How would *you* explain the Church’s teaching on marriage?

Well, thanks for the comment.

Let’s go one at a time.

Um, no. The characteristics I’m imbued marriage with are precisely biblical. That may be the problem, and it’s fine to reject its Biblical source, but nope, it’s right there.

Marriage isn’t a partnership. It’s a covenant. Partnerships can be dissolved, but (Biblically speaking, marriage is permanent (“a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two become one flesh” (Gen 2:24)).

Sex is a gift, as humans experience it. Animals don’t “have sex”. They mate, it’s driven by instinct, and it’s purpose is to procreate. Period. People, on the other hand, bring an entire other dimension to the party. Procreation is an important part of it, but it is also intended to Be the one-flesh union that Genesis, and Jesus in Matthew, talk of.

The question of the interpretation of human anatomy and its nuptial meaning may be a mystery, but please show me how genitals that are designed to fit together one way (again, I assume a Purposeful Creator, you are free to reject that notion) are not “stamped into our bodies”. Of *course* one can use an elbow for something other than articulating the arm at its midpoint. But the fact remains that the elbow’s purpose, by design, is to enable the arm to bend. Likewise, one can use a penis for a multitude of fun and fascinating tasks, but none of those uses changes its primary purpose: to fit into a vagina to deposit semen near a cervix, which, if done during a woman’s fertile 100 or so hours, will result in a new life being conceived. To insist on anything else might qualify as wishful thinking.

You speak multiple times of “flawed human interpretation”. Are you privy to some other revelation that allows you to dismiss the Church’s interpretation? Let’s be fair; when I talk about Church teaching, it’s backed up by, oh, 2,000+ years of reflection. When you say “Is not!”, why would I be wrong to just shout, “Is too !”? I’m not talking a bunch of mystical jumbo jumbo; phenomenologically speaking, what I’m saying can be observed. But that’s outside the scope of a combox reply.

Human beings are *not* just “one more species of animal”. And you know that. Animals cannot make moral judgments, humans can. Humans, unlike *every* other animal created, can reason. That’s why morality applies to us, and not to Fido; “Bad dog!” may feel good to say when Fido poops in the house, but it is really not reasonable.

Finally…to resort to an ad hominem attack on the Church doesn’t bolster your argument. You have a right to do whatever you wish with your genitals, or anyone else’s. You have a right (if you want to call it that) to do as you please, and to reap whatever consequences, good or bad, you perceive yourself to reap.

But how does calling a relationship something it isn’t “legitimize” it? I can tell you how naming just any old relationship marriage damages marriage (again, too much for this post). If marriage isn’t something specific, why isn’t it just anything at all?

I give you credit. You were pretty nice, all things considered. Thanks!

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Man, I wish I had more time to devote to this!

Seriously, ladies…do you think that love, and sexual expression, and. All the ways both right and wrong to exercise our sexual faculties were just invented in the 21st century? You cat as I several thousand years’ experience dealing with sexuality has nothing of value to teach anyone.

“Orwellian” is a bit extreme. And it would only apply if you wee being sold some big lie.

Wanna see Orwellian? Look at the way oral and injectable contraceptives re advertised. Tell you what: TiVo the next contraceptive commercial you see. Then slow it down and listen to the warnings at the end. Or better yet, scroll down the blog and read the entry on the 5 things your doctor never told you about your. Contraceptives. Orwellian? How about the Big Lie you’ve been sold all your adult life about how great contraceptives are (lie), and about how free they make you (lie), about how they’re so good for you, and the only responsible way to have sex (lie, lie).

No…a supposed “sex expert” in Cosmo is much creepier than the Church telling you something. I don’t have to have built a rocks to tell you how to build one. And certainly, someone who’s never used their sexuality *correctly* is even less qualified to give you advice.

If you choose to Buy the Lie, that’s fine. But how can you knock what the Church *knows* is true…if you’ve never tried it? How do you know what your body is going through *on* contraceptives…if you’ve never been *off*. How do you know what a relationship can be without people sexually using one another …if you’ve never had a chaste relationship? How would you know what noncontracepted sex with a spouse is like…if you’ve never had it?

How could one reject being, and receiving, a total self-gift of another, if every sexual encounter has that big NO of contraception imposed on it?

“Orwellian”? Who’s being sold a lie? Bet it ain’t me…

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I have moderation on mainly to prevent random postings by strangers. I’m pretty sure your last comment and mine are both out there.

i’lll address your questions about my ministry later. We are 5,500 or so people in my parish. Some of my duties involve Ministry to the sick (you forgot them). Some involve ministry to the poor. Some (nor many) involve ministry to other constituencies.

