(November 17, 2016 at 2:11 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: And honestly don't even want a baby anymore. I just want one because I want to have one for my husband... and so we can be a family. But the prospect of being pregnant again and going to the OB for sonograms in fear of what they might find is absolutely terrifying to me and is already giving me a lot of anxiety. If it was entirely up to me, and if my husband didn't care about being a dad, I would just say "forget it".
Sorry for getting too personal but what do you mean by that? How can a Catholic decide to be or not to be pregnant? Are you telling me that you use contraception? I mean isn't that like the worst thing to do in Catholicism?
I'm asking this because we are on a forum where we discuss people's beliefs and lack of them and also because Catholic Church is very loud and aggressive of how much it forbids the contraception and when I see it be in the news or leaflets they refer to this papal encyclical promulgated on 25 March 1995 by Pope John Paul II.
Here are some parts of that document:
"...negative values inherent in the "contraceptive mentality"-which is very different from responsible parenthood, lived in respect for the full truth of the conjugal act-are such that they in fact strengthen this temptation when an unwanted life is conceived. Indeed, the pro- abortion culture is especially strong precisely where the Church's teaching on contraception is rejected. Certainly, from the moral point of view contraception and abortion are specifically different evils: the former contradicts the full truth of the sexual act as the proper expression of conjugal love, while the latter destroys the life of a human being; the former is opposed to the virtue of chastity in marriage, the latter is opposed to the virtue of justice and directly violates the divine commandment "You shall not kill".
But despite their differences of nature and moral gravity, contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree. It is true that in many cases contraception and even abortion are practised under the pressure of real- life difficulties, which nonetheless can never exonerate from striving to observe God's law fully. Still, in very many other instances such practices are rooted in a hedonistic mentality unwilling to accept responsibility in matters of sexuality, and they imply a self-centered concept of freedom, which regards procreation as an obstacle to personal fulfilment. The life which could result from a sexual encounter thus becomes an enemy to be avoided at all costs, and abortion becomes the only possible decisive response to failed contraception.
http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-i...vitae.html
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
