inputs forming and informing yours (whether you are conscious of that or not).
quote:All I can conclude is that you maintain blindly that there is a difference between NFP and condoms or oral contraceptives, "by faith." Because when asked to explain it, you admit you cannot do so in terms that anybody outside the RCC would accept.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:Nope.
Originally posted by mousethief:
Got it.
quote:Oh, bullshit. I neither want to pretend such a thing, nor do I believe you can honestly conclude that I do from anything I've written here.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:All you want to do here is to pretend that because theology cannot answer all questions, it must be generally incompetent.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
This sounds a lot like "we can speculate about things which have already been speculated about."
quote:I actually expected that there probably would be an answer – and for all I know, there is one. (After all, I think it really is a simple, obvious question – which you haven’t denied – and thus one that would have occurred to RC theologians.)
How does your statement that "there exists an identifiably individual human being from the moment that an egg gets fertilized" square with the existence of monozygotic twins?
quote:At this point I rather suspect that you don't actually know whether or not there's anything in RC theology that addresses this question. I see no reason to think that "the best of your knowledge" is particularly informed on this point.
If you want to know whether theology can answer X, you have to ask whether authoritative sources (scripture, Church fathers, ...) spoke about X, or whether they at least spoke about something else, from which one can draw conclusions about X, or whether there exists sound knowledge of the world which in combination with some authoritative religious statements allows some speculation about X. This is the case for Limbo (marginally - Limbo is after all known for being a disputed theological subject), it is to the best of my knowledge not the case for the question when and how precisely God "ensouls" human beings.
quote:Again, bullshit. I've never suggested that RC theology is all nonsense, and I certainly don't think that it stands or falls on the fateful question of monozygotic twins.
quote:You expect that wherever you poke a ready answer must be forthcoming, or it is all nonsense.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
People with answers whose vaunted theoretical foundations can satisfy a little poking around seem to be a rather harder to find.
quote:Firstly, that's not quite right, unless you include the miraculous among direct causes. Secondly, even if I said that, then your conclusion doesn't follow. To say that something requires purpose X does not deny purpose Y. It merely says that purpose Y on its own is not enough.
Originally posted by Justinian:
But that is exactly what you do do. You claim that sex is ordered to procreation and therefore that any form of sex that can't directly lead to procreation is wrong.
quote:Firstly, which case? You may be right for the case of contraception, but I doubt that you are right for the case of abortion. Secondly, numbers on this are largely obtained by inference, which is suboptimal. Thirdly, that someone believes to have "good reason" for something does not necessarily mean that it is moral. People can have immoral motivations and desires and/or follow faulty reasoning.
Originally posted by Justinian:
And yet even the overwhelming majority of Roman Catholics have a strong enough moral sense to tell the Roman Catholic Church to shove it on this case.
quote:Would you consider contraception medical care then, in general? Seems like a bit of a stretch to me, fertility is not a sickness. Which incidentally immediately tells you that this is not merely a matter for synderesis. As long as we need to think about definitions and circumstances at all, we are firmly in the realm of conscience. Competing moral goods occur and that something is "more obvious" to one's moral sense unfortunately does not make it "more important" all the time.
Originally posted by Justinian:
"Don't prevent medical care" is the level of basic that innate moral sense can handle.
quote:Sure. And I think the very same about your morals on these matters. The difference between us is that you feel compelled to rant like Rumpelstilzchen about it all, whereas I think that achieves nothing.
Originally posted by Justinian:
Yes, I believe it is that obvious that the Roman Catholic Church is wrong, and wrong with tragic consequences.
quote:I've argued at length about the difference, and faith was not involved in that, see for example here. Where faith comes into the picture is on the question how important in a moral sense this difference is, not whether it exists. I also think that it is entirely feasible to agree with the RCC on the moral importance purely using natural reasoning (without faith). However, I do not think that this reasoning is conclusive, it has more probabilistic character ("it is likely that..., it may also be that..."). The problem then becomes that sexual motivations are very strong for most of us, so that in a conflict between likelihood and impulse likelihood is likely to lose. That's where faith steps in and elevates a possibility of natural reasoning to a certainty of belief.
Originally posted by mousethief:
All I can conclude is that you maintain blindly that there is a difference between NFP and condoms or oral contraceptives, "by faith." Because when asked to explain it, you admit you cannot do so in terms that anybody outside the RCC would accept.
quote:Well, I can honestly conclude that you think you are onto something, when honestly, you are not.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
I neither want to pretend such a thing, nor do I believe you can honestly conclude that I do from anything I've written here.
quote:And you seriously believe that simple questions always have readily available answers? What is the meaning of life? What is light? Who invented the wheel? How did life arise? Does she love me? How do I get promoted? Are there aliens out there? How to solve the crisis in Syria? Is spacetime quantized? How will we source our energy? Do I look fat in this dress? How does consciousness arise? Is capitalism the best economic system? Etc.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
(After all, I think it really is a simple, obvious question – which you haven’t denied – and thus one that would have occurred to RC theologians.)
quote:You could of course make an effort and try to find out. If it makes any difference to you, Trisagion independently asserted exactly the same point on this very thread, here.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
At this point I rather suspect that you don't actually know whether or not there's anything in RC theology that addresses this question. I see no reason to think that "the best of your knowledge" is particularly informed on this point.
quote:'with a host tag' does make a difference, Think 2. You can hardly blame people who want to discuss these things for their discussion when up to this point no hostly instruction had been given.
Originally posted by Think²:
I'll try this again with a host tag - THIS IS BOARD NOT DEAD HORSES.
If dead horse discussion continues, this thread will be as dead as the damn horse.
Think²
Hellhost
quote:Except as a description of emotions, "certainty of belief" is an oxymoron.
Originally posted by IngoB:
That's where faith steps in and elevates a possibility of natural reasoning to a certainty of belief.
quote:What, you think there isn't enough personal invective being thrown at the Catholics?
Originally posted by Think²:
I'll try this again with a host tag - THIS IS BOARD NOT DEAD HORSES.
If dead horse discussion continues, this thread will be as dead as the damn horse.
Think²
Hellhost
quote:I know this. Which would be why I then dcided to host post and did not issue any host comment directed at an individual. Please discuss hosting issues in Styx.
Originally posted by Anselmina:
quote:'with a host tag' does make a difference, Think 2. You can hardly blame people who want to discuss these things for their discussion when up to this point no hostly instruction had been given.
Originally posted by Think²:
I'll try this again with a host tag - THIS IS BOARD NOT DEAD HORSES.
If dead horse discussion continues, this thread will be as dead as the damn horse.
Think²
Hellhost
quote:As noted above, please direct comments on hosting to styx.
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:What, you think there isn't enough personal invective being thrown at the Catholics?
Originally posted by Think²:
I'll try this again with a host tag - THIS IS BOARD NOT DEAD HORSES.
If dead horse discussion continues, this thread will be as dead as the damn horse.
Think²
Hellhost
I was under the impression that it had been established that Hell could stray into Purgatory-like territory, just not the other way around.
quote:Thanks for this, you are right and I was wrong. I had over-focused on the passing comments on abortion - contraception is not a dead horse.
Originally posted by RuthW:
I've revived the thread in the Styx about DH and Hell for further discussion of Think2's hostly post.
