Simple question?

Quote: FrGamble

Isn't it a little scary to you that you are comparing pregnancy, something that happens when we are healthy, with serious injuries and illnesses? When something is broken or is not working correctly then we take the step of intervening with implants and chemicals, which always have side effects and consequences. Why in the world would we do that when everything is working great and just the way it is supposed to?!?

I think Natural vs artificial argument is often misused. Most of the problems are trade-off issues. If you are willing to deal with the trade-off then maybe artificial is better for you than natural. For instance if some people can have a more comfortable but shorter life taking a drug-- they may choose the comfort over the length.

It's only when something is misrepresented that it becomes unethical IMO, i.e., all the facts. The crunchy whole natural foods, and make your own stuff naturally, is not the lifestyle everyone would choose, even when given a choice.

Here is another article with different groups and rates and percents, hard to pull out what you want. Small sample size of catholic school girls, too

Http://ccgaction.org/node/1076

The problem with looking at a difference of scale, such as 4x, is it can represent a large range of percents.

For example, group A can hook up at a rate of 1 to 25%, meaning group B hooks up at a rate of 4 to 100%

4% - not such a big deal to be 4x of 1%. - but 100% hook-up participation rate? That would really be something to talk about.

The article I linked to has percents also, but I didn't read it very closely.

In one place it says 38%, in another 76%. No patience for decoding it right now, though.

Quote: Dalex64

Here is another article with different groups and rates and percents, hard to pull out what you want. Small sample size of catholic school girls, too

Http://ccgaction.org/node/1076
.

"Findings revealed that for both females and males, church attendance was negatively related to some forms of hooking-up behaviors (the more frequent the church attendance, the less frequent the hooking-up behavior), but religious feeling was only significant in reducing hooking-up behavior for males. For females, the emotional attachment to religion had little impact on their decision to participate in hooking-up behaviors."

"She found that most intrinsic (religious) students were significantly less likely to participate in premarital sexual intercourse–except for Roman Catholics. For the Catholic students in the Stoddard study, affiliation with the Catholic Church made no difference in reducing the rate of engaging in premarital sexual behavior."

This is the zinger:

"Unlike students on evangelical or conservative Protestant campuses, students on Catholic campuses do not constitute what the authors identify as a “moral community.” When Catholic students enter college, it appears that they do not enter with the same level of religious commitment or knowledge of their faith as their Protestant counterparts. The Catholic women in the study report significantly lower levels of subjective religiousness than both conservative and mainline Protestant respondents."

I'll say it again, Catholic girls have always
had the reputation of being 'easy' to get
sex from. Why is that, why are the
Evangelicals succeeding in producing chaste
girls, and why have the Catholics always
failed.

I think some of that comes from a feeling of repression they had when they were growing up, and now that they have the freedom to make their own decision, these are the decisions they are making in disproportionate numbers compared to other groups.

So, too much discipline and too many rules backfires/suffers from backlash.

You can see the opposite, too, where not enough rules or not enough discipline leads to similar sorts of problems.

Quote: Dalex64

I think some of that comes from a feeling of repression they had when they were growing up

I knew a woman that went to 12 years
of Catholic school and she was a mess.
She thought sex was filthy, but had it
all the time with different men. She
would never say the name of a part
of the sexual anatomy, but was a
wildcat in bed. She also treated anybody
she slept with like crap, because she
was doing a 'dirty' act with them.

Needless to say, her life is still a mess
30 years later. But she still wears the
cross and has an alter in her house.
Bless the lord.

It seems like you hear about that sort of thing a lot. I know a couple of people personally who rebelled like this with sex and promiscuity after a strict religious and strongly disciplined upbringing.

Quote: Dalex64

I am also not equating pregnancy and illness. I am just pointed out that there are countless cases where we are ok with using chemicals or implanted devices to mess with our bodies.

We don't do this to make our eyesight blurry or to give ourselves an irregular heartbeat. We use chemicals and implanted devices to help fix a problem. Fertility is not a problem! It is a sign of health so the question remains, why in the world would we choose in this one case to treat a sign of health as a problem in women and give them pills and other things that can harm them? It seems terribly unfair, unjust, illogical, and sexist.

