Is contraception immoral...


CatholicLady
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At this point, what I understand is that you (and, I assume, many other Catholics) perceive a moral difference between these two situations, and that said moral difference hinges on two things: (1) What is supposed to be the intent of the action, and (2) whether you actually perform the proximal action to the death, or whether there is at least one conceptual level of separation between your action and the cause of death, the allowing you to retain a plausible (in the minds of some) deniability of directly causing the death.

 

Please let me know if I'm mistaken in any of the above.

 

For myself, I see little or no moral difference between the described actions. The intent in all cases is salvation, not death, and whether or not you perform the proximal action to kill the innocent person is irrelevant, since you are knowingly and willingly doing the actions that you know will result in his death. To suppose otherwise smacks to me of Pharisaical parsing, as if God is the Great Celestial Lawyer and our salvation depends on how cleverly we can read (or manipulate) his law.

 

I hope this is not interpreted as a personal criticism of you, because it is not intended as such. In fact, I am not thinking of it even as a condemnation of Catholicism. I think it is a faulty philosophy, probably no worse than any other false philosophy and frankly less damaging than many, but which under the wrong circumstances could lead to tragic choices.

 

To an extent I would concur with your summary, though I do feel a little more ought to be said.

 

On the subject of intent, I still don't think there's much of a distance between our varying positions. For an action that has good and bad results to be okay, you have to be performing the action for the purpose of bringing about the good effect. In other words, if one of the effects was absent, the one you intend is the one that, if lacking, would cause you not to perform the action.

 

So, again, the issue seems to be intrinsically evil actions. Basically the Catholic mindset goes something like this: God gave us a command not to murder, so we cannot murder. As far as that goes, I don't think there's a lot of debate. That being said, I think most people would also agree that some acts resulting in the death of an innocent person are murder, and others that are not. The hard part is deciding where exactly to draw that line.

 

Certainly proximity to the result is a factor, at least in the case of murder. If I shoot an child, then virtually everybody would agree that I murdered them. If in a just war I bomb a large military installation, it probably isn't murder even though there's almost certainly somebody there who's an innocent non-combatant. In most cases it's probably not outlandishly difficult to make the distinction, but in the really hard cases you have to get into really fine details.

 

I recognize that Catholics can get "lawyerly" and "split hairs" in those cases, but again God told us not to murder and, in the absence of divine revelation to the contrary, we don't really have a mechanism to avoid that rule.

 

Where I would contend with the "pharisaic" accusation is that the Pharisees got in trouble by increasing the strictness of commandments (in order to avoid the near occasion of violating them) and they were hipocrites who followed the ordinances but who were motivated by pride more than a love of God. Obviously we are willing to go to great length to cut it very close on some commandments, which I think gets us out of the first half of that. As for the second part, that's probably an issue amongst some people in every church.

Edited by Claire
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Oh, no, I am not. I am pulling the trigger specifically so the gunman will go away. I don't know for 100% sure my child will die. Maybe the gun will misfire. Maybe the bullet will miss vital parts of his brain. Maybe the bullet will enter a portal singularity before penetrating my child's skull.

 

The deal was that if I don't pull the trigger, my wife and child die, but if I do, he won't kill anyone. That's the deal. I am manifestly NOT pulling the trigger in order to kill my child; I'm doing it to get the gunman to go away.

 

So now that you understand the situation clearly, what is your answer and rationale?

 

Lol, but the gunman is asking you to pull the trigger for the sole purpose of shooting and killing your kid, and you know that.

 

I think at this point we are just going around in circles.

 

Like Clair said, God gave us a commandment, and that is not to commit murder. That is usually pretty clear. But in complicated and extreme situations, we are left to decipher whether or not causing the death of a person would be considered "murder".

