2399 The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception).…

1855 Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him.…

1857 For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: “Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent.”

1858 Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments, corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man: “Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and your mother.” The gravity of sins is more or less great: murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wronged: violence against parents is in itself graver than violence against a stranger.

1859 Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God’s law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin.

1860 Unintentional ignorance can diminish or even remove the imputability of a grave offense. But no one is deemed to be ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are written in the conscience of every man. The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pressures or pathological disorders. Sin committed through malice, by deliberate choice of evil, is the gravest.

1861 Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself. It results in the loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace, that is, of the state of grace. If it is not redeemed by repentance and God’s forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ’s kingdom and the eternal death of hell, for our freedom has the power to make choices for ever, with no turning back. However, although we can judge that an act is in itself a grave offense, we must entrust judgment of persons to the justice and mercy of God.

Life Issues: Abortion, Contraception, and Euthanasia

Last edited on Fri Dec 28th, 2007 03:43 pm by Dave Armstrong

Last edited on Mon Dec 31st, 2007 04:12 pm by Dave Armstrong

Last edited on Mon Dec 31st, 2007 04:50 pm by BodRod

1. Contraception:

A) Deliberately willing the nonexistence of this possible child that might be conceived as a result of this act of intercourse, and the regarding of such a child as an "accident" rather than part of God's will and providence.

B) This mentality is what led inexorably to legal abortion (not inevitably as an opinion in every individual case - I was always a strong pro-lifer when I contracepted - , but as a general principle of applying the notion of a child being an "accident" or "unwanted").

C) Even in terms of legal case law precedent, legal contraception led to legal abortion.

2. Natural Family Planning:

A) The decision to not conceive a child at a given time, for legitimate, grave reasons, without refusing the possibilities of a child being conceived in a particular conjugal act (the non-willing of a particular child), since that act did not take place.

B) A refusal to separate the pleasure of sex from its deepest purpose, and willingness to always keep them together, or else to abstain in order to maintain the natural pairing and unity of the two aspects.

C) Acceptance of any children conceived as a result of improper practice of NFP as a gift of God (i.e., God knows more than we do about the future and our circumstances).

Sullivan offers several more direct objections to the natural law claim that it is immoral to engage in sexual acts while frustrating their procreative function. None of these objections is very impressive, and some of them seem to rest on a poor understanding (or at least poor exposition) of both traditional natural law theory and Catholic teaching.
For example, Sullivan describes a “Catholic married couple who live their lives according to natural law in every respect” as one who “never engage in any sexual act that does not result in the penis depositing semen in a vagina” (p. 84). If what he means by this is that the Catholic Church or natural law theory forbids acts like fellatio and cunnilingus even between married people, he is mistaken. What is forbidden is taking fellatio to the point of orgasm, or taking cunnilingus to orgasm outside the overall context of a completed act of intercourse; it is not necessarily forbidden to indulge in them as foreplay to an act of intercourse that results in ejaculation within the vagina. Perhaps Sullivan realizes this, but if so he should have expressed himself more clearly, since he is bound to give unwary readers the impression that natural law and Catholic teaching are more restrictive than they really are.
He also expresses himself badly when he gives the impression that the Church and natural law theory hold that after pregnancy, a married couple need “to refrain from any sexual activity in those nine months, to avoid activity ‘contrary’ to nature” (ibid.), a teaching whose justification he says is “hard to see” (p. 85). It should be hard to see, since neither the Catholic Church nor natural law theory actually teaches any such thing. Both allow that sex between a husband and his pregnant wife is perfectly legitimate. Again, it may be that Sullivan realizes this, and that what he is really saying is that even though the theory does allow this, it cannot do so consistently with its prohibition on contraception. And again, if so, he should make this clear, because readers unfamiliar with Catholic teaching or natural law theory would definitely get a misleading impression from Sullivan’s text.

http://rightreason.ektopos.com/archives/2006/10/reply_to_sulliv.html

The acts by which spouses lovingly prepare each other for genital intercourse (foreplay) are honorable and good.  But stimulation of each other’s genitals to the point of climax apart from an act of normal intercourse is nothing other than mutual masturbation… An important point of clarification is needed.

Since it’s the male orgasm that’s inherently linked with the possibility of new life, the husband must never intentionally ejaculate outside of his wife’s vagina.  Since the female orgasm, however, isn’t necessarily linked to the possibility of conception, so long as it takes place within the overall context of an act of intercourse, it need not, morally speaking, be during actual penetration… Ideally, the wife’s orgasm would happen simultaneously with her husband’s (orgasm), but this is easier said than done for many couples.  In fact, if the wife’s orgasm isn’t achieved during the natural course of foreplay and consummation, it would be the loving thing for the husband to stimulate his wife to climax thereafter (if she so desired).

(Good News about Sex and Marriage: Answers to Your Honest Questions About Catholic Teaching, Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Publications, 2000, pp. 90-91)

According to the Church’s traditional teaching, it is neither unnatural, perverted, nor immoral for couples to]seek sexual stimulation and arousal by means of oral (…) intercourse, but such activity should not be continued to the point of orgasm… Sexual climax, however, is to occur only after vaginal penetration…

On another matter of marital sexuality, some wives may need reassurance.  Should it happen that she fails to achieve sexual fulfillment in the act of sexual intercourse, a woman is morally permitted, according to the Church’s teaching, to seek and achieve orgasm by other means.

(Vincent Genovesi, In Pursuit of Love: Catholic Morality and Human Sexuality, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1996, 242-43)

Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity.

Last edited on Mon Dec 31st, 2007 05:43 pm by Dave Armstrong