A Change in Catholic Birth Control Dogma is Coming
Conservatives in the Catholic Church have turned back efforts to liberalize its position against birth control for a long time. There have been efforts to change but they never quite made it to the finish line. A change may be coming.
The current official stance is all but laughable. Over 90% of Catholics practice artificial birth control. How can one conclude the "Catholic Church" does "not believe in birth control" when Catholics themselves actually believe in it, i.e., do not believe it is a sin?
Catholics (and some other branches of Christianity like Southern Baptist leaders) have a passion for controlling first the lives of their members, then later, the live of the societies they live in and finally their governments. This passion is so strong many people hesitate to criticism this control and only violate secretly. Those who try to hold on to this control, mostly white males, find its better to maintain a facade of control rather than admit they have failed.
The big synod scheduled for this fall seems, at least to an outsider, to have change potential. This change might include both married priests and birth control. If the synod recommends changes to the Pope it allows him some freedom to decide what he wants for church's position to be. This system for decisions by the guy at the top reminds me of how Castro used to justify his policies. He would send out his police and make sure huge crowds came to his speeches. During the speeches he would shout applause lines. The shouting of approval was what he would later declare as "the people have spoken."
When you think about it, what choice does the Pope and Catholic Church have? When there is wholesale disregard, almost universal hostility, to a church idea like no birth control it has to follow those who pay the bills. That is the people in the pews.
Nothing could be better for the Catholic Church than to be a partner in the lives of its parishioners instead of a punishing father figure. This is not what some of the controlling members and clergy in the church want, but best for its future.
A laughable argument is clearly made by Jon. The official teaching of the Catholic Church is clear and has never changed since the genesis of the Catholic Church, about 2000 years ago.
ReplyDeletePeople who call themselves Catholics and whom the secular and religious press call Catholic do not enact dogma for the Catholic Church. 90% of this nebulous figure may disagree with the Church teaching on artificial birth restriction.
People who are Catholics are sinners. Everyone sins. Only Christ and Mary were sinless. It would be Church of 2 people if only perfect people were admitted as members.
It is good to consider the fact that the Church declares some people as saints (in Heaven) but has never declared some people as permanent residents of Hell.
You can postulate or dream of a day when the Church's teaching on contraception as identical to yours.
There will be no change in the contraception teaching. There will never be women priests. There already exists married male priests. One only has to exercise sound judgment on these issues to see where the future lies.
Anonymous "The official teaching of the Catholic Church is clear and has never changed..about 2,000 years. "
ReplyDeleteThe "official teaching" and what was actually taught or not taught seems not so clear. Violating my own rule against copy/paste I'll paste this:
he church, however, had little to say about contraception for many centuries. For example, after the decline of the Roman Empire, the church did little to explicitly prohibit contraception, teach against it, or stop it, though people undoubtedly practiced it.
Most penitence manuals from the Middle Ages, which directed priests what types of sins to ask parishioners about, did not even mention contraception.
It was only in 1588 that Pope Sixtus V took the strongest conservative stance against contraception in Catholic history. With his papal bull “Effraenatam,” he ordered all church and civil penalties for homicide to be brought against those who practiced contraception.
However, both church and civil authorities refused to enforce his orders, and laypeople virtually ignored them. In fact, three years after Sixtus’s death, the next pope repealed most of the sanctions and told Christians to treat “Effraenatam” “as if it had never been issued.”
One would think your cut and paste would at least by cited. I'm guessing the Most Esteemed Carpet Cleaner Bart Ehrman, or is it Errorman?
DeleteRegardless, Church teaching on such subjects is unchanging. BTW, I haven't heard a sermon against murder or rape in decades. Does that mean they aren't sins?
as far asI know, Protestants were strongly opposed to contraception until at least 1930 when the Anglicans broke ranks. your cut and paste, as Matt points out, sounds like a creative bit of history. I can't gainsay it one way or the other but it certainly sounds fishy. something that St Bart might put out.
DeleteMatt-- "One would think your cut and paste would at least by cited."
DeleteI looked again and did not see a citation by your "statement of fact" that the Catholic position has never changed over 2,000 years.