13. THE QUESTION WAS: How did Luther describe contraception?
a. "a sin greater than adultery and incest"
b. "a sin equal to adultery and incest"
c "permissible if the
couple is unable to refrain from relations one week each month."
THE ANSWER IS……A….Luther
said contraception was “a sin greater than adultery and incest.”
Calvin called it “a
monstrous thing.”
Wesley and Zwingli also
condemned contraception
Protestants traditionally
interpreted the story of Onan in Genesis as a condemnation of contraception.
(until the 20th century)
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/marriage/mf0011.html
(Article on contraception)
Other
Links:
http://www.catholic.com/library/Contraception_and_Sterilization.asp
http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ274.HTM
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0898704332/qid%3D1001414721/sr%3D1-7/ref%3Dsr%5F1%5F3%5F7/002-9813528-7393614
http://www.trosch.org/rwd/brthcntl.htm
http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ207.HTM
http://www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/nfp/
(natural family planning)
Book:
“Why Humanae Vitae Was Right: A Reader” by Janet Smith
Bible verses: Gen
38:8-10; Gen 41:52; Ex
23:25-26; Lev 26:9; Deut 7:14; Ruth
4:13; Lk 1:24-25
St.
Augustine: "This proves that you [Manicheans] approve of having a wife,
not for the procreation of children, but for the gratification of passion. In
marriage, as the marriage law declares, the man and woman come together for the
procreation of children. Therefore, whoever makes the procreation of children a
greater sin than copulation, forbids marriage and makes the woman not a wife
but a mistress, who for some gifts presented to her is joined to the man to
gratify his passion" (The Morals of the Manichees 18:65 [A.D. 388]).
St.
Augustine: "You [Manicheans] make your auditors adulterers of their wives
when they take care lest the women with whom they copulate conceive. They take
wives according to the laws of matrimony by tablets announcing that the
marriage is contracted to procreate children; and then, fearing because of your
law [against childbearing] . . . they copulate in a shameful union only to
satisfy lust for their wives. They are unwilling to have children, on whose
account alone marriages are made. How is it, then, that you are not those
prohibiting marriage, as the apostle predicted of you so long ago [1 Tim.
4:1-4], when you try to take from marriage what marriage is? When this is taken
away, husbands are shameful lovers, wives are harlots, bridal chambers are
brothels, fathers-in-law are pimps" (Against Faustus 15:7 [A.D. 400]).
St.
Augustine: "For thus the eternal law, that is, the will of God creator of
all creatures, taking counsel for the conservation of natural order, not to
serve lust, but to see to the preservation of the race, permits the delight of
mortal flesh to be released from the control of reason in copulation only to
propagate progeny" (ibid., 22:30).
St.
Augustine: "For necessary sexual intercourse for begetting [children] is
alone worthy of marriage. But that which goes beyond this necessity no longer
follows reason but lust. And yet it pertains to the character of marriage . . .
to yield it to the partner lest by fornication the other sin damnably [through
adultery]. . . . [T]hey [must] not turn away from them the mercy of God . . .
by changing the natural use into that which is against nature, which is more
damnable when it is done in the case of husband or wife. For, whereas that
natural use, when it pass beyond the compact of marriage, that is, beyond the
necessity of begetting [children], is pardonable in the case of a wife,
damnable in the case of a harlot; that which is against nature is execrable
when done in the case of a harlot, but more execrable in the case of a wife. Of
so great power is the ordinance of the Creator, and the order of creation, that
. . . when the man shall wish to use a body part of the wife not allowed for
this purpose [orally or anally consummated sex], the wife is more shameful, if
she suffer it to take place in her own case, than if in the case of another
woman" (The Good of Marriage 11-12 [A.D. 401])...
St.
Augustine: "I am supposing, then, although you are not lying [with your
wife] for the sake of procreating offspring, you are not for the sake of lust
obstructing their procreation by an evil prayer or an evil deed. Those who do
this, although they are called husband and wife, are not; nor do they retain
any reality of marriage, but with a respectable name cover a shame. Sometimes
this lustful cruelty, or cruel lust, comes to this, that they even procure
poisons of sterility. . . . Assuredly if both husband and wife are like this,
they are not married, and if they were like this from the beginning they come
together not joined in matrimony but in seduction. If both are not like this, I
dare to say that either the wife is in a fashion the harlot of her husband or
he is an adulterer with his own wife" (Marriage and Concupiscence 1:15:17
[A.D. 419]).
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