“The final battle between God and Satan will be about marriage and the family.” – Sister Lucia of Fatima, in her letter to Cardinal Caffarra
This is Part Two of my essay on the evil of contraception, and why any approval of contraception has direct and inevitable rational corollaries, including the approval and acceptance of sodomy, and why heterosexual contracepted sex (the marital act frustrated) is on the same moral plane as sodomy – that’s right, you might even say it is a form of participation in sodomy. And since 99% of the population is using contraception, the sodomites have a rational argument against those 99% if they dare to condemn sodomitical acts: If contraception is okay, then sodomy must also be okay. See how that works?
If you don’t believe me, keep reading.
Love is Love, you know. NOWADAYS, it has nothing to do with fecundity, generativity, eh? Again this is a direct quote from Msgr. Pierangelo Sequeri, the new Dean of the recently destroyed John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, currently “studying” the matter at hand. If you can’t see where this is going, if you can’t already see that this principle can and will be applied to “gay marriage”, and to fornication and sodomy in general, start by going back and reading part one of this essay HERE.
The thing that makes human beings unique among creation is the rational soul. An honest human can take an honest look at Natural Law and deduce reality. That’s why the prohibition against contraception survived universally amongst all Christian sects for 1900 years, until modernism took over and reason went out the window. Once the procreative aspect of the marital act is separated and removed from the act itself, the partners are participating in an act that is closer in nature to sodomy, than it is to the generative marital act itself. Here is how I explained in Part One of this essay:
We begin with exploring nature. What is the nature of nature? The root of nature can be found in John 1:3, “All things were made by him, and without him was made nothing that was made.” The natural law is nothing more than observing the nature of things, including things like body parts and human actions, and determining truth through deductive reasoning. Let’s take the “reproductive system”. The name itself is fairly descriptive of of the nature of it, wouldn’t you say? What is it’s purpose? What is it ordered toward? What is it to be used for? Is it not the transmission of life? Do we observe that it is the only system in the human body which is unable to complete its function without a complementary partner? If we forcefully block the very purpose of the organs, if we aren’t at least passively open to the possibility of new life, or if we engage in acts (the ends of which) by their nature cannot possibly generate new life, then we go against nature, and hence we go against God who created nature (cf John 1:3). Any use of the reproductive system whereby the transmission of life is either deliberately thwarted or made physically impossible is mortally sinful.
Now let’s move on to the teaching of Humanae Vitae and the intrinsic evil of contraception. The heart of the matter is the teaching in PP#11-14, which we will examine point by point. But first I must warn you that HV does contain error, in that it elevates the unitive aspect of the marital act to the same level of importance as the procreative aspect. That’s false, and a topic for another day (you can find an excellent annotated essay HERE).
Paramount to understanding the document and also our current situation as it relates to Amoris Laetitia is Paragraph #3 of HV, which outlines the three main fallacies offered for consideration by the modernists in setting up this debate. Remember as you read this paragraph, this is NOT the teaching of HV, rather this is setting up what HV is about to refute. Paragraph #3 lays out the common arguments of the heretics in favor of contraception, in most convincing form. It is a strong possibility that Pope Paul VI Montini wrote Paragraph #3 to be the actual teaching of the HV, but then when Cardinal Ottaviani intervened, he flipped it by using Paragraph #3 as the set up, which then he (Ottaviani) utterly destroys each point later in the document, in true Thomistic style. These same false arguments are being presented yet again, 50 years later, as shown in the tweets posted above. Here is HV Paragraph #3 in its entirety:
3. This new state of things gives rise to new questions. Granted the conditions of life today and taking into account the relevance of married love to the harmony and mutual fidelity of husband and wife, would it not be right to review the moral norms in force till now, especially when it is felt that these can be observed only with the gravest difficulty, sometimes only by heroic effort? Moreover, if one were to apply here the so called principle of totality, could it not be accepted that the intention to have a less prolific but more rationally planned family might transform an action which renders natural processes infertile into a licit and provident control of birth? Could it not be admitted, in other words, that procreative finality applies to the totality of married life rather than to each single act? A further question is whether, because people are more conscious today of their responsibilities, the time has not come when the transmission of life should be regulated by their intelligence and will rather than through the specific rhythms of their own bodies.
Here is a summary of the three false premises laid out (in order to be refuted) in Paragraph #3 of HV:
- The rigidity of the law in this area would sometimes require “heroic virtue” among the spouses. It’s unmerciful to expect people to exhibit “heroic virtue.”
- The concept of “Totality” dictates that so long as there remains a lifelong commitment to the family, and general openness to life, individual acts which would otherwise be objectively sinful may be rendered licit.
- Certain concrete situations demand that man must use his intelligence/conscience to discern family size, finances etc. Sometimes circumstances not only can remove the prohibition, but actually REQUIRE the sin to be committed. God wills it.