 

What I am explaining to you in this thread is what the Catholic Church, after 2000 years of existence and thousands of its theologians/philosophers studying moral theology and double effect, has come up with. Obviously we don't agree on all the details, and that is perfectly fine. But that's all I got for ya. :)  

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Estradling, that's weird. #318 is the long post below. But I'm going off of Folk's analogy right here:

 

 

Post 318:

 

 

I suspect that it is because we have some hidden duplicate posts...  I (and other mods) can see where they are and they are counted for me.  I am pretty sure you can't see them, and so the count is different.   If so I will have to remember this issue and not take post number as a good reference point.

 

Anywho... On to the questions... Cutting the rope.  Setting here safely at home reading the setup noticing the 'Mortal Wounds' of my child there is really only action to take.  Save as many lives as I can and cut the rope.  Its Logical, its reasonable, its also coldly analytical. However if I was really in that situation, I would be confused, stressed, worried, trying to understand and accept the wound that my child took, and the dangerous situation we were in.  So much that I could easily mess it up.

 

As for the gunman situation.  Its a classic attempt to dodge responsibly.  Those applying the force or duress are the ones responsible for the results (aka the gunmen).  Plus I would have no reason to trust the Gunmen's to keep there word so I would not believe that I would save any lives.  So me personally, I would not pull the trigger.  Although I would understand and sympathies with someone that did

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Lol, but the gunman is asking you to pull the trigger for the sole purpose of shooting and killing your kid, and you know that.

 

Utterly irrelevant, CatholicLady.

 

Your claim was that intent of action determines whether an action that is not lethal in and of itself is permissible. Pulling a trigger is NO MORE DEADLY than cutting a rope. That pulling a trigger might cause a bullet to fire and go into the brain of your child, killing him, is no less removed from the proximal cause of death than that cutting a rope might (certainly will) cause your son to fall to his death.

 

Yet you claim cutting the rope is allowable, yet pulling the trigger is not. I would like to understand the real, honest justification for this seemingly non-existent distinction. Hand-waving isn't allowed. I want a real, measurable distinction.

 

Remember what this discussion is about: Aborting an unborn child before viability to save the mother's life. The Catholic point of view is that it's untenable -- yet you can remove a fallopian tube and thus kill the baby, but it's A-OK, because you're taking out a "diseased" fallopian tube. (Which is in itself false -- there is nothing wrong with the fallopian tube until it actually ruptures, so you are removing a distended but otherwise healthy body part, and killing the baby as a result.)

 

I understand the Catholic stand. I have understood it for some pages. I'm pointing out that the distinction is indefensible. You can always delay the "proximal cause" of death another level so that you didn't *really* kill the baby, you just did an allowable procedure that resulted in its death. It's Pharisaical reasoning.

 

Of course, I might be wrong. That's why I want to know your justification for saying it's okay to cut the rope and kill your son but it's not okay to pull the trigger and kill your son. (Ironically, your son has a greater chance of survival in the gun scenario. since at least some fraction of a percent of round will misfire.) So far, you have laughed a lot, but haven't actually identified any moral distinction.

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Utterly irrelevant, CatholicLady.

 

Your claim was that intent of action determines whether an action that is not lethal in and of itself is permissible. Pulling a trigger is NO MORE DEADLY than cutting a rope. That pulling a trigger might cause a bullet to fire and go into the brain of your child, killing him, is no less removed from the proximal cause of death than that cutting a rope might (certainly will) cause your son to fall to his death.

 

Yet you claim cutting the rope is allowable, yet pulling the trigger is not. I would like to understand the real, honest justification for this seemingly non-existent distinction. Hand-waving isn't allowed. I want a real, measurable distinction.

 

Remember what this discussion is about: Aborting an unborn child before viability to save the mother's life. The Catholic point of view is that it's untenable -- yet you can remove a fallopian tube and thus kill the baby, but it's A-OK, because you're taking out a "diseased" fallopian tube. (Which is in itself false -- there is nothing wrong with the fallopian tube until it actually ruptures, so you are removing a distended but otherwise healthy body part, and killing the baby as a result.)

