Ewww - Condoms As Fashion

[Varg]

I like debating

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='HisChildForever' date='11 October 2009 - 04:02 PM' timestamp='1255294924' post='1983230']
Yeah, exactly. Why do you come here, Varg?
[/quote]
I think it's because he's in love with you.

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='Varg' date='11 October 2009 - 05:06 PM' timestamp='1255295171' post='1983232']
I like debating
[/quote]

When have you debated?

[tinytherese]

[quote name='Hassan' date='10 October 2009 - 05:16 PM' timestamp='1255212986' post='1982592']
That's a distinction without a difference.

Condoms demean women because it says the man considers her good enoguh to have sex with, but not to have his child. The exact same thing can be said about NFP.
[/quote]

What's the big difference between NFP and contraception?
There are at least four enormous differences between NFP and contraception. The first is the morality of the act; the second deals with the fact that some contraceptives work by causing abortions; the third issue pertains to adverse side effects caused by contraceptives; and the last issue deals with the fruits of NFP.

Morality
Suppose that a married couple is using contraceptives for the same reason another couple is practicing NFP. Both couples already have children and hope to have more. But for good reasons they need to space the next birth by a couple of years. Both have the intent to regulate births, and responsible parenthood allows couples not to have more children than they can care for.

However, the good intent of a couple is not sufficient to determine the morality of their act. For example, if two women wanted to avoid becoming overweight, one might go on a diet, and the other might binge and purge (bulimia). Both may stay slim, but one exercises the virtue of temperance, while the other succumbs to gluttony and unnatural, unhealthy behavior.

Similarly, the Church’s condemnation of contraception does not imply that the couple has bad intentions but that they are using a means that is immoral. Married couples are free to have intercourse (or to agree to abstain from it) on any given day, regardless of the wife’s fertility. But when they do join as one flesh, they must not frustrate the purpose God designed that act to have. It is God alone who has the power to create an immortal soul as a result of the marital act, and to contracept is to say that God’s presence is not desired. Clearly then, a couple abstaining from sex for a just reason cannot be compared to a couple who sterilize their acts of lovemaking in order to enjoy the pleasure of the marital act apart from God’s design.

The reason the Church denounces contraception is not because it is artificial. After all, the Church allows the use of countless artificial drugs and other technological advances that medicine can offer man. However, these are to be used to heal dysfunction and promote the proper functioning of the body as God designed it. Contraception does the opposite: it prevents the natural functioning of the body.

Therefore, the moral difference between NFP and contraception is that contraception deliberately interrupts, sterilizes, and works against (contra) conception, while NFP respects the way God ordained conception to occur. In no way does NFP interrupt or sterilize an act of intercourse. NFP couples are not acting against the way God has designed fertility but are working with it.

Abortifacient effect
Another major difference between NFP and contraceptives is that some birth control methods work by causing abortions. For example, the birth control pill, the morning-after pill, the patch, the intrauterine device (IUD), and Depo-Provera (the shot) sometimes work by preventing a newly conceived child from attaching to the uterus. This causes a first trimester abortion to occur—without the mother even knowing it. Click here. for proof.

Side effects
All contraceptives have potential adverse side effects, most of which affect the woman. In our articles on the various forms of birth control, here, we go into detail regarding the side effects of contraceptives. Here we will simply point out that depending on the method used, these may include a heightened risk of breast cancer, a greater risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease, migraine headaches, high blood pressure, fatal blood clots, increased fetal abnormalities, and toxic shock syndrome.

Fruits of NFP
Finally, consider the implications of the fact that couples who use NFP have a divorce rate of 1 to 3 percent.[1] In one study there were zero divorces out of fourteen hundred NFP couples.[2] Keep in mind that more than half of all marriages end in divorce. The striking correlation between NFP and strong marriages is an important indication of the close relationship between NFP and the way God designed marriage and sex to work.

Also, NFP offers benefits that contraceptives cannot. Couples using NFP have an understanding of how to time intercourse to achieve pregnancy. Because they track the woman's fertility cycles so closely, they'll also become aware of fertility related health problems that would otherwise be masked under the effects of contraception.

Further, NFP couples are in a much better position to teach their teens about sexual self-control. A couple should not expect their children to follow the Church’s teachings on sexuality outside of marriage if they as parents are not willing to follow the Church’s teachings on sexuality within marriage. It would be like a parent saying to their teen, “You need to obey God and abstain from sex for about a decade, but I won’t obey God and abstain for a week.”

Despite all these differences between contraception and NFP, it can be abused. Because NFP is so effective in regulating births, a couple could take on a contraceptive mentality and close themselves off from the gift of life. Therefore, it must be practiced responsibly and only when there is just reason to do so.

When we consider the positive impact of NFP on a marriage and the potential dangers of contraception, the most loving option becomes obvious.

_________________________
[1]. What’s Wrong with Contraception? (Cincinnati, Ohio: The Couple to Couple League International); Mercedes Arzú Wilson, “The Practice of Natural Family Planning Versus the Use of Artificial Birth Control: Family, Sexual, and Moral Issues,” Catholic Social Science Review 7 (November 2002).
[2]. Christopher West, Good News About Sex and Marriage, (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Servant Publications, 2000), 179.


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Why do NFP couples have such low divorce rates?
The low divorce rate among couples practicing NFP reflects a combination of factors.

First, couples with strong relationships may be more likely than other couples to choose to practice NFP. After all, NFP depends on some of the same virtues as marriage itself: commitment, communication, consideration, and self-control. Couples who reject NFP as “too much trouble” or “too restrictive” all too often turn out to be the same couples who ultimately find the demands of marriage itself to be too much to handle.

Second, NFP helps strengthen marital relationships. On the most basic level, since the spouses are not constantly sexually available to the other, it keeps them from taking the other for granted. Often women rightly complain that the use of contraception has lowered their sense of worth.

I recently received a letter from a woman who said that while she and her first husband were using contraception, she felt like a “toy or a recreational vehicle.” The contraception made her husband assume that she was always sexually available, and she felt used and taken for granted. She has since been married in the Church and has used NFP for years. In her words, “a chaste marriage is the ultimate!” After abandoning contraception and switching to NFP, another woman said, “I now know the true meaning of the word ‘intimate.”’[1] When was the last time you heard a woman say that using a spermicide is “the ultimate!” and that after using a condom she finally knew the meaning of intimacy? The enthusiasm has never been there because no woman wants to be at war with her body.

Sure, she may want to delay pregnancy, but she has never been ecstatic about the methods commonly offered to do that. She may seem content, but she silently wishes there was a better arrangement.

NFP is this better way, and couples who make the switch are more than pleased with the results. One way to measure a couple’s satisfaction with a method of spacing births is to look at how many continue to use it over time. For example, spermicides have a 42 percent annual continuation rate; the condom, 53 percent; the shot, 56 percent; the diaphragm, a 57 percent rate; and the Pill, 68 percent.[2] What about NFP? Research of 1,876 couples using the Creighton Model of NFP showed that it has an annual continuation rate of 89 percent—which is higher than any form of reversible contraception.[3]

The Church explains that the practice of NFP “favors attention for one’s partner, helps both parties to drive out selfishness, the enemy of true love, and deepens their sense of responsibility.”[4] Many men do not realize that there is a time for a wife to be sexually intimate and a time for her to have some space. Men who sacrifice to give a woman that freedom improve the unity and intimacy of the marriage. The relationship has space to breathe. In the words of one husband, “It’s wonderful because it almost creates the honeymoon over and over again.”[5]

All-Pro NFL quarterback Philip Rivers pointed out that self control “doesn’t end when you get married. Chastity is still part of your marriage.” He and his wife practice NFP, and he admitted that “it can be hard as ever sometimes. But it makes us stronger and love each other more. It allows you to love in many different ways. . . . That part of our relationship has strengthened us.”[6]

During the times of abstinence, the spouses learn to express love in nonsexual ways. As a result, the intimacy between them deepens. In the meantime their anticipation of the marital act will intensify its joy. Furthermore, even the act of abstaining from intercourse can be a loving gesture, since not having more children at that time may be best for the family.