But as my reply to your last comment will point out ( it’s at 2 pages and climbing), there are hundreds/thousands/millions of us. I don’t have to do everything. I have to do the thing I’m called to do, and do it to the best of my ability. I don’t minister to pregnant young ladies (much). I don’t minister to prisoners. I don’t minister to children of divorced parents, except incidentally, nor do I minister to crack hoes down on Third St in Memphis (which is where they hang out).

I just tell the truth. And the amazing thing is that the Truth really does set people free.

Now I have to go finish my reply to your prior post. It will answer more than this does.

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Kaitlyn,

FINALLY have time for this.

See, you did what many people who disagree with what they THINK the Church teaches do: You threw all your grievances down on the table at once, with a “so, THERE!” flourish, looking to overwhelm me. It doesn’t. It just takes longer to respond. So let’s begin.

Let’s go back to the basic premise of George Orwell’s book, 1984. The basic premise is that Big Brother is telling everyone what to think, how to think, and putting in place these huge penalties for thinking differently. Poor synopsis, but that’s the piece you brought to the table, so let’s go with it. While her delivery, and some of her content, were faulty (God does not “judge us for impure thoughts”; our sins separate us from Him by being obstacles to grace, but that’s another lesson), her basic message, there is nothing strange or weird about a representative of a 2,000 year old institution relating the experience of the lives of the tens of millions who have been a part of her. Frankly, I’ll take an “n” of 10,000,000+ over an “n” of 1 any day, if I am trying to make a decision about how best to live my life.

The Orwellian aspect of our conversation is, rather, this: that you, as a representative of a, let’s just say *different*, advocacy group, are accusing the Church of doing something wrong by relating to you the Truth. You see…Big Brother isn’t God. He isn’t the Church. Big Brother, in our little drama, is whatever entity, force, cultural movement, however you want to identify it that has convinced you of the workability of the Big Lie. I call him Satan, because that’s what Scripture and the Church call him; you might not, because in the same breath you tell me that “what’s right for you isn’t necessarily right for me”, you will deny the existence of an entity like that. Funny thing: that’s part of the Big Lie. But again, that’s for another post.

You say I’m a little “fixated with birth control”. Interesting observation. Perhaps I am, because it lies at the root of so many issues (and none of them are the ones that folks think like you seem to (judging from your later examples) think they are). You’re pretty good at whipping around (unsubstantiated) numbers, but let’s go with it. You said, “The people behind it pretend to be overly concerned about the women’s health aspects of hormonal contraception. Yes, health.” Then you went on to pull in other health issues, and asked if I was as concerned about those. Interesting maneuver, but off point. Briefly, yes, I am. And our 1.25 BILLION-member Church has people working on both clean drinking water AND food issues. The beauty of belonging to a family is that not everyone has to devote their life’s work to EVERY issue; we can work together to solve a BUNCH of things at once. But I digress (as did you).

I’ll just answer by saying that no, they get neither as much attention nor as much outrage. They get, instead, my money and time. I can’t create access to drinking water for “800 million people”. In fact, I can’t do better than to give two bottles of water to the guy at the bottom of the off ramp to the expressway. And writing ten blog posts about the need for access to clean water and food will not add to the debate, because NO ONE thinks people should be denied either. People DO, however, think that ignoring the intrinsic value of a single life is OK, when it definitely ISN’T. So what good does it do for me to talk about it? Precisely this: I CAN have an impact by doing this. I can tell one person the Truth, and by doing so, hopefully help her. Or him. Thus, my investment here.

See, Kaitlyn, this is the funny thing about artificial contraceptives: they kill people and ruin relationships. Wow…that sounds harsh, Deacon Chip. How can you say that?

And that’s where the Big Lie starts to mess everything up.

Because…if you haven’t given any thought to when human life actually begins (at conception, everything that will ever be true about the genetic make-up of that individual person is present, except for some mitosis; nothing else but nutrition and time get added, but again, another post), then knowing that one of the three mechanisms of actions of hormonal contraceptives is abortifacience. In other words, they cause the abortion (ending) of a pregnancy. This is not a problem if the products of conception are just a blob of tissue (cue: the Big Lie); of course, if they’re something else, we have a problem.

Now…what if all three mechanisms (prevent ovulation, prevent fertilization, prevent implantation (remember, that’s the one I term “abortifacient”)) fail, Kaitlyn? Well, we have another problem! Sometimes (often…usually?), we view that problem as a medical one, requiring surgery. That surgery is what we term in Church-speak a “direct abortion”. Of course, what’s wrong with that? Nothing…if it’s just a blob of tissue that my contraceptive failed to prevent from implanting in my uterus. But what if it’s a life that just survived two attempts to prevent it coming into existence, and one to end it? Well…that’s another problem.

Now, let’s leave the child out for a minute, and turn to the relationship question.