 

I understand the Catholic stand. I have understood it for some pages. I'm pointing out that the distinction is indefensible. You can always delay the "proximal cause" of death another level so that you didn't *really* kill the baby, you just did an allowable procedure that resulted in its death. It's Pharisaical reasoning.

 

Of course, I might be wrong. That's why I want to know your justification for saying it's okay to cut the rope and kill your son but it's not okay to pull the trigger and kill your son. (Ironically, your son has a greater chance of survival in the gun scenario. since at least some fraction of a percent of round will misfire.) So far, you have laughed a lot, but haven't actually identified any moral distinction.

 

Vort, after almost 20 pages, I'm not sure how else to say it to you or how else to explain it lol. You told me I haven't actually identified any moral distinction. But I have. You just don't agree with them. You've responded with saying these details are "utterly irrelevant." And ok, that's your opinion. *I* don't think they are irrelevant. You have your church and your religion, and I have mine. You were taught one thing, and believe one thing, and I was taught differently and believe differently. At this point you say that you understand my position, you just don't agree with it. That's perfectly fine. 

 

I personally don't think it's nice that you're telling me that my beliefs are "just hand waving" and "Pharisaical" and "indefensible" and "utterly irrelevant". I would never have said that to you about anything you believe in, and I'm a little disappointed that these things are being said to me here, to be honest.  :mellow:  

Like I said, God gave us the commandment that murder is always immoral. That is usually pretty clear. But in complicated and extreme situations, we are left to decipher whether or not causing the death of a person would be considered "murder"... and to do this as accurately as we know how, we have to get into really fine details.

 

Bottom line is we simply don't agree on the relevance or significance of some of the particular details being discussed here. And that is really all there is to it at this point. There's not much else to say.  :)

PS- please don't take my "laughing a lot" as laughing at you or anything like that. Typing "lol" is just my way of conveying a friendly/light hearted tone, since tone is difficult to decipher via text.

Edited by CatholicLady
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God gave us the commandment that murder is always immoral. 

 

I'm not sure this is supportable. There are plenty of killings God has justified and even commanded that would be considered legal and even ethical murders by others.

Edited by The Folk Prophet
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I'm not sure this is supportable. There are plenty of killings God has justified and even commanded that would be considered legal and even ethical murders by others.

 

Well, that's the thing. :)

Murder is defined as *wrongful* killing. Self defense, for example, is not murder. Neither is just war. Those are the two big ones.  

 

I don't believe God ever commanded any killings in the OT. For example, I don't think He commanded Abraham to kill his son. I think I said this in another thread, but I don't take the OT literally.

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I am sorry for having offended you, CatholicLady. I enjoy your conversation and appreciate your attempts to answer our questions.

 

Oh it's ok, Vort. I appreciate your discussions too. Sorry I got a little touchy lol... it was late. I really do think these details are things we simply won't agree on, and there's really no other way to explain anymore. It's not a matter of misunderstanding anymore, now it's just a matter of not agreeing. :)

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I don't believe God ever commanded any killings in the OT. For example, I don't think He commanded Abraham to kill his son. I think I said this in another thread, but I don't take the OT literally.

 

If you deny the truth of the Bible - even the OT - then there can be no common ground to our understanding.

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If you deny the truth of the Bible - even the OT - then there can be no common ground to our understanding.

 

Fair enough. Though just for the record, don't get me wrong...

 

I'm not saying the OT is a book of lies or anything like that. I just think it was written in allegorical form, verses literally. And I also think it was necessary for Jesus to come down and give us a better understanding of God and morals... the words of the OT were not enough.

 

^I thought this was actually the understanding most Christians had concerning the OT. Do Mormons take it literally? Even Genesis?

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Fair enough. Though just for the record, don't get me wrong...

 

I'm not saying the OT is a book of lies or anything like that. I just think it was written in allegorical form, verses literally. And I also think it was necessary for Jesus to come down and give us a better understanding of God and morals... the words of the OT were not enough.

 

^I thought this was actually the understanding most Christians had concerning the OT. Do Mormons take it literally? Even Genesis?

