(June 19, 2015 at 9:25 am)robvalue Wrote: I can't hope to cut through everything that's going on here, so I'm not even going to try! All I can say is it's very interesting to read. Much of Catholic doctrine is absolutely shocking to me.
I will say that "waiting to have to have sex until you're married" achieves nothing regarding reducing pregnancy at all. Even worse, it may cause people to get married earlier than they otherwise would (or at all) so they can have sex. Again, the marriage is irrelevant. It's an abstract social contract, which itself bears no more actual weight on the sexual behaviour of the people involved than an unmarried couple. It's legal aspects are mainly financial and to do with children and so on. It does nothing and says nothing about having children. It would be no different than telling someone to wait until they find their life partner.
So the less people have sex, the less children are had, yes. But telling people to wait until marriage (a) generally doesn't work (b) can lead to deceit, secret affairs and having to lie to those close to you and © can cause marriage just to have sex (d) telling people they can't do something under any circumstances, without giving them a demonstrable reason why, can just cause rebellion and for them to do exactly that. These are all serious problems. To be blunt, it's an incredible naive and demonstrably bad way to achieve the professed goal. However, contraception does reduce the number of pregnancies, and therefor the number of unwanted pregnancies, by a staggering amount. And this applies to marriage and outside marriage. It applies to people who have been told to wait until marriage but aren't going to. Classing this as immoral is a hugely damaging thought process all round, and highlights the danger of theologically dictated doctrines with no bearing on reality. It is strange you would support this (and other it seems) messages from the Old Testament which you so readily dismiss. I would be very interested to hear what exactly all the horrific stories in the OT are allegory for.
Sex is great. It is part of being the kind of animal we are, a very pleasant part. I recommend it albeit with appropriate caveats regarding STD's and pregnancy. Not desiring to have kids (and not being Catholic) I quite rationally used birth control back when that was an issue. Now that the missus is impregnable we just let it fly and that's even more fun.
Whatever else or more we humans may be we are also and will always be mammals. This isn't a bad thing. I like animals in general. Each kind is as special in its own way as we are. I have no desire to be 'elevated' above our 'bestial' nature. Why not embrace everything that we are?
