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“The Catholic Church teaches that contraception is immoral as it frustrates our natural sexual powers, thus your position would never be able to be adopted in t

“The Catholic Church teaches that contraception is immoral as it frustrates our natural sexual powers, thus your position would never be able to be adopted in the Catholic Church.” I never get this stance. They are against abortion, but at the same time against sex ed or contraception. It makes no sense. They are setting people up for failure.

TheFreim 5y ago
> They are against abortion, but at the same time against sex ed or contraception. I assume you believe either contraception or abortion are moral (or both, I suppose)? I think that if you look at it from their point of view for a moment it makes more sense, setting aside biases. Abortion is believed to be wrong because it's the unjust killing of an innocent human being. Contraception is wrong because it frustrates our natural sexual faculties which are ordered towards the marital act (procreation). These don't appear to be contradictory stances. If abortion and contraception are both immoral then you'd logically have to be against both. You appear to be looking at it from a utilitarian point of view, not assessing the actual moral claims. If something is immoral you should oppose it even if some bad consequences may occur. Similarly, I'd say that the Catholic Church isn't opposed to "sex ed" unless "sex ed" means "educating people how to sin". If you believe that contraception is immoral its perfectly logical to oppose teaching people how to sin with it, same way anyone would oppose classes teaching kids how to lie to their parents well. > They are setting people up for failure I'd like your input on this since it is probably the main issue I can sense: is a hard moral standard "setting someone up for failure" inherently? Back to the subject of lying I used as an illustration earlier, I'd say it's very hard to go through life without saying occasional lies but I'd never say it's setting people up for failure by telling them to not lie. What are your thoughts? Do you think your main concern is with standards not making sense or is the issue rather that you simply don't agree with one or more of the standards themselves? I'm interested to hear your response!
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  I can see how one can be against abortion, contraception and sex ed. But I think this is just not a realistic stance. Teenagers that don’t know about how things work, still have sex and then children. The Catholic Church has even major problems keeping their own priests celibate as the number of pregnancies and child abuse cases show. That should tell them something. The whole thing reminds me of the war on drugs or prohibition before. It’s a moral stance that makes sense but it’s just not realistic and has shown repeatedly to not work and do great harm to society. Considering all alternatives it seems to me that contraception is the least harmful and easy to implement measure. It has shown to be successful and is way better than abortion or teenage moms. I think it’s it irresponsible by the church to be against contraception. There are a lot of other moral issues they should strict on first. For example they should examine their long time support of dictators like the nazis. They had a great opportunity to speak up back then but chose not to.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  Kinda off topic but... "sex ed" used to be more "this is the biological process that occurs" (re sperm and egg and subsequent fetal growth) with sometimes vague descriptions of how the sperm got there, and sometimes including fetal development through birth. It could feasibly be renamed, since it was far less focused on sex itself and more on what might happen if the sex was "successful" (from a procreation standpoint). Today it's literal cartoonish drawings of men fellating other men, written depictions of anal fisting, affirmations of acceptable lust, and vague warnings about how to prevent disease or "success" (see above). Yeah, sure, I'm highlighting the extremes. However, it is undeniable that the ["Western"] strategy has shifted away from "what sex results in" to "ways to use sex for pleasure without consequence".
Larrikin 5y ago
Failure is the goal. If you are constantly producing children you're producing workers for your fields to increase yields and even more important you're increasing the human resources that can be used, taxed, and tithed. Outlawing most drugs makes sex one of the few legal pleasurable activities, especially before modern technological entertainment. Making sure sex is limited to married families has an effect of keeping both parents invested in the children so they are raised to adulthood. Having your life tied to children at a young age has you focusing on providing a good life for your children so you don't want to risk your life revolting against those in power. Those in power just pretended to follow the same rules as others.

TheFreim 5y ago

> They are against abortion, but at the same time against sex ed or contraception. I assume you believe either contraception or abortion are moral (or both, I suppose)? I think that if you look at it from their point of view for a moment it makes more sense, setting aside biases. Abortion is believed to be wrong because it's the unjust killing of an innocent human being. Contraception is wrong because it frustrates our natural sexual faculties which are ordered towards the marital act (procreation). These don't appear to be contradictory stances. If abortion and contraception are both immoral then you'd logically have to be against both. You appear to be looking at it from a utilitarian point of view, not assessing the actual moral claims. If something is immoral you should oppose it even if some bad consequences may occur. Similarly, I'd say that the Catholic Church isn't opposed to "sex ed" unless "sex ed" means "educating people how to sin". If you believe that contraception is immoral its perfectly logical to oppose teaching people how to sin with it, same way anyone would oppose classes teaching kids how to lie to their parents well. > They are setting people up for failure I'd like your input on this since it is probably the main issue I can sense: is a hard moral standard "setting someone up for failure" inherently? Back to the subject of lying I used as an illustration earlier, I'd say it's very hard to go through life without saying occasional lies but I'd never say it's setting people up for failure by telling them to not lie. What are your thoughts? Do you think your main concern is with standards not making sense or is the issue rather that you simply don't agree with one or more of the standards themselves? I'm interested to hear your response!

spaetzleesser 5y ago
I can see how one can be against abortion, contraception and sex ed. But I think this is just not a realistic stance. Teenagers that don’t know about how things work, still have sex and then children. The Catholic Church has even major problems keeping their own priests celibate as the number of pregnancies and child abuse cases show. That should tell them something. The whole thing reminds me of the war on drugs or prohibition before. It’s a moral stance that makes sense but it’s just not realistic and has shown repeatedly to not work and do great harm to society. Considering all alternatives it seems to me that contraception is the least harmful and easy to implement measure. It has shown to be successful and is way better than abortion or teenage moms. I think it’s it irresponsible by the church to be against contraception. There are a lot of other moral issues they should strict on first. For example they should examine their long time support of dictators like the nazis. They had a great opportunity to speak up back then but chose not to.
jimmygrapes 5y ago
Kinda off topic but... "sex ed" used to be more "this is the biological process that occurs" (re sperm and egg and subsequent fetal growth) with sometimes vague descriptions of how the sperm got there, and sometimes including fetal development through birth. It could feasibly be renamed, since it was far less focused on sex itself and more on what might happen if the sex was "successful" (from a procreation standpoint). Today it's literal cartoonish drawings of men fellating other men, written depictions of anal fisting, affirmations of acceptable lust, and vague warnings about how to prevent disease or "success" (see above). Yeah, sure, I'm highlighting the extremes. However, it is undeniable that the ["Western"] strategy has shifted away from "what sex results in" to "ways to use sex for pleasure without consequence".

Larrikin 5y ago

Failure is the goal. If you are constantly producing children you're producing workers for your fields to increase yields and even more important you're increasing the human resources that can be used, taxed, and tithed. Outlawing most drugs makes sex one of the few legal pleasurable activities, especially before modern technological entertainment. Making sure sex is limited to married families has an effect of keeping both parents invested in the children so they are raised to adulthood. Having your life tied to children at a young age has you focusing on providing a good life for your children so you don't want to risk your life revolting against those in power. Those in power just pretended to follow the same rules as others.