What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[Longhorn]

You know what? I will own up to that.

Well, partially anyway. It goes much deeper than just "because God says", but I will agree that God plays a big role in my views regarding sexual morality. I cannot divorce God from my views of sexual morality.

Fair enough

Well first of all, since the Church already teaches that premarital sex is immoral, it doesn't really matter whether a couple who is not married uses contraception or not. The Church doesn't say people who aren't married shouldn't use contraception. The Church says people who aren't married shouldn't have sex lol. It's a moot point.

But you mentioned STDs and unplanned pregnancies as the negative results of premarital sex. Contraception takes care of that. So the catholic church teaches that it's immoral for no reason other than because bible says so.

Second, contraception is widely available and accessible. Yet unplanned, out of wedlock pregnancies still happen all the time. The fact that contraception exists and is available and and easily accessible unfortunately has not taken care of the problem. Either because people don't use it properly, don't use it at all, or it simply fails to work.

Just because it doesn't have a 100% success rate does not mean it doesn't work at all.

I'd still say the far superior method of avoiding out of wedlock pregnancy is to just not have sex until marriage.

Abstinence doesn't work. It's a fact.

To date, 11 states have evaluated the impact of their abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. None has been shown to reduce teen sexual activity.

I have addressed this multiple times in my post about it, because I knew people would still come back and say "but bad stuff can still happen in marriages!" I did not specify "matrimonial frauds," but I did address that marriages aren't always a guarantee of anything, but tend to be the best bet nonetheless. I also addressed the committed relationship thing specifically, in a post shortly afterwards. I've got my hands full now and can't dig it up for you, but would recommend you go look if you are still interested.

Alright, must've missed it, I'll dig for it later

I apologize, I did not mean to ignore you.

I do agree that there are 2 ways of going about teaching children sexual morality. Just like everything else, there is a right way and a wrong way of going about doing this.

The decision itself of saving sex for marriage is not bad or harmful in and of itself, and neither is it bad or harmful to teach others the great benefits of doing so. It's the way it is done that can be harmful, just like with everything else as I mentioned above.

I agree that it is an important subject that must be handled with care. Not to instil guilt or fear into people who have or eventually do fall into it, is key. I was taught to wait until marriage, and so was my husband. We have many Catholic friends who also waited and are happily married, lovely people. It has worked really well for us and I am so happy that I was taught what I was taught. I feel like perhaps I could've faced some negative consequences that would have complicated my life if I had slept with other men before my husband. It's definitely something I will pass on to my children.

You know, that's great

Thank you for the compliment!

I understand and appreciate your concern, but I think you may have been led to believe a bit of an exaggeration, though you don't realize it. This doom and gloom you speak of above has not been my experience at all. And I am saying this as a Catholic who grew up in the Catholic Church. I have a Catholic family, I went to Catholic school, I was involved in my family parish, etc. I cannot relate at all to what you say above. I'm not saying no one has bad experiences, but I do think you're making it out to be far more than it is.

I was raised catholic. I wish I was exaggerating.

Abstinence does not work. And when combined with forbidding contraception, it causes entire STD outbreaks.