 

I am not aware of any official church position on this, so I should probably look into it sometime. I know some members take it literally, while others seem to take it more allegorical/metaphorically. I personally take it quite literally. I do believe Adam and Eve were literal first humans for example. I believe Noah built an ark and had a lot of animals on it and the earth was flooded. I believe people used to live over 800 years of age. I believe that Goliath of Gath was a giant of a man slain by a common shepherd with with a sling and stone/his own sword.

 

Perhaps I am in the minority for even what most mormons believe, I don't know. But for me I don't see why I should take the OT as any less of a history than the NT or BOM without having a revelation or instruction to that effect. To me it seems that people like to say the OT is metaphorical because it makes uncomfortable topics easier to reconcile. I mean why is it harder to believe that Abraham could have had multiple wives for instance than that a man named Jesus who was a carpenters son came back to life after being crucified. If I find the latter to be too much, perhaps I'll just start explaining it in allegorical terms because resurrection involving actually having a physical body live again is unfathomable... That's always the justification I hear for OT not being historical, certain parts don't match our current understanding of science and so forth so they must just be stories to teach us moral values.  

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Fair enough. Though just for the record, don't get me wrong...

 

I'm not saying the OT is a book of lies or anything like that. I just think it was written in allegorical form, verses literally. And I also think it was necessary for Jesus to come down and give us a better understanding of God and morals... the words of the OT were not enough.

 

^I thought this was actually the understanding most Christians had concerning the OT. Do Mormons take it literally? Even Genesis?

 

I find it's more of a spectrum of belief than being 100% literally or 100% figurative.  A couple of examples from my personal belief:

 

Naoh --  It did flood the whole area (Noah's "world").  Bible describes it raining 40 days.  I do not believe that means at day 40 11:59 pm it magically stopped raining to have a sunny day 41.  Rather, I believe "40" refers to the metaphorical Hebrew number-olgy "40" (length of time for a severe test).  

 

I fear that going 100% literal makes you miss the symbolic bueaty.  And 100% figurative makes you go "oh that's a nice pretend story".

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Fair enough. Though just for the record, don't get me wrong...

 

I'm not saying the OT is a book of lies or anything like that. I just think it was written in allegorical form, verses literally. And I also think it was necessary for Jesus to come down and give us a better understanding of God and morals... the words of the OT were not enough.

 

^I thought this was actually the understanding most Christians had concerning the OT. Do Mormons take it literally? Even Genesis?

 

I expect there are things in the OT that are not literal, but as a general rule, we believe what it says happened happened. But there are things that could be artistically described, perhaps -- as Jane Doe suggested above. The problem is, in my opinion, that if you don't give the OT the benefit of the doubt then it's too easy to simply write off anything you disagree with. I find that thinking incredibly spiritually dangerous.

 

So did the flood "literally" cover the whole earth or not? I don't know. Perhaps not. But I see no harm in simply presuming it did. Did a snake talk to Adam and Eve or is the snake symbolic and representative of something? I don't know. Once again, I see no harm in presuming it was a literal snake.

 

Really, in these things, it doesn't much matter though. Whether it was a snake or Satan himself speaking, someone tempted Eve.

 

Certainly the more directly spiritual things I believe though. Simply taking the Abrahamic sacrifice and writing it off as false? Why? I very much believe it actually happened.

 

And what is the motivation for claiming it figurative? Because the stories are hard to swallow? Oh...you mean like a man walking on water, turning water to wine, raising the dead, magically creating food, and coming  back from the dead Himself? That kind of hard to swallow? And yet we accept this as valid -- in spite of the fact that they're a bunch of "crazy stories". So why would I write of the OT "crazy stories"?

 

So, yes. I take the OT literally -- for the most part -- and any suspicions I have that there may be some level of figuratism therein, I give the benefit of the doubt to literalism regardless. (I think I just made up the words figuratism and literalism. Cool.)