Does any of this sound remotely familiar? Fast Forward 50 years:
“…Under certain circumstances people find it very difficult to act differently. Therefore, while upholding a general rule, it is necessary to recognize that responsibility with respect to certain actions or decisions is not the same in all cases. Pastoral discernment, while taking into account a person’s properly formed conscience, must take responsibility for these situations. Even the consequences of actions taken are not necessarily the same in all cases” Recognizing the influence of such concrete factors, we can add that individual conscience needs to be better incorporated into the Church’s praxis in certain situations which do not objectively embody our understanding of marriage. Naturally, every effort should be made to encourage the development of an enlightened conscience, formed and guided by the responsible and serious discernment of one’s pastor, and to encourage an ever greater trust in God’s grace. Yet conscience can do more than recognize that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel. It can also recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal. In any event, let us recall that this discernment is dynamic; it must remain ever open to new stages of growth and to new decisions which can enable the ideal to be more fully realized.
Amoris Laetitia #302-303, “Mitigating factors in pastoral discernment”
This passage from AL appears in a section dealing with people living in “irregular” unions, or so it would seem. But the faulty logic being employed here can easily be applied, and certainly will be applied, to any “concrete situation” in which approval of objective mortal sin is the intended result of the discernment process. Not only are these sinful actions acceptable, according to this logic, but they are actually a fruit of God’s grace, and it is God himself who asking for the sin to be committed! This is so diabolical as to defy belief.
Antipope Bergoglio laid the groundwork for applying this “logic” to the question of contraception less than a year into his “papacy”, in the run-up to the two Fake Synods on the Family:
Pope Francis has shown great appreciation for Bl. Paul VI and for “Humanae Vitae” several times, such as in an interview March 5, 2014 with the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, ahead of two synods on the family. Asked if the Church was going to take up again the theme of birth control, the Pope responded: that “all of this depends on how ‘Humanae Vitae’ is interpreted. Paul VI himself, at the end, recommended to confessors much mercy, and attention to concrete situations.”…
“The question,” Pope Francis concluded, “is not that of changing the doctrine but of going deeper and making pastoral (ministry) take into account the situations and that which it is possible for people to do. Also of this we will speak in the path of the synod.” HERE
Now let us contrast this with the authentic teaching of Humanae Vitae paragraphs 11-14. Although I will highlight some (emphasis mine), I won’t provide much commentary, as the words speak for themselves.
11. The sexual activity, in which husband and wife are intimately and chastely united with one another, through which human life is transmitted, is, as the recent Council recalled, “noble and worthy.” It does not, moreover, cease to be legitimate even when, for reasons independent of their will, it is foreseen to be infertile. For its natural adaptation to the expression and strengthening of the union of husband and wife is not thereby suppressed. The fact is, as experience shows, that new life is not the result of each and every act of sexual intercourse. God has wisely ordered laws of nature and the incidence of fertility in such a way that successive births are already naturally spaced through the inherent operation of these laws. The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.
12. This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act. The reason is that the fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life—and this as a result of laws written into the actual nature of man and of woman. And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called. We believe that our contemporaries are particularly capable of seeing that this teaching is in harmony with human reason. (nice touch)
13. Men rightly observe that a conjugal act imposed on one’s partner without regard to his or her condition or personal and reasonable wishes in the matter, is no true act of love, and therefore offends the moral order in its particular application to the intimate relationship of husband and wife. If they further reflect, they must also recognize that an act of mutual love which impairs the capacity to transmit life which God the Creator, through specific laws, has built into it, frustrates His design which constitutes the norm of marriage, and contradicts the will of the Author of life. Hence to use this divine gift while depriving it, even if only partially, of its meaning and purpose, is equally repugnant to the nature of man and of woman, and is consequently in opposition to the plan of God and His holy will. But to experience the gift of married love while respecting the laws of conception is to acknowledge that one is not the master of the sources of life but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. Just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, and with more particular reason, he has no such dominion over his specifically sexual faculties, for these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source. “Human life is sacred—all men must recognize that fact,” Our predecessor Pope John XXIII recalled. “From its very inception it reveals the creating hand of God.” (13)
14. Therefore We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage when We are obliged once more to declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children. Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary. Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means. Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one, or that such intercourse would merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness as these. Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good,” it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it —in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general. Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.
Lastly, no exposition of HV is complete without examining the hauntingly prophetic Paragraph #17, which explores the consequences of ignoring the teachings contained therein. This is the paragraph that is so clearly divinely inspired, it seems to me. At the very least, it is the result of profound insight into the human condition, the tsunami of the “sexual revolution” then taking place, and the inevitable collapse of the family we are now experiencing.
17. Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.
Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife. Consequently, unless we are willing that the responsibility of procreating life should be left to the arbitrary decision of men, we must accept that there are certain limits, beyond which it is wrong to go, to the power of man over his own body and its natural functions—limits, let it be said, which no one, whether as a private individual or as a public authority, can lawfully exceed. These limits are expressly imposed because of the reverence due to the whole human organism and its natural functions, in the light of the principles We stated earlier, and in accordance with a correct understanding of the “principle of totality” enunciated by Our predecessor Pope Pius XII.
Dear brethren, please get yourselves on the right side of this. Spend a lot of time in prayer. Pray for the grace to conform your mind to objective reality. Amend your life. The sense of freedom that comes from realizing that what you previously thought was “freedom” was actually slavery is truly breathtaking.