At times couples resort to sex as a way to solve problems, when in reality they are only burying the issues under a false sense of closeness. Since complete physical intimacy is not always possible for the couple practicing NFP, they cannot as easily use the feeling of physical intimacy to cover up conflicts. This opens a door for them to deepen their ability to communicate and solve problems. As a result, their exchange of the marital act is not as likely to be a means to bury problems but an opportunity to celebrate their love.

The use of contraception also fosters a level of rejection between spouses. By sterilizing the act of intercourse, the woman is saying that she wants to make love, but will kill any sperm that come her way.[7] The man is saying that he accepts everything about the woman except for fertility. He gives everything to her except his potential fatherhood. The language of sex should be that of complete self-donation, but that is impossible with contraception. Since the body reveals the person, a rejection of the body is a rejection of the spouse.

Also, couples who reject contraception are less likely to see children as a burden. Because of their generous spirit, they tend to have larger families, and divorce rates are highest where children are fewest. NFP couples also tend to take their faith, and therefore the sacrament of marriage, more seriously than the average contracepting couple.

Lastly, since the couple never sterilize acts of intercourse, they are truly renewing their wedding promises each time they exchange the marital act. Knowing that they are not blocking God’s plan for life and love, their times of unity as one flesh take on the joy, peace, and freedom that come from obeying the Lord and his bride, the Church.

___________________
[1] Nona Aguilar, No-Pill, No-Risk Birth Control (New York: Rawson & Wade, 1980), 102.
[2]. R.A. Hatcher, et al., Contraceptive Technology, Nineteenth Revised Edition (New York: Ardent Media, 2007).
[3]. Thomas Hilgers, et al., “Creighton Model NaPro Education Technology for Avoiding Pregnancy. Use Effectiveness,” The Journal of Reproductive Medicine 43:6 (June 1998), 495–502.
[4]. Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, 21.
[5]. Charlotte Hays, “Solving the Puzzle of Natural Family Planning,” Crisis, December 2001, 15.
[6]. Cyril Jones-Kellett, “Charger Quarterback Lends Voice to Chastity Conference,” The Southern Cross (June 21, 2007), 11.
[7]. Janet E. Smith. Contraception, Why Not. Audiotape of lecture presented at meeting of the Catholic Physicians Guild at the Pontifical College Josephinum, Columbus, Ohio, May 1994. (Dayton, Ohio: One More Soul, 1999).


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[Catholictothecore]

[quote name='Varg' date='10 October 2009 - 03:11 PM' timestamp='1255201900' post='1982489']
Ah yes. Then I would be free to be told what to believe by other people.
[/quote]

I know you are just being sarcastic, but the idea that Catholics only believe what they are told is absolutely, positively, the biggest steaming pile of horsesh-t I've ever heared. No one in this life believes ANYTHING because they are simply told it. The world has become WAY to opinated for that to be true anymore.

[Chestertonian]

[quote name='Varg' date='11 October 2009 - 03:06 PM' timestamp='1255295171' post='1983232']
I like debating
[/quote]





You call little snide remarks "debating?"

[Catholictothecore]

I don't thinke either one of you is debating. You're just taking it in turns to slam one another.

[Chestertonian]

[quote name='Catholictothecore' date='11 October 2009 - 05:04 PM' timestamp='1255302250' post='1983305']
I don't thinke either one of you is debating. You're just taking it in turns to slam one another.
[/quote]

HCF never claimed to be.

[jeffpugh]

The Varg is here for the lullz. Leave him be.

[Catholictothecore]

I'm just an writer stuck in the Northland. What is "the lullz?"

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='Catholictothecore' date='11 October 2009 - 07:04 PM' timestamp='1255302250' post='1983305']
I don't thinke either one of you is debating. You're just taking it in turns to slam one another.
[/quote]

I'm not talking about our petty back-and-forths. He says he's on Phatmass to debate, but I've never seen him in an actual debate.

[picchick]

Varg is here because in secret...he's.............a Catholic.



Come on, Varg, you are amongst friends. No need to hide who you really are.

[Catholictothecore]

[quote name='picchick' date='11 October 2009 - 07:28 PM' timestamp='1255303712' post='1983323']
Varg is here because in secret...he's.............a Catholic.



Come on, Varg, you are amongst friends. No need to hide who you really are.
[/quote]

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!