I decided to skim through some of the new content on the updated site, excited to see some new and more up-to-date commentary on sexual issues.
The first article i came across was one titled God, Sex, and Babies by Christopher West. (I strongly suggest you read through the article before reading the rest of this)
The purpose of the article was to address confusion in Church teaching on sexual issues, specifically Contraception vs. NFP (Natural Family Planing)
He starts off with his thesis that confusion reigns with regard to responsible parenthood when it comes to the moral question of contraception and NFP. He then continues by quoting Pope Saint John Paul II and comments on things he observed regarding the moral and theological difference between these two things.
However, for today, my critique will be over everything he said following this. (Starting after the subtitle; "Dis-incarnate Love") It's at this point that things start to go wrong.
He starts by quoting something he had received in a letter;
“To think that constraining the free flow of body fluids impedes me from loving my wife is ludicrous.”
As should be obvious, this quote is simply a meaningfully catchy way of expressing the simple claim that contraception doesn't stop you from loving someone. However, Mr West seems to get caught up in taking it bluntly literal. He goes on to compare it to the free flow of blood from Christ's body at the crucifixion and attempts to use this as some sort of meaningful counterargument. This is my first problem with this article.
Instead of simply using a simple, direct and practical counterargument, he decides he has to take the long route and make things all meaningful, needlessly paralleling it to Christ's crucifixion. One could even contend that he's implicitly shaming the guy by pitting him against the free flow of Christ's blood on the cross, when all the guy was implying in the first place was claiming that contraception doesn't stop him from loving his wife.
Going along with this, My second issue with this article is that Mr. West seems to be out-right accusing the guy of believing that love is not expressed through the body, when, once again, all the guy was trying to say was that contraception doesn't stop him from loving his wife.
Not only is his accusation needless, its baseless. He is simply putting words in the guy's mouth. He doesn't actually know what the guy believes, that is unless of course it was explained to him elsewhere in the letter, but my point is that he can't actually know all that just from the one quoted sentence.
In the next section, he starts by clarifying that couples can space their children for serious reasons, eliminating the misconception that couples should just act like rabbits and trust in God. All good here.
However immediately after he addresses the claim that infertile sex is all-around immoral. He starts by stating that elderly couples who are certainly infertile can still make love in good conscience, and with that, so can people using NFP. This is my third problem with this article.
He explains clearly that couples who chose (for a good reason) not to be open to life (for a period of time) can still have sex simply during the infertile time. This claim is in fact my biggest issue and objection to what Mr. West has said.
To clarify, I am not objecting to NFP.
I'm not even objecting to having sex during the infertile time periods.
What i am ultimately lead to object to is having sex at all during a time frame when you are (for a noble reason) not being open to life. The two are logically counterintuitive.
You cannot sneak sex into a period of time when (for a noble reason) you are temporally being not open to life. Doing such would inevitably constitute sexual activity that is not open to life, thus, logically, making it synonymous with contraception.
Mr. West attempts to address objections to the difference between the two. rebutting the argument that "the end result of the two things are the same," by paralleling it to abortion and miscarriage, saying that these two things are the same ending result, but that doesn't mean they are ethically the same.
He's correct. Those who object to the difference between NFP and contraception by saying they have the same outcome are using bad logic.
However, my objection to the difference between the two has nothing to with the fact that the outcome the same, it has to do with the fact that their intent ends up being the same. (Again, not NFP in general, just in the particular case which i previously objected to.)
Ethics is mostly if not completely about intent. Supposedly, contraception is logically immoral because of it's intent to make sex solely for the purpose of pleasure by effectively dodging its only other practical purpose; openness to life.
He concludes this subsection by stating that the difference between the two is that one is an act of God while the other is taking matters into our own hands. However, he never goes on to explain how exactly this makes one wrong and the other not.
Obviously something that has naturally occurred is intended by God and is thus good, but just because something is "taken into our own hands" doesn't automatically render it wrong. In order for something to be wrong, it must actually be an ultimate negative, and be driven by a selfish but also negative intent. Thus my fourth and finally issue with this article.
Overall, Mr West has a fair amount of accurate and clear information to offer, but overall, i was disappointed by much of the ambiguity and lack of persistent logic in this article.
Regarding my objection to the particular use of NFP, (Having sex regardless of fertility when one is supposedly avoiding children for a period of time for a serious reason) If my objection is logically incoherent, then i am ultimately left in the dark as of the logical reason why contraception is unethical in the first place.
I wish to end with clarifying that i mean no offense to Mr. West himself, but i felt the need to call out and object to the way he was explaining many things in this article.
-Nate Kezer
8/12/14
