Obama, Abortion and the Roman Catholic Church

this is just uninformed.

there are many choices for valve replacement

http://www.heart-valve-surgery.com/biological-heart-valve-replacement.p…

and halal and kosher rules only prohibit eating pork, not other uses.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/altmuslim/2011/09/whats_pork_got_to_do_wit…

http://judaism.about.com/library/3_askrabbi_c/bl_pigs.htm

are you actually interested in answers? or just in proving obama wrong?

the first amendment does not guarantee that i’ll never have to have any of my money indirectly going towards something disagreeable.

the catholic argument is that even though they provide insurance for employees of their non-church organizations in 28 states that includes contraceptives, suddenly the world is ending and they’re facing persecution if it extends nationally.

late addendum: and the catholic argument isn’t about whether or if some contraceptives function abortively or not. they’ve been opposed to contraception since the church fathers.

WOW - this thread is all over the place.

Chris, not arguing the main thrust of your last post, but making a significant distinction.

The RCC doesn’t extend back to the church fathers. It didn’t form until after Constantine. Best estimate places this around the late 300s or early 400s.

Furthermore, not sure on what grounds you claim the church fathers were against all forms of contraception.

[Chip Van Emmerik] not sure on what grounds you claim the church fathers were against all forms of contraception.

i thought their consensus was pretty clear. see for example http://books.google.com/books?id=u4i8jv0b7IkC&pg=PA307] McGuckin p. 306 from McGuckin, John Anthony. (2004). “Sexual Ethics”. in The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology. Louisville: Westminster Press. pp. 305–9. ISBN 978-0-664-22396-0.

Most patristic statements about the ethics of lovemaking in marriage are concerned with the concept (again Stoic-inspired) of “natural law.” The value of an act is determined by its compatibility with the natural purpose. Eating is ethically good when concerned with sustenance of the body, ethically wrong when concerned with gourmet self-pleasuring. Thus, sexual intercourse is right and proper only when it is aimed at physical procreation of children.

The loud surrounding context of Hellenistic sexuality, inspired either by pagan cult or existentialist relativism, that faced the church of the early centuries perhaps explained the need for stern rhetoric on such matters from the early Christian teachers. Abortion, contraception, and child exposure were classed together by many Christian theologians as the wicked results of a surrender to sexual license and were regularly condemned.

Chris,

I appreciate the quote. i am still not aware of the church fathers really dealing with the concept of contraception - it just wasn’t a real issue then. Furthermore, I do not believe this quote is representative of either the church Fathers or the scripture on the topic of sex. The quote identifies all sex except for the explicit purpose of procreation to be wrong. Obviously this flies in the face of all marital teaching that might be considered after the wife passes through menopause. Not familiar with the author you quote, but he is not identifying anything I recognize from my own studies.

[Chip Van Emmerik] i am still not aware of the church fathers really dealing with the concept of contraception - it just wasn’t a real issue then. Furthermore, I do not believe this quote is representative of either the church Fathers or the scripture on the topic of sex. The quote identifies all sex except for the explicit purpose of procreation to be wrong. Obviously this flies in the face of all marital teaching that might be considered after the wife passes through menopause. Not familiar with the author you quote, but he is not identifying anything I recognize from my own studies.

in the book, the mcguckin cites the places church fathers write about this topic (i left those out in my retyping). i’d suggest you start your reading there. if you can’t see the pages of this book on google books, your local library should be able to help you. a lot of what the church fathers wrote is available freely in english (the older translation is now public domain) at places like http://www.ccel.org/ christian classics ethereal library .

i’m not trying to say that the church fathers were right on marital relations. i disagree with them, and i’m not aware of any modern groups that entirely follow the consensus of what they wrote on this topic. just trying to say what they said.

contraception, abortion and infanticide are very old issues. some historians have even written about ancient egyptian practices.

[Chip Van Emmerik]

The RCC doesn’t extend back to the church fathers. It didn’t form until after Constantine. Best estimate places this around the late 300s or early 400s.

I confess I simply have no idea what this assertion means.

Charlie,

I simply meant that Polycarp (for example) wasn’t a leader in the RCC; there wasn’t an RCC yet. The RCC didn’t really morph into existence until after Constantine. I don’t like to give legitimacy to the RCC by permitting them to claim they have always been the true church established by Christ and the apostles.

the 2nd and 5th centuries were more connected than you let on by making such a firm demarcation in the 4th century. justin martyr and athenagoras from the 2nd century and jerome and augustine from the late 4th/early 5th were among the writers on this subject that mcguckin cites.

Jerome and Augustine would clearly fit within the paradigm I described. However, I do not mean to make a sharp demarcation. i acknowledge there was a gradual shift. My only point was that in the 1st century we had the true church. By the fifth century we had the true church and the formal organization of the RCC. The RCC began somewhere, but certainly not in the 1st century.

if rcc excommunicated pro-choice members of congress, i think the response might be even more strongly pro-choice.

from http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2011/04/13/index.html Contraceptive Use Is the Norm Among Religious Women

Contraceptive use by Catholics and Evangelicals—including those who attend religious services most frequently—is the norm, according to a http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/Religion-and-Contraceptive-Use.pdf] new Guttmacher report . This finding confirms that policies making contraceptives more affordable and easier to use reflect the needs and desires of the vast majority of U.S. women and their partners, regardless of their religious beliefs.

“In real-life America, contraceptive use and strong religious beliefs are highly compatible,” says Rachel K. Jones, the report’s lead author. “Most sexually active women who do not want to become pregnant practice contraception, and most use highly effective methods like sterilization, the pill, or the IUD. This is true for Evangelicals and Mainline Protestants, and it is true for Catholics, despite the Catholic hierarchy’s strenuous opposition to contraception.”

if you stayed on topic instead of starting new speculations about why national healthcare might fail in america, we might actually have a discussion.

here’s another story showing how claims about religious freedom are just a smokescreen, and this fight is really about politics.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/15/nation/la-na-gop-contraceptives…] Before current birth-control fight, Republicans backed mandates

Since President Obama moved to require Catholic hospitals and universities to offer their employees contraceptive health benefits, Republicans have rushed to accuse the administration of an unprecedented attack on religious freedoms.

None has been more forceful than former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who accused Obama of “a direct violation of the 1st Amendment.” But years before the current partisan firestorm, GOP lawmakers and governors around the country, including Huckabee, backed similar mandates.

First, the article clearly states you are comparing apples and oranges.

The original Obama regulation, released in January, went further than any state by requiring that women receive contraceptive benefits without co-pays or deductibles, as required for all preventive care under the healthcare law

Emphasis Added

Second, even if it is a “smokescreen” for some, it is still a matter of conscientious and constitutional importance for many more.