Saturday, April 30, 2011

Humanae Vitae Part 1

I spent the last few days trying to get my head around the Catholic position on birth control and its relationship to their theology of marriage. My first project was to determine their perspective on its strongest account. This is the strongest account of their position that I could develop:

God has a perfect design for marriage. We fall short of this design because of the fall. Redeemed people attempt to fulfill this design according to God's grace.

Part of God's design for marriage includes planned childbearing using the natural cycle of fertility and infertility. Utilizing this method of "natural family planning," humans step into God's full design for marriage.

Artificial methods of birth control may seem harmless at first, but they violate God's design for marriage. Why?

Let's look at a parallel example. Emotions are part of being human, just as bearing children is part of being married. God gave us a natural mechanism--a will--to control our emotions, just as he gave us the natural fertility cycle to control childbearing.

The fall disordered these mechanisms. We cannot totally plan childbearing or submit our emotions to our will. It is easy to see how uncontrolled emotions are inconvenient and can damage or strain relationships with others.

We could solve this problem if we contracepted our emotions. By simply taking a pill, we could turn off our emotions until it was convenient or prudent. However, controlling our emotions in such a way detracts from our pursuit of God's design for humanity.

Similarly, if we use artificial methods of birth control, we actively detract from our pursuit of God's design for marriage.

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