Wednesday, November 2, 2022

The Standard Catholic Position On Contraceptives

The standard Catholic stance on contraception is that any artificial, synthetic contraceptive that goes beyond mere "natural family planning" (which is not necessarily about actively preventing conception) is that all such measures are sinful.  Individual Catholics might reject this idea, but they are also not consistent Catholics on the subject if so, for the same reason that someone could be a political liberal in general but not in part while still thinking themselves a wholehearted liberal.  Catholicism deviates from the Biblical theology it allegedly reflects and thus is false as a general worldview whether or not the Bible is true.  Catholic people are insincere as adherents to Catholicism and thus hypocritical if they start selectively believing in Catholic doctrines while still thinking themselves consistent Catholics.

When it comes to the issue of contraception itself, it needs to be understood that contraception is not abortion: the former is meant to prevent contraception/pregnancy and the latter is killing a separate human being living within the womb.  This conceptual distinction alone disproves the idea that if abortion is immoral, contraception must also be evil as well.  That the Bible condemns killing outside of very limited contexts but does not condemn use of contraceptives to delay or avoid pregnancy, and thus contraceptives are not sinful according to the Bible's very own moral framework--see Deuteronomy 4:2. It is clear that the actual teachings of the Bible are in no way opposed to mere contraception.

Now, it is not even that the methods of natural family planning, which is often about identifying days when a woman's fertility increases or decreases, are inefficient, expensive, or morally abominable themselves.  The Catholic championing of NFP is not the problem.  Rather, the legalism (claiming that extra-Biblical rules exist or are obligatory on the genuine Christian worldview) and attachment to papal approval and general Catholic tradition (belief in traditional ideas because they are traditional is irrational in itself, but the office of pope is already not a Biblical one as it is) are the philosophical problems here.  Contraception is Biblically nonsinful no matter what a pope says.  Still, papal backing is not necessarily the primary fallacious reason a Catholic might oppose contraception.

Other than mere appeals to the supposed philosophical authority of a pope, another possible ideological motivator for an individual Catholic to oppose contraption by default is the unbiblical myth that the Christian deity wants every married couple to have as many children as they can.  This is actually quite popular in some Protestant communities.  The Bible, just as it does not condemn contraception, does not prescribe that anyone have as many children as they can, and the command of Genesis for humans as a species to populate the planet is neither a command for everyone to get married or have sex (whether or not they are married) nor a demand for every specific couple to have any children at all if their preferences or circumstances do not push them in that direction.

When it comes to contraception and many other things, Catholicism is largely nothing but traditions assembled by popes, extra-Biblical writings, or church consensus over time, differentiating it very blatantly from a rationalistic philosophy or thoroughly Biblical theology--logical truths are true by necessity and thus cannot change, and, even if it is not true despite the immense evidence for it, Biblical Christianity is of course the same as what the Bible teaches, with the Bible not teaching only what sincere Catholics would embrace.  It is not the case that Catholicism is Christian theology itself instead of, at best, distortions of Christianity.  In one sense, yes, the permissibility of contraception is far less central than many parts of Christian morality.  In another sense, the Catholic stance on the matter could unnecesarily increase the difficulty of people's lives with its ramifications.

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