 

We also believe, in the LDS church, that the Bible, OT and NT are only correct as far as they are translated correctly. We believe there are errors therein. Is it possible that some of the crazy stories are somewhat in error? Sure. But does that automatically imply that the entirety of the book is meant to be nothing but figurative? No.

 

As SpiritDragon implied, there's no hard line "it is figurative" or "it is literal" for the entire OT, though I feel confident that if we dug we could find some sort of teaching somewhere about the literal belief in most of the occurrences therein.

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The official stance is...  "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly"

 

Beyond that belief can vary from person to person.

 

We have in addition to the account of Genesis in the Old Testament, we have through modern revelation an account of the Lord revealing it to Moses and to Abraham.  We also have statement showing that the Jaredites had an account of it and so did the Nephites.

 

Needless to say there is plenty of pointers in the LDS faith to how important God thinks the account of Gensis is given his preservation and restoration of the account.  That could lead to a lot of people taking it very seriously

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Sounds like you guys are actually pretty much describing how I feel about it too. I believe at least some of those people were real people, but I do think the stories were written in allegorical form.... exaggerated to make a point, and using metaphors. I don't think God's voice ever echoed from the skies and told Abraham to kill his own son. I also don't believe God told David to have multiple wives. (I'm only using these in particular as examples because I see them brought up here a lot)

 

The Catholic Church leaves it open for its members to either believe it was written literally or figuratively. As long as we believe the crux of the message being expressed, that's what matters. Sounds like it's the same in the LDS community.

Edited by CatholicLady
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CatholicLady - "I don't think God's voice ever echoed from the skies and told Abraham to kill his own son."

Then you do not feel the same way we do about it at all.

 

Oh?

 

My understanding was that the belief in the literal or allegorical forms of the OT can vary from person to person, and that the LDS church has no official position on it?

 

Am I misunderstanding?

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Every single adherent to Mormonism will have their own unique testimony as can be said of any other faith. Personal view-points will be as varied as the individuals holding them.

 

I've come to be amazed at how varying the view-points are within my own faith through discussions in these forums. I don't think you're misunderstanding how we have varying view-points on what is literal and what is figurative in scripture. Also a lot of times being historical and figurative are not at odds with each-other. For instance Abraham likely literally brought his son Isaac to be sacrificed as part of a test of both of their faith. Isaac was likely strong enough at the time to overpower Abraham and was figuratively putting his trust in his father as did our saviour Jesus Christ upon His holy sacrifice. TFP clearly believes this part of the record to be historical as I would expect most LDS would.

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Every single adherent to Mormonism will have their own unique testimony as can be said of any other faith. Personal view-points will be as varied as the individuals holding them.

 

I've come to be amazed at how varying the view-points are within my own faith through discussions in these forums. I don't think you're misunderstanding how we have varying view-points on what is literal and what is figurative in scripture. Also a lot of times being historical and figurative are not at odds with each-other. For instance Abraham likely literally brought his son Isaac to be sacrificed as part of a test of both of their faith. Isaac was likely strong enough at the time to overpower Abraham and was figuratively putting his trust in his father as did our saviour Jesus Christ upon His holy sacrifice. TFP clearly believes this part of the record to be historical as I would expect most LDS would.

 

Yes, this is what I had originally thought I understood.

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No one can be a believing LDS and deny God's literal speaking to man. Our faith is based on God literally appearing to Joseph Smith. And we have many many instances of God's voice "booming" down in both the Book of Mormon and latter-day experiences. It would be pretty silly to accept these as literal and deny the same in the OT.

Edited by The Folk Prophet
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No one can be a believing LDS and deny God's literal speaking to man. Our faith is based on God literally appearing to Joseph Smith. And we have many many instances examples of God's voice "booming" down in both the book of Mormon and latter-day experiences. It would be pretty silly to accept these as literal and deny the same in the OT.

 

I agree, and yet over the years I've been surprised by how many things like this people disagree on, so I don't presume to speak for everyone.

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