Comments on: on contraception

By: Jaybird

Jaybird — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:02:53 +0000

This is one of those cases where the past is another country.

We read Lewis’s paragraph from a world where sex has been divorced from reproduction for our entire lives.

Keep in mind that, as he was writing that, he was writing it from a position where sex meant that pregnancy followed and the idea that one could, with 99.5% efficiency, prevent pregnancy was one that had yet to have its unintended consequences even scratched.

By: Tony Sifert

Tony Sifert — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:05:04 +0000

If we’re considering future generations in the way I mean here, then no. At least, the “them” you refer to is only a subset of “future generations.”

Of course, it can “be said.” But saying it has nothing to do with the recognition that there is something fundamentally wrong with contraception. If the issue is interpreted as a matter of necessity, it is only because “we” are, as a public, willing to accept certain kinds of destruction of what it means to be human. But that’s just another way of making present the fool’s bargain with history that the “Americanist heresy” has already made.

By: E.D. Kain

E.D. Kain — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:56:36 +0000

Bob – I know you have more to offer on this subject than snark.

By: Krauthammer

Krauthammer — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:51:29 +0000

I’m all for considering future generations, but couldn’t it be said that contraception is actually a benefit for them against the evils of overpopulation?

By: Bob Cheeks

Bob Cheeks — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:50:58 +0000

You guys are like theologians! Keep up the good work, this is like listening to Aquinas and Augustine.

By: Tony Sifert

Tony Sifert — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:58:40 +0000

“How have we effected a future generation? . . . what is it about contraception that has changed the scenario in any meaningful way?”

I can’t really answer either question, partly because it depends upon what is acceptable as “meaningful,” but maybe more because it seems incapable of prosaic articulation (to the question, “how have we affected a future generation,” I would want to say, with Frost, “elves . . . but it isn’t elves exactly”). It certainly has a lot to do with what you recognize as the problematic conflict of contraceptive pills with that which is “natural” (which also has an effect on the natural body politic–the “contraceptive mentality”). That recognition is part of the care with which you attempt to live in the world, but it is also, for some, a kind of stepping-stone toward a (possible) full meaning of sex and procreation (which, as Mike points out, includes the Catholic prohibition of the “spilling of seed”).

By: E.D. Kain

E.D. Kain — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:35:01 +0000

Yeah, but sex is both groovy and fun and pretty hard to say no to, and we should nevertheless exercise control because it’s also deeply personal and has great capacity not only to create joy but to create hardship, pain, etc.

Which is all to say that God especially likes things that are both good and yet have consequence. Perhaps his motto should be “You can indeed have too much of a good thing.”

By: Mike at The Big Stick

Mike at The Big Stick — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:32:37 +0000

I tend to think it depends on your idea of how God is. If he’s big on willpower, then he will say we should exercise control. If he understands that he made sex groovy and fun and pretty hard to say no too, then I think he would be okay with condoms or the pill.

By: E.D. Kain

E.D. Kain — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:58:54 +0000

I get that. I guess. I’m from a Catholic family. My mom’s parents had eight kids. I have tons and tons of cousins because of this. But I suppose, in the end, I have to weigh out other sins – like abortion – which I do think are limited by the availability and use of contraception.

By: Mike at The Big Stick

Mike at The Big Stick — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:57:00 +0000

E.D. I may misunderstand your question, so if so, please ignore my reply…

Theologically speaking Catholics believe it is a sin to ‘waste one’s seed’ in a sex act that does not at least have the possibility of pregnancy. Some take that rule very seriosuly. When I was growing up my church had at least 10 families with 8 or more kids.