Wasting seed

Gen 38:8-10 is a traditional prooftext against "artificial" contraception (and masturbation). But what exactly is Onan's sin? According to one interpretation, "wasting seed" is a grave or mortal sin. To put this in Thomistic natural law terms, "wasting seed" thwarts the natural telos of seminal fluid. There are, however, problems with that interpretation:

i) V9 adds a qualification. Not merely "wasting his seed", but for a particular reason. So intent is a necessary condition.

ii) If wasting seed per se is sinful, then that drastically restricts licit sexual intercourse. Having intercourse with a postmenopausal wife is "wasting seed". Having intercourse with a manifestly pregnant woman is "wasting seed".

Even during ovulation, only one, or rarely, two sperm will be able to fertilize the ovum. Most sperm are "wasted". They never reach the goal. 

iii) Ironically, if wasting seed per se is sinful, then this is a prooftext against "natural family planning". The husband is deliberately wasting his seed by intentionally limiting intercourse to infertile periods during his wife's cycle. By design, the couple is frustrating the natural teleology of semen.  A calculated effort to subvert and circumvent the biological goal of seminal fluid. What could be more wasteful than that? So this is a highly counterproductive text to defend "natural family planning" as the licit alternative to "artificial" contraception. 

Don't look back!

Here's a parody of Catholic natural law reasoning on artificial contraception:

Don't look back

By MICHAEL FRAYN

It is with a close and warmly sympathetic interest that all men of good will, whatever their creed, are following the vigorous debate now going on within the Carthaginian Monolithic Church on the vexed question of rear-view mirrors.

It has long been the teaching of the Church that looking backwards while travelling forwards is categorically and explicitly forbidden by God, since it was for doing this that He visited instant fossilization upon Lot's wife. In this context "looking back" has always been interpreted as frustrating the natural forward gaze of the traveler, whether by turning the head (visus interruptus), or by the interposition of a mechanical device such as a mirror. Carthaginian Monolithic theologians claim that looking back is not only divinely prohibited, but can also be seen by the light of reason to be contrary to natural law, since it is patently interfering with nature to inhibit the inherent tendency of fast-moving objects to collide, and is frustrating the natural consequences of the act of driving—the possibility that an heir may succeed to the driver's estate. Moreover, they argue, there is a strong aesthetic objection to looking backward, since it must plainly detract from the spontaneity of the driving act, and they point out how much more insipid life becomes if the spice of the unexpected is removed altogether. It must in all fairness be pointed out that the keen interest of the monolithic clergy in preserving spontaneity and avoiding insipidity is entirely altruistic, since they do not themselves drive. Those arguments notwithstanding, the Church has long recognized the need to prevent cars crashing into the backs of one another indiscriminately, and Monolithics are permitted to avoid it by abstaining from driving altogether, or by driving only during the so-called "safe period", between midnight and 6 a.m., when the chances of being crashed into are greatly reduced. Nevertheless, there is a sympathetic—indeed anguished—realization among many Monolithic leaders today that self-restraint alone may be inadequate to meet the situation. The question was less crucial in the days when the main effect of the doctrine was to prohibit Monolithics from sitting with their back to the engine in railway carriages. But the increasing popularity of the motorcar is putting an intolerable burden upon the accident wards of the world's hospitals. There is intense sympathy, too, for the great strain undergone by Monolithic drivers who have been run into from behind perhaps 13 or 14 times already, and who now scarcely dare to drive home to see their wives if it involves turning right, or pulling out to pass a parked car. To is to this agonizing problem that "the Box" may provide an answer. "The Box" is a rearward radar scanning device which scientists are still testing. Monolithics believe that scanning aerial cannot be said to "look" back in the natural sense of looking, and that the radar screen does not deflect the natural forward gaze of the driver, like a mirror, but is a natural part of his natural forward view. It is emphasized that even if "the Box" were to be accepted, it could never be used for merely selfish purposes, to avoid a crash simply because a crash was not desired, but only where a driver had already had three or four crashes, and there were genuine grounds for believing that another one might have serious effects upon his health. All the same, some authorities doubt if the box could ever be an acceptable compromise. They believe that the safe period principle is more reliable—making absolutely sure that the road behind the car was kept clear by scattering perhaps nails or broken glass, perhaps small high explosives or napalm bombs. The Heights, Volume XLVII, Number 15, 17 February 1967

Contraceptive intent

According to Catholic philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe:

For it was obvious that if a woman just happened to be in the physical state which such a contraceptive brings her into by art no theologian would have thought the fact, or the knowledge of it, or the use of the knowledge of it, straightaway made intercourse bad. Or, again, if a woman took an anovulant pill for a while to check dysmenorrhea no one would have thought this prohibited intercourse. So, clearly, it was the contraceptive intention that was bad, if contraceptive intercourse was: it is not that the sexual act in these circumstances is physically distorted. This had to be thought out, and it was thought out in the encyclical Humanae Vitae.
Here, however, people still feel intensely confused, because the intention where oral contraceptives are taken seems to be just the same as when intercourse is deliberately restricted to infertile periods. In one way this is true, and its truth is actually pointed out by Humanae Vitae, in a passage I will quote in a moment. But in another way it's not true.
The reason why people are confused about intention, and why they sometimes think there is no difference between contraceptive intercourse and the use of infertile times to avoid conception, is this: They don't notice the difference between "intention" when it means the intentionalness of the thing you're doing - that you're doing this on purpose - and when it means a further or accompanying intention with which you do the thing. For example, I make a table: that's an intentional action because I am doing just that on purpose. I have the further intention of, say, earning my living, doing my job by making the table. Contraceptive intercourse and intercourse using infertile times may be alike in respect of further intention, and these further intentions may be good, justified, excellent. This the Pope has noted. He sketched such a situation and said: "It cannot be denied that in both cases the married couple, for acceptable reasons," (for that's how he imagined the case) "are perfectly clear in their intention to avoid children and mean to secure that none will be born." This is a comment on the two things: