----- Original Message -----
From: "John D. Giorgis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Brin-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2001 10:21 PM
Subject: Natural Family Planning Re: Pass the applesauce . . .
> At 09:55 AM 8/4/01 -0500 Marvin Long, Jr. wrote:
> >As in the case of "natural" law, this is one of those irritating uses of
> >the word natural to mean "the proper prejudice," or, in this case, "the
> >approved technology."
>
> Well, the idea of "natural" comes from the fact that God has endowed women
> with a natural cycle of fertility and infertility. Natural family
> planning simply exploits this natural cycle.
>
> Catholic teaching has long held that unbridled sexual expression, even
> within marriage is a bad thing.
This comes from one of the less attractive sides of Augustine. He believed
that one loses one's capacity to reason during sex. Since that capacity to
reason is absolutely necessary, one should abstain from sex.
Obviously, the human race would die if everyone did that. So, it was
considered a necessary evil at the time. The Catholic church's official
position has changed from that, but that thinking can still be seen as the
theological foundation of the official position. I remember being told in
the confessional that married people have it hard because they have to be a
little dirty instead of totally clean.
Yea, John, I can quote chapter and verse of the official dogma too. But it
doesn't really hold together as argued, as other posters are noting. IMHO,
the real foundation of the desire to restrict sex is Augustine's theology.
Since the church leaders are bright enough to see the inconsistency with
scripture here, they create an elaborate justification for this. But, I
think that this is part of the "of the earth" and not part of the "of the
spirit" nature of the Catholic church. To put it bluntly, the radical
detachment of the leaders of the Catholic church from the reality of married
life shows.
Also, I don't have the post in front of me, but let me comment on the 90%
success rate for "natural" family planning. When my wife and I received
training to be part of the local parish marriage preparation team, we met
some trainers for natural family planning. Since I was a scientist, I
started asking questions about their statistics. It turns out that they
kept statistics in a different manner than the statistics for other methods
of birth control. If the people involved didn't practice the technique
right, it wasn't counted as a failure.
Dan M.
