Contracepting Christians...

So today the CMF (Christian Medical Fellowship) in my university held a discussion group on "contraception".

I have been excited (& scared) about this talk all term; an opportunity to discuss the amazing beauty of sexual relations with fellow Christians, and perhaps shed some light on why the Church teaches that contraception is so damaging to sexual relations! (or at least that's what I thought...)

I know that for Evangelicals/low Anglicans (who CMF is almost entirely composed of) quoting Catholic Church documents or 2000 years of Saints saying that contraception is wrong doesn't really persuade them (even though some of these Saints were around before the Bible was!!)

So last night I stayed up till midnight preparing myself 5 PAGES of Bible quotes all about sex, the beauty and purpose of sex, the meaning of sex, what God thinks of sex, Onan, the comparison of sexual relations to Christ & the Church etc....and ergo, how contraception is incompatable with God's view on sex.

I even threw in quotes from Calvin, Luther and Wesley (Protestant reformers) ALL of whom thought that contraception was a horrific evil.

(not a lot of Protestant know that these guys who started their denominations all thought contraception was wrong wrong wrong.)

I wanted to make sure I knew all my stuff so that the Holy Spirit could work in me to cover any argument with a relevant Bible verse!

This morning I went to super-early-Mass before lectures and at the end was talking to some of my lovely friends about this discussion group later in the afternoon.

I said to them "Well, at least it's a GOOD sign that the Evangelicals want to talk about contraception in a series of ethics lectures. It shows that they recognise that there's something not entirely wholesome about it...."


How wrong I was.

The hour of contraception discussion was not actually about whether contraception itself was wrong.....it was all about whether it is right to prescribe it to people who aren't married, or whether there is any difference morally between the pill and the coil...

But they just assumed that contraception itself was fine and good and there was no problem with it!!

what?!!


I didn't prepare 5 pages of Bible quotes for nothing!

so I made sure at the beginning to say something like 'But surely we must consider whether contraception in itself is a good thing, before we can consider the circumstances in which it might be right to give it out!"

I did get my chance to say my bit about the difference between NFP and contraception, and the fact that every sexual act has two purposes (unitive + procreative), and it's not authentic to artificially seperate the two.
I also mentioned the fact that the sexual act is inherently ordered to procreation, and that the Bible tells us procreation is a very good thing means you can't justifiably distort it and change the actual essence of the act.

I then waffled on some more; they didn't really have anything much to say in response other than rather odd things like "But God gave us our intelligence, and if we use our intelligence to make chemicals to stop fertility then God must be happy with that..."

I was like "....errr......atomic bomb anyone?!.....just because we can do something, doesn't automatically mean it's right or good!"

She then said "But in about 40 years time we will need 3 PLANETS the size of Earth to fit the population of the world if it continues to grow at the rate it is!"(Yes! She did say that! and she is a GP?!)


That's a ridiculous thing to say because

a- it's not true; the planet has huge amounts of space left for living on. We are certainly not running out of space.

b- even IF the planet were running out of space, that doesn't mean that it would be okay to use contraception! That's a very consequentialist/utilitarian thing to say.....you can't just justify an action based on what you hope to achieve by it.

I couldn't just kill my elderly rich Aunt in order to use her money to feed starving children.

You have to look at the essence of the action itself.

So just because contraception would drop birth-rates doesn't automatically mean contraception is good!

You have to look at the morality of contraception itself, and what contraception does to sex before you can say if it is right or wrong.

So I brought up NFP, and she had no clue about it and said it didn't work. I tried to quote my studies but she just shoo-ed them off.
I wish I'd remmebered to say that Mother Theresa got a Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the poor in Calcutta, and her NFP programme in India prevented 1.1 million births.


anyway, we only spent about 15mins discussing whether contraception in itself was good or not, then one of the girl's said something like "well, we are actually here to discuss under what circumstances we'd give it to our patients, and not whether it is right or not."

So that put an end to that and we spent the rest of the time reading little vignettes about 15 year old girls who want to go on the pill, and what type of pill or injections we should put them on!

blah!

I did manage to get a few points in about how it seemed to me that a Christian doctor who believed that sex outside of marriage was wrong but still gave out contraception to unmarried women, was like someone in Jerusalem 2000 years ago handing over a hammer to crucify Jesus.

( that kinda shocked them a bit, but I stuck by it and I think they were all quite moved by that analogy by the end! )


But all in all it was as inconsistent and semi-frustrating as the last talk on IVF that I went to with them.

They each believe whatever they wish, their truth is made up according to their own opinion, they twist and change Bible verses to mean whatever it is most convenient for them to mean....and they think that it makes sense to be like that!


A lovely Franciscan priest friend once said to me that most of the time God uses us to complete His will despite our utter failings and inability to do His will perfectly.
So although I don't think I spoke very well today, I hope that the Holy Spirit planted a few tiny seeds, and at least some of them will see the beauty & authenticity of the teachings of the Catholic Church in relation to sexuality.
(and consequently live it, and then see that the rest of the Church's teachings make total sense too!)


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