Please relax and continue your search for the truth. Though the following doesn’t use the word contraception it uses the word “sorcery.” You will find with a little effort that “sorcery”, midwivery and witchery were used interchangably in antiquity. Sorcery in this sense included potions/herbal mixtures for contraceptives and abortificients. For this I reference “Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West” by John M. Riddle. This book can be found at http://www.amazon.com/Eves-Herbs-History-Contraception-Abortion/dp/0674270266/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219362397&sr=8-1. Also refrence: “when Abortion Was a Crime by Leslie J. Reagan at “http://www.amazon.com/When-Abortion-Was-Crime-1867-1973/dp/0520216571/ref=pd_sim_b_4″

Gal 5:16-21 – “I say, then: live by the Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh. For the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you want. But if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness,
idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Good luck on your quest for the truth and God bless,

A fellow searcher – in Christ,

GK
-God is good.

We are commanded to love God and neighbor. There are many things that violate love of neighbor that are not explicit in Scripture. Show me the scripture that says it is wrong for me to dump my garbage in my neighbor’s yard. Show me the scripture that says it is wrong for me to blast rap music out of my windows at high decibel levels in the wee hours of the morning.

God gave us intelligence to discern the wrongness of those acts as contrary to the duties of love. In the same manner, God gave us marriage and the sexual union, God revealed in the very nature of the sexual act and transmission of life His purpose for marriage (natural revelation), and then through the history of Divine revelation, God gave us further understanding, explicitly denoting man as made in His image, explicitly calling children and the opening of the womb His own gifts (OT); then God further revealed the exalted status of human beings as invited to share the life of the Holy Trinity in eternity (NT). God formed the Church to minister the very guidance of the Holy Spirit to us lead into all truth. The very same Church fathers who selected the canon of scripture to which you wish us to refer, were united in condemnation of contraception as an evil from the earliest days of the Church. If you don’t regard that as a God’s authority, then you have no scriptures to fall back on because if they were wrong on that, they just as well could have been wrong about which books belong in the Bible.

All of the above is put into the shorthand statement that contraception is a violation of God’s law, intrinsically evil and gravely immoral.

If God speaks to you at all through the Scriptures given you by the authority of the Church, then it is the same God speaking to you through the same authority to tell you that He condemns contraception.

Blessings,
Mary Kochan, Senior Editor, Catholic Exchange

It seems as though my point is falling on deaf ears. Catholic, Protestant, etc. may support or condemn contraception. They may even change their minds, as you have duly noted. The point is that GOD DOES NOT condemn, nor support, contraception. Contraception, therefore, is a subject to be left to lower social argument. To say God supports your way of thinking WITHOUT PROPER SUPPORT is irresponsible. Let’s not confuse our own ideas of rightiousness with God’s.

Be careful not to honor traditions of men more than the word of God. God is the authority, not man, not the Church. Don’t be misled. Start with God.

Regarding the article – God says nothing against contraception in the Bible. To say that God has held contraception to be evil or immoral, or that he supports such beliefs, is irresponsible.

Thanks for not taking an adversarial view of my response to the article. I am indeed in search of the truth as many Catholics are. However, in my search I still have yet to find support in the Bible that contraception is “evil and immoral.” No doubt God views children as a gift. He says so several times, and the Bible supports that assertion. He also requests us to be fruitful and multiply. But NOWHERE does he say that contraception is wrong.

In particular, I took exception to the author’s careless use of God’s motive without proper citation, as if putting words in his mouth. Let’s be careful not to do that.

“Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish [ought] from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.”(Deuteronomy 4:2)

“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and [from] the things which are written in this book.” (Revelation 22:18-9)

You state that “apparently [I've] never read the Catechism, because each teaching within cites Biblical references, some implicit and some explicit.”

I attended Catholic school and Catechism for several years, and received my confirmation into the Catholic curch. I have indeed read much of the Catechism or have had it taught to me. I would be very interested in the portions of the Catechism you refer to that claim support in the Bible that contraception is evil or immoral in the eyes of God.

Man was commissioned by God “to be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28)as you stated. However, the Bible in this passage or elsewhere does not address birth control or whether it is right for Christians to use birth control.

2539 Envy is a capital sin. It refers to the sadness at the sight of another’s goods. CCC

http://catholicfamilyvignettes.wordpress.com/2008/08/12/silly-questions-silly-answers/

Re: NFP While the Church approves the Method She doesn’t necessarily approve the Motives. Too often NFP is promoted as if it was the 8th Sacrament or the 11th Commandment.

http://www.audiosancto.org/auweb/20040718-Holy-Matrimony-and-NFP.mp3