Quote:

The church is asserting that any means of preventing pregnancy that they don't agree with is IMMORAL, and it just so happens that the one method that they agree with could be called "natural." the whole natural vs unnatural ways of preventing pregnancy is really a red herring. they are justified after the fact.

so, I am drawing a parallel between hair length and hair dyes, and condoms and natural family planning. Both of them seem to be equally arbitrary to me.

It is just getting worse for you. First of all the Church has no stance on hair length or hair dyes.

The choice to avoid pregnancy is not justified after the fact. It is a discussion that needs to and should happen prayerfully and thoughtfully between spouses before the fact. As I mentioned before you can use natural means but still have a contraceptive mentality. The Church agrees with NFP not by happenstance but because it respects the natural way the human body works and is healthiest for the woman and the couple.

Quote:

...opposition to "artificial birth control" on the basis that it would open a "wide and easy a road... towards conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality"

What about teaching people to be moral, rather than removing tools which have valid, valuable uses?

It is well known that the church policy against contraception led to unwanted pregnancies. Somehow, the good boys and girls decided that they would follow the prohibition against contraception, but not follow the prohibition against premarital or extramarital sex. results? unwanted pregnancies, spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

This is the gun control argument, too: guns are used to commit crimes by criminals so remove the guns.

condoms are used by immoral people for immoral purposes, so remove condoms.

Yes, first and foremost you need to teach people to be moral. I wish more people would try this method first. If instead having a culture and so many thrusting "safe sex" on us it might be a better approach if we all first encouraged young people and all of us to be moral. The problem is that now people think that because of contraception they can have sex without consequences and that too has lead to unwanted pregnancies and the rampant spread of sexually transmitted diseases. The other thing not enough people talk about, but one I have to deal with a lot, is the broken hearts of young women left in the wake of sexual promiscuity and the resulting guilt, sadness, and body image issues they feel.

If we really took seriously our effort to educate and form moral people who did not want to commit crimes then we wouldn't need to ban guns. The same can be said about contraception.

I oppose abstinence training, when it presented as the only acceptable moral choice.

Quote: Evenbob

This is the zinger:

"Unlike students on evangelical or conservative Protestant campuses, students on Catholic campuses do not constitute what the authors identify as a “moral community.” When Catholic students enter college, it appears that they do not enter with the same level of religious commitment or knowledge of their faith as their Protestant counterparts. The Catholic women in the study report significantly lower levels of subjective religiousness than both conservative and mainline Protestant respondents."

I believe it. The reason is not at all because of some Catholic repression or us teaching that sex is dirty. It is because we don't evangelize in the way our brother and sister protestants often do. Catholics are good at ritual and sacraments. These exterior experiences of prayer are good, but if it stays exterior and doesn't reach someone's heart and soul then it does not prepare them for the times when they will be without the Catholic community, without ready access to the sacraments, and experiencing a new freedom.

When you experience the deep love of Jesus Christ personally in your life it helps you deal with the temptations to sin and difficulties of life. As a Church we need to do a better job.

Quote: FrGamble

I believe it. The reason is not at all because of some Catholic repression or us teaching that sex is dirty. It is because we don't evangelize in the way our brother and sister protestants often do. .

Nope, that's not the reason. They don't screw
around because of the repercussions it would
cause in their family and among their peers.

I'm an expert on this, I've watched 17 of my
wife's nephews and nieces grow up in an
Evangelical environment. They have all the
same urges that Catholic kids have, but they
would be shunned if they gave into them.
Shunned by the family and shunned by their
church. So what they do is go to college, meet
a nice mate, get engaged, and screw like
rabbits. Get married after they graduate.

The difference might be the Catholic girl can
go to confession to make it OK. The non
Catholic has no where to go except down,
so they control themselves with so much to
lose. Christians watch other Christians like
hawks for the slightest impropriety, so they
can pounce.

Either church is massively flawed raising
massively flawed kids. Flaws that you really
don't see in secular families.