Natures as Words, Contraception as a Lie

By Pater Edmund Waldstein | September 16, 2014

One of the main obstacles to understanding the Catholic teaching on contraception is an ignorance of the relevant meaning of the concept of nature. What sense of nature is being used when one says that contraception is “contrary to nature?” An exactly parallel sense of “contrary to nature” is used in the Church’s teaching on lying. And although the teaching on lying is as obscure to many as is the teaching on contraception, I think that a comparison of the two is illuminating. The teaching on lying is particularly illuminating, because the natures of created things can in a real sense be said to be “words” of the Creator.

Natures as words

St. Thomas Aquinas follows Aristotle in using “nature” to mean a principle of change and rest that is in a thing, making that thing be what it is. So the “nature” of a tree is the principle in the tree according to which the tree grows and stops growing, stretches out toward the sun, bears fruit, and so on. Aristotle shows in the Physics that nature is directed toward a goal, toward a good, that the thing is supposed to realize. So one could define nature as a kind of direction within a thing toward a particular good that it is supposed to realize.

St. Thomas Aquinas takes this Aristotelian account and develops it further by arguing that to act for an end presupposes some kind of knowledge. So he defines nature as an impression of the Divine Reason on creatures; the nature of each thing is a kind of participation in the divine wisdom by which that thing is directed towards its end. (Cf. his Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, lectio 14, 268.) This is the sense of nature from which natural law is derived: human beings are directed by this innate impression of divine wisdom to seek self-preservation, reproduction, friendship, knowledge of God, and so on, and to shun what is destructive of those goods. Charles De Koninck in commenting on this passage says that every nature can be called a “Divine logos … a Divine word” (On the Primacy of the Common Good, Appendix). Logos can of course mean reason as well as word and De Koninck notes that the nature of irrational things is “a substitute for intellect” (ibid.), but a nature is also a word in a much more literal sense.

God’s principle intention in creating is to manifest his own glory, and so each nature is a sign by which God leads rational creatures to a knowledge of Himself. As St. Thomas puts it:

The creatures made by God’s wisdom are related to God’s wisdom, whose signposts they are, as a man’s words are related to his wisdom, which they signify. And just as a disciple reaches an understanding of the teacher’s wisdom by the words he hears from him, so man can teach an understanding of God’s wisdom by examining the creatures He made (Commentary on 1 Corinthians, Lectio 3, 55).

Maurice Dionne thus argues that the “natural works” of God, that is the natures of natural things, are given us as “principles which permit us to discover certain divine names” (“The Grace of Mary,” 1).

That creatures are words of their Creator is in principle knowable by natural reason, but revelation deepens our understanding of this truth. All things are created through the Eternal Word, the Logos Who is the perfect expression of the Father’s knowledge of Himself. And creation reflects that Word. But rational nature is in a special sense a reflection and even an image of the Logos. Human contemplation of God is an image of the eternal generation of the Word, and human speech is a sign of the Incarnation, in which the eternal Word was manifest in the sensible world. (See John Francis Nieto’s exposition of this point in his lecture “Nil Hoc Verbo Veritatis Verius.”)

Two ways in which an action can be contrary to nature

So natures are words of the Creator, and they make a thing to be what it is. A tree is a tree because of the sort of participation in the divine wisdom that it has, a participation that orders it to the sort of good that can be realized by a tree, and that signifies something about its creator. Similarly a human being is human because of human nature. But not only the substantial natures of things are Divine logoi— everything was made through the Word, and without the Word nothing was made. Thus human actions, which flow from human nature and are ordered to an end, can also be said to be Divine words, and to have “natures” in this sense. One can look a kind of human actions and ask, “what is the nature of this sort of act”–i.e. what is the innate ordering to a goal that this kind of act has. Thus one can look at human speech and ask: What is human speech? What makes it to be what it is and not something else? This is crucial for understanding the teaching of Humanae Vitae; in the case of sexual intercourse too one has to ask: What is the nature of this act? What is the innate order toward a good goal in it that makes it to be sexual intercourse and not something else?

It follows, then, that there can be two ways in which an action is “contrary to nature.” In one way it can be contrary to the end of human nature as a whole—this is true of any evil action, since all evil actions are against “right reason” and contrary to the final goal of the human person. But in a more particular sense something can be “contrary to nature” if it is against the particular nature of the kind of act that it is.