The Church proposes that there is a right and a wrong way for people to relate to one another. It goes back to understanding who we are, as beings who are subjects, rather than objects, “someones” versus “somethings”.

The Church proposes that we are all created to LOVE, and to be LOVED. Ultimately, we are created to know, to love, and to serve God in this life, and to be united with Him forever in heaven in the next, that is, if you believe in all that. We know we are created to love and to be loved, to be in relationship, because it is observably built into our make-up. Everyone longs to be in relationship with another “someone”, another subject who can respond to that love. Animals don’t fit that bill for us because, like Adam, we ultimately realize that they are not enough like us to be able to respond with the free, fruitful love that is human love (or at least is supposed to be). So the love to which we are oriented by our very nature is only possible with a complementary creature.

The problem with that orientation to love and be loved is that it can turn into objectification, mutual utilitarian use for sensual enjoyment. And that, at root, is the problem. No human being is ordered to being used as a tool for another’s pleasure, enrichment, gratification, or labor-saving. And no matter what emotions one brings into a sexual relationship outside of marriage, the sexual act is going to speak, with “the language of the body”, sentiments that are at root a lie. Sexual intercourse is ordered to communicate, to “speak”, the free, total, fruitful, and faithful gift of each spouse to the other. A “hook-up” is none of those things. And contraception facilitates the Big Lie by helping to ensure that there are no “consequences” to a sexual act, thereby removing what used to be a natural deterrent to the misuse of the gift.

Now, introduce contraception into a marriage. It now becomes possible for the spouses, who are supposed to be free, total, faithful and fruitful gifts to one another, to take a utilitarian approach toward their relationship. And now we see the gnawing away begin: now, spouses are “free” (have license – not the same thing) to treat each other as objects for their own sexual gratification, instead of as persons to be respected. This license demotes sexual intercourse between spouses to the same level as fornication, in that it isn’t ordered toward the other, as much as it is ordered to the self. Does it always end badly? No. But about half the time it does. How could I possibly know that? Look at the divorce rate. About half of all marriages end in divorce. About 75% of second marriages end in divorce. About 80% of third marriages end in divorce. Correlation, not causation, you say? I accept that critique. But it’s awfully suspicious to me that, when couples choose to NOT contracept, the divorce rate falls to something on the order of 4%. Probative? Not yet, I’ll admit. But it makes me wonder.

So. Why do I spend so much time on the topic of contraception, and the right ordering of our sexual faculties? Because the greatest threat to our society is the destruction of the family. And though I am sure you will not get the reasoning behind it, contraception, and the attitudes toward life, toward marriage, toward children that it engenders, are at the root of that threatened destruction. And it’s all because of the Big Lie, in which we believe what we like, as if doing so changes reality. Contraception promotes a utilitarian approach toward the people in our lives. Contraception turns us inwardly toward ourselves. Contraception makes us believe we can live as we like. And when contraception (inevitably) fails (because life will struggle to survive, even against bad odds), it leads to the rationalization of the ending of a life. Which is bad for society.

I’ll close with this. Slavery in the early history of our society was tolerated because the humanity of the Negro was placed in doubt. It was justified to enslave the Negro, because it was what he was ordered to; he wasn’t capable of learning, of reasoning, of participating in civil society. The Negro was just a dumb animal, ordered to use by superior beings (like white folks).

Fortunately (for me; I would have made a bad slave), we woke up to the inhumanity of the practice of slavery, and the humanity of the slave. Thus, I have the chance to live a life free of the threat of capricious moves away from my family, of torture and even death at the whim of the White Man. I can be free to pursue what dreams I may have.

But there are about 50,000,000 children who will never have that chance. And I lay their deaths at the feet of the contraceptive mentality that has facilitated the Big Lie. So why do I focus on it? Because people are dying physically, in the womb, because their mothers have bought the Big Lie. Because people are dying, spiritually, because they believe the load of crap, the Big Lie, that is being foisted on them. Because I care about your soul, the souls of the parishioners I serve, and the souls of all God’s children in the human race. You’ve been bamboozled, Kaitlyn. I am simply trying to wake you, and others, to the Truth.

The empirical evidence in on my side. And from experience, whether you will admit it or not, what I propose rings true to you on some level. The Big Lie will try to force you to dismiss all I’ve laid out. But the Truth has a nasty habit of making itself known, and of wiggling its way into the consciousness of thinking people.

All this screed isn’t designed to shout you down, Kaitlyn. We have so lost our philosophical framework, that it takes a novella to lay out foundational principles from which to have a discussion. I’m perfectly happy to debate this with you for as long as you care to remain engaged. I ask only that you stay on topic. No, I don’t expend my energy in pursuit of every just cause there is. But I will expend myself for this one. I hope something above has been of use to you.

God bless.

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