We can see this in the case of speech. One can sin by saying something mean or indiscreet, and this is contrary to right reason, and thus contrary to one’s nature, but it is not against the particular nature of speech. But there is one kind of sin in speech that is indeed against the nature of speech itself. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “By its very nature, lying is to be condemned” (CCC 2485). St. Thomas argues for this position in the Summa Theologica (IIa IIae, q. 110, a. 3) through an analysis of the nature of speech. Speech is by its nature, that is its particular nature as a certain kind of act, ordered to communicate the thoughts that a person has in his mind. So, if one says something that is directly contrary to what he thinks, then he violates the nature of speech: The action is “unnatural.”

Of course, communicating the truth is not the only good that speech realizes—speech also strengthens relationships, sounds nice, and so on. But it is communicating truth that gives speech its nature—it is the primary natural end of speech from which all the others flow. Hence St. Thomas teaches that one even the so-called “friendly lie” (lying out of politeness: “you look great”), or the jocose lie (April fool’s jokes), is sinful. The whole class of actions called lies is intrinsically bad and can never be good. (Again, see Nieto, “Nil Hoc Verbo Veritatis Verius.”)

And St. Thomas teaches something precisely similar about sexual sins. He argues that there are two ways in which a sexual act can be sinful:

First, through being contrary to right reason, and this is common to all lustful vices; secondly, because, in addition, it is contrary to the natural order of the venereal act as becoming to the human race (Summa Theologica, IIa IIae, q. 154, a. 11, c).

In the first class are sins such as adultery and fornication—they are contrary to right reason, contrary to the final end of the human person, but the are not contrary to the nature of the sexual act. An act of adultery still has the nature of a sexual act. And this because it preserves the natural order toward the end of that kind of act. The primary end of sexual intercourse is reproduction. Of course sex also realizes other goods: the union of the spouses, pleasure etc. But the one that defines it, that makes it to be what it is, that gives it its nature, is reproduction. Thus adultery and fornication are not contrary to the nature of sex. But sins such as sodomy and masturbation are contrary to the nature of sex. It is not just that in doing such acts one is not intending to reproduce; it is that the kind of act one is choosing is not a reproductive kind of act all. It doesn’t have the nature of proper sex, and hence it is unnatural. It is like a lie.

Pope Paul VI teaches (and Pope St John Paul II expands on his teaching at great length) that contraception belongs to this category of acts. Contraception is not wrong because people contracepting are not intending to reproduce (however true that might be); it is wrong because it contradicts the nature, the Divine logos of the act. It uses the faculty of generation in a way that directly frustrates the defining end of that faculty, the end that gives that faculty its nature. It is perverse because it is contrary to the nature of the faculty in the same way that lying is contrary to speech: It changes the kind of act that you are doing into a kind of act in which a faculty is used to contradict itself. As Elizabeth Anscombe puts it, “The action is not left by you as the kind of act by which life is transmitted, but is purposely rendered infertile, and so changed to another sort of act altogether” (“Contraception and Chastity”).

Thus, contraception is always sinful. It is always contradicts the impression of the Divine wisdom that is imprinted in sexual nature. This is why Paul VI speaks of contraception as contrary to the “meaning” of the conjugal act (Humanae Vitae, 13), and why St. John Paul II speaks of the language of the body: “the truth of the language of the body can be expressed only by safeguarding the procreative potential” (General Audience of November 21, 1984).

Lying is to Equivocation as Contraception is to Natural Family Planning

While lying is always sinful, it can in certain emergencies be morally good to deceive someone by equivocation, that is, by saying something true that one’s interlocutor is liable to misunderstand. A classic example: St. Athanasius, fleeing his persecutors by boat, orders his men to turn the boat around and sail straight toward the persecutors. The persecutors ask his men, “have you seen Athanasius?” And his men answer (on his orders), “yes, he is near by.” The persecutors hurry on up stream.

What is the difference between lying and equivocating in such a situation? In both cases one is intending to deceive. But in the case of a lie you are directly acting against the nature of the act of speech—it’s the wrong kind of act that you are doing. When you equivocate you are certainly not intending to communicate truth, but the act nevertheless is the right kind of act—it has the nature of true speech—even though in this case you hope it won’t succeed in communicating truth.

The case of “Natural Family Planning” (NFP) and contraception is similar. Contraception is always sinful because it doesn’t have the nature of sex; it is like a lie. But NFP is more like equivocation. In an emergency situation (for example, inability to support more children due to unjust economic structures), one does not want the sexual act to result in pregnancy. So one chooses to engage in a true sexual act, but in such a way that it will not (likely) result in pregnancy, just as Athanasius’s sailors say something true but in a way that will not communicate the truth. Thus in certain circumstances using NFP can be morally good. As Pope Paul VI teaches:

Neither the Church nor her doctrine is inconsistent when she considers it lawful for married people to take advantage of the infertile period but condemns as always unlawful the use of means which directly prevent conception, even when the reasons given for the later practice may appear to be upright and serious. In reality, these two cases are completely different. In the former the married couple rightly use a faculty provided them by nature. In the later they obstruct the natural development of the generative process (Humanae Vitae, 16).

The difficulty that many Catholics have in understanding this teaching is caused (at least in part) by the modern concept of nature, which is very different from the true one. The natural world is seen by much of post-Cartesian modernity as a kind of machine with parts acted on by blind force, rather than an order of things directed from within by impressions of the divine wisdom. In his Introduction to St. John Paul II’s series of Wednesday audiences, The Theology of the Body, Michael Waldstein has argued that one of the Pope’s main points was to try to recover the traditional view of the nature on which this teaching is based. In the final audience of the series St. John Paul says that the whole series was ordered to understanding the teaching of Humanae Vitae. What he tries to show finally is that this teaching is about our very structure as creatures of God; about the impression in us of the divine wisdom.

Aaron Taylor

Oh dear, oh dear. What a car crash of moral reasoning. I suggest you begin by reading the Supplement to St Thomas’s Summa Theologiae, q. 41, a. 1, on what it means for matrimony to be an “office of nature,” and you will see how far you have strayed from the straight way. This paragraph of yours, in particular, is awful :

” … In the first class are sins such as adultery and fornication—they are contrary to right reason, contrary to the final end of the human person, but the are not contrary to the nature of the sexual act. An act of adultery still has the nature of a sexual act. And this because it preserves the natural order toward the end of that kind of act. The primary end of sexual intercourse is reproduction. Of course sex also realizes other goods: the union of the spouses, pleasure etc. But the one that defines it, that makes it to be what it is, that gives it its nature, is reproduction. Thus adultery and fornication are not contrary to the nature of sex. But sins such as sodomy and masturbation are contrary to the nature of sex. It is not just that in doing such acts one is not intending to reproduce; it is that the kind of act one is choosing is not a reproductive kind of act all. It doesn’t have the nature of proper sex, and hence it is unnatural. It is like a lie … ”

Why is it so difficult for Catholic conservatives to wrap their heads around the idea that humans are … well, human … not farmyard animals? Because human nature is rational, something can’t be “contrary to reason” and at the same time *not* contrary to nature because the relevant moral sense of “contra naturam” in Catholic moral theology is that it is contrary to *our* nature. Taking procreation as the primary purpose of the sex act, rationally-ordered procreation for *humans* (we’re not farmyard pigs, remember … ) involves a lot more than just depositing semen in the vaginal tract and then walking away. As St. Thomas tells us in the article I referenced, “*nature* intends *not only* the begetting of offspring, but *also* its education and development until it reach the perfect state of man as man [emphases mine]!!” And it goes without saying, as indeed St. Thomas points out, that “a child cannot be brought up and instructed unless it have certain and definite parents, and this would not be the case unless there were a tie between the man and a definite woman,” So sorry but fornication and adultery are not “natural” however much some Catholic conservatives might wish that they were!!

Secondly … both a condom, say, and NFP rely on a) a certain understanding at the rational level of how the reproductive process works (the condom would never have been invented if people didn’t understand through observation that depositing semen in a vagina leads to conception), b) a deliberate decision as one’s proximate *end* to engage in reproductive-type actions either for the purpose of bonding or simply for pleasure while excluding as far as possible the natural reproductive consequences of those actions, and c) the further deliberate decision to use a technological intervention as a *means* in order to achieve that end (viz., the prevention of conception) … and NFP is a far more technical intervention, what with its charts, thermometers, measuring of vaginal mucus, and so forth … flag-waving JPII TOTBers rail against contraception for “objectifying” women so that men can have their wicked way with them but what does NFP do? In order to monitor and manage a woman’s reproductive cycle it treats them with all the dignity of a professional farmer trying to breed his prize pigs (this barnyard brand of sexual ethics seems to be a recurring theme in contemporary conservative Catholic moral theory).

Of course I’m not saying that therefore the Church’s teaching on contraception is wrong (unless you identify the Church’s perennial teaching with TOTB; in which case, you are wrong). But most people aren’t idiots. Perhaps theologians could focus on coming up with new and convincing ways of explaining this teaching instead of wheeling out the same, tired old explanations and then when people don’t buy them, trying to claim that its just because people are stupid and they don’t understand what nature really means, rather than asking yourself the question of whether perhaps the fault lies with you for explaining it poorly.
http://newarkistheplace.com Thomas Mullally

I like your interpretations. When we take the bits and pieces of God’s creation and relentlessly apply them to our own ends, we are failing to simply live as intended by Him. Acting always with reason instead of passion and emotion is not holy. Acting always with reason and calculation is probably a life of great sin, and usually a subset of worldly ambition.

Sadly, ambition is with few exceptions crushed by the stampede of competing ambition. Making us left without, wheat and chaff.
Sancrucensis

Aaron Taylor, you write, «Because human nature is rational, something can’t be “contrary to reason” and at the same time *not* contrary to nature.» Yeah, I agree, and actually say that above. Nevertheless, there are different ways of being contrary to nature. Saying something uncharitable is contrary to nature in a different way than lying.
http://newarkistheplace.com Thomas Mullally

Think about this: true love and faith are natural, and they are shorn of all reason. Reason wants something in return. Everything we do must be imbued with reason, to be natural?

Actually, reason came with the fruit Adam stole from the tree. Yours is the case for the cold science of our age, not faith. Human nature as you call it, is something about which God has been infinitely forgiving, but it was not part of His original plan.
http://newarkistheplace.com Thomas Mullally

My goodness, you have to think about your “rule”! Love and faith are natural, yet in pure form they are shorn of all reason. Reason expects something in return. Everything we do must be imbued with reason, to be natural?

Actually, reason came with the fruit Adam stole from the tree. Yours is the case for the cold science of our age, not faith. Human nature as you call it, is something about which God has been infinitely forgiving, but it was not part of His original plan.
JGradGus

Time out! Twice now you’ve stated, “Reason came with the fruit Adam stole from the tree.” When exactly
did the debate on what the fruit was that Adam and Eve ate finally get settled?
BM

In several places St Albert, St Thomas, and his commentators note that the principle that the good of something is its proper act/end applies to the whole as well as to its parts. To take a single example, Sylvester Ferrara in commenting on the Contra Gentiles (B. 3, c. 122) notes: “Bonum uniuscujusque est ut finem suum consequatur: malum vero quod a debito fine divertat. Et hoc sicut in toto, ita et in partibus considerari oportet.” This, of course, helps to show how something can be contrary to one aspect of nature and not to another, since the parts of something are non the same as the whole of it.
http://newarkistheplace.com Thomas Mullally

Faith are reason are opposites, it is simply erroneous to claim they have harmony in a human nature that is superior to all else in the world.. (I don’t care what Aquinas says, I worship God and Christ, not Aquinas.) We carry both faith and reason, and must reconcile them. Faith is supplied by God himself, reason stems from knowledge, and where did we get that?
JGradGus

I ask again, when exactly did the debate on what the fruit was that Adam and Eve ate finally get settled?
http://newarkistheplace.com Thomas Mullally

It is settled, in the Book of Genesis. Check it out….
JGradGus

If Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the “tree of knowledge” you would have a bullet proof argument, but they ate the fruit of the “tree of knowledge of good and evil.” This might be splitting hairs but words matter. Also, I have read that our faith comes from our ability to reason so I don’t know that I would agree that they are opposites.
http://newarkistheplace.com Thomas Mullally

Good point, it seems reinforcing the idea we were not intended to reason. Our judging of good and evil was not even part of the God’s first plan! But also certainly, He has been working with us further!
CaritasDeiMoveturCaelum

I really don’t how to respond to this. First of all, on biblical-historical grounds, the tree of knowledge of good and evil is an extreme merism for knowledge of everything - that is, God-like knowledge. It is not about moral choices or our capacity to reason in itself but a transgression of the boundary between creature and God, an attempt to gain godhood without God. Humans chose the wrong Tree and forfeited the Tree of Life which would have secured their immortality and godhood/theosis. Thus they abandoned their role as priests in the sanctuary of God, their angelic robes and spiritual forms. It is not about reason. If we wanted to look for reason, Adam reasoned when he named the creatures with language, a royal and even divine prerogative.

Second, on traditional-interpretative grounds, the “image of God” in human beings has long been held to be the very capacity of reason itself, the rational soul which makes us most God-like and able to apprehend God. Indeed, the passions cloud reason because they are out of joint with the apprehensive-rational soul due to the Fall. Prior to the Fall, rational control extended to every function - at least, according to tradition. So, with no intent to malign you personally, it seems your suggestion is precisely backwards.

So, no, I would not say that Faith and Reason are opposites. Rather, Faith is the recognition of the place where Reason cannot tread. However, Faith is reasonable insofar as it is trust in the Creator-God to provide what we cannot understand. Indeed, Faith is chiefly not about knowledge but about trust in God’s actions and purpose except insofar as Revelation (Trinity, etc.) is concerned. It is not a rejection of Reason in its proper place. Philo very much exalted Reason, but he lampooned the philosophers as fallen “sons of heaven” because they attempted to understand by reason the Unknowable, the “I am that I am,” Who is unique and apophatic and not penetrable by reason.
CaritasDeiMovetCaelum

Oops. I apologize. The name should be “CaritasDeiMovetCaelum,” active ["moves"] obviously and not passive ["is moved"].
http://newarkistheplace.com Thomas Mullally

Is that the Charity of God Sculpts?
http://newarkistheplace.com Thomas Mullally

OK, thanks… I realize that I am walking the line with heresy, but we are now at a dark stage of history and I am looking for a way out. There is a lot of excess baggage piled onto our theology at this point, that we are trying to carry no matter what. Some of it needs to be jettisoned if we are to revive the Faith.

Now you say: “I would not say that Faith and Reason are opposites. Rather, Faith is the recognition of the place where Reason cannot tread. However, Faith is reasonable insofar as it is trust in the Creator-God to provide what we cannot understand. Indeed, Faith is chiefly not about knowledge but about trust in God’s actions and purpose except insofar as Revelation (Trinity, etc.) is concerned. It is not a rejection of Reason in its proper place.” Well, its proper place is continually expanding and faith has declined commensurately, as science (using reason) has disassembled God’s elements and re-assembled them time and again. Economic efficiency has been made paramount, the majority of humankind is being freely exploited, and we are destroying the earth itself.

I am sorry, but the problem today is not an excess of passion and emotion. It is the opposite.

Therefore, we can debate history for the rest of our own lives. In any interpretation, it is time now for the Church to stop accommodating science, rationality, and reason…. they reached their point of diminishing returns quite some time ago. Every single purported innovation, now comes at a great cost to life itself!

Thank God for Pope Francis, and May God Bless You!
JGradGus

You just lost me! This essay is about using ‘reason’ to show that contraception is a sin. Our faith comes from our ability to ‘reason.’ St. Thomas and St. Augustine are all about ‘reason.’ How can you say, “Reason is only activated when faith shuts off”?

And just where are your statements, ” . . . we are now at a dark stage of history and I am looking for a way out,” and “I am sorry, but the problem today is not an excess of passion and emotion. It is the opposite” coming from? Things certainly are no darker today than have been many times before in the past, and debating ideas calmly and rationally is certainly preferable to debating them passionately, and emotionally.

As for your statement, ” . . . the majority of humankind is being freely exploited, and we are destroying the earth itself,” that is certainly jam-packed with both emotion and passion, but I’m not sure how it fits in with a discussion of Mr. Waldstein’s essay.
http://newarkistheplace.com Thomas Mullally

Sorry, if you follow the thread upward I was not responding to the essay, I was responding to a comment interpreting that human nature is defined by reason. Love stems from reason, faith stems from reason? This is the widest interpretation of reason, and it is nothing more than an enabler of sin.

Every amoral scientist, Josef Stalin, Karl Marx, these are people imbued with cold rationality e.g. reason. We have reason carried to the extreme. Thomist philosophy is gumming up the works, for the core Catholic message.
CaritasDeiMovetCaelum

I’m almost certain that’s the “Love of God moves Heaven.” Then again, I’m no Classics scholar.

God bless you, too.
http://newarkistheplace.com Thomas Mullally

Thank You… apparently the Catechism of the Church has a section explaining passion, as it relates to will and intellect. Here is a link explaining that part of the Catechism: http://catholicmoraltheology.com/catechism-post-passions/
JGradGus

How do we “get back to Christ Himself?” Are you saying we (mankind, the Catholic Church, theologians, etc.) are overthinking Jesus’ message?
http://newarkistheplace.com Thomas Mullally

Yes- I feel there is excess. Thank God we have the Catechism of 1993 to refer to, on the Holy See’s website. It is a lot more concise than Augustine and Aquinas. I think I am making statements in accordance, but I am going to read through again, to be sure…. Don’t pay attention to me, look at it! Thanks and God Bless!
JGradGus

I’ve had a hard cover copy on my bookshelf since 1994 and I refer to it often, however, I don’t know that it “settles” every/all/most questions. We (mankind) are inquisitive and maybe even skeptical by nature and we will always be asking ‘why?’. So when the Catechism say bluntly, ‘this is so,’ we jump right to, ‘why?’. Jesus never addressed things like contraception, in vitro fertilization, whether a war can be a just war, etc., so we look to others smarter (or more holy?) than ourselves for answers. And then we question the answers they give us!

I often think of Judas’ lines from the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar: “If You’d come today You could have reached a whole nation! Israel in 4 B.C. had no mass-communication!” and, “Why’d You choose such a backward time in such a strange land?”

Be that as it may, I have often thought that we are overthinking things as well — especially when it comes to the Church’s teachings on sex, contraception, etc.! However, life and the world gets more complex seemingly by the minute, so we look to Church leaders and theologians to keep us on the right path.
Oh well, as they say, such is life. God Bless you too!
http://newarkistheplace.com Thomas Mullally

Ohhh- well, things aren’t really that complicated, but there are many more ways to get confused! E.g. there are those who wish to reconcile Catholicism with the pursuits they also wish to justify as not being so bad, and look for any interpretation from scholars (including Saints) and bishops and even priests, who have foundations and write books. And I fight with them about which interpretation is superior, them I turn around and realize, my case was in John Paul II’s Catechism to begin with! It is very up-to-date, and more understandable as you get older. E.g. the right-to-life, is as much for the woman as anybody… why should a woman give up her beautiful child, for the false and fleeting promises of economics and ambition?
JGradGus

Well, I am 62 years old, Catholic from birth, with 16 years of Catholic education, and pretty well read beyond that, but I think the Catechism could still benefit from a really good editor! I
For instance in Part 1, Section 2, Chapter 3, Article 9, Paragraph 3 [816] it states “For it is through Christ’s Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained.” This has been consistent Catholic doctrine. But then it goes on to discuss other religions and says [in 819] “Christ’s Spirit uses these Churches and ecclesial communities as means of salvation, whose power derives from the fullness of grace and truth that Christ has entrusted to the Catholic Church.”
http://newarkistheplace.com Thomas Mullally

Yes, I see… well there is Christ’s generosity and selflessness in a nutshell! It seems to me that this part is speaking to the metaphysical (e.g. non-reasonable) nature of salvation. It is hard for us to understand, we go through life always thinking you need to work so hard to earn things, that why should these other people get something for nothing? By stating that God and His Son are not excluding anyone, it means it is even possible to infer divinity from nature and carry the goodness of God and Christ in your own heart without even knowing literally anything about the Bible at all! Of course if you have access and can benefit from it, you have a great head start. But there are great sinners who go to Church to “earn” salvation, just as there are outsiders who are risen, who the Church is speaking about there.
JGradGus

Yes, I am aware of this explanation and it is probably the best explanation that has been offered up, but it then brings up the idea of individual conscience as being the source of what is right and wrong. And so we go round and round! The debate goes on and we continue to overthink, interpret and re-interpret everything! Can women be priests? Should someone who is divorced be able to receive the Eucharist? Should divorce even be allowed at all since marriage in insoluble? Is contraception a sin when the vast majority of Catholics feel it is not? What is “the truth?”
http://newarkistheplace.com Thomas Mullally

Yes, conscience, thinking…. reason. They can hold us back from freely flowing with our heart, to the wishes of God. We are set upon with conflicting codes… moral, legal, personal… too much logic instead of a day-to-day flow of life- to me, this is the most unholy part! (And BTW personally, I think older fellers like us would be given much less of a free pass, compared to the iniquities of the young. We have spent our lives observing and making rules, only to suddenly break them in the face of greater interests!)

The Church is generally against contraception. Is that to say, it is a bad sin for a young guy to put on a condom for a single tryst? It seems not- although the Church certainly wants him to think about the fact that he is wasting his precious life moments trysting with a woman he is not sure about. How about a woman taking pills for years because she wants to solidify her career? This is sort of an ongoing greed, and besides she is polluting her body with chemicals, potentially affecting long-term fertility, and opening her to repeated depravities.

As for divorce, probably how we behave during and after the estrangement is more important in God’s eyes. The divorce itself is but a formality, although due to sacramental status you are making a mess! Does God wish marriage to become a slavery- clearly not… and the problem is, when you force people to contravene a holy sacrament, you are setting up more and worser ventures outside the teachings of the Church… I think you will find Pope Francis trying to reform this set of problems, ahead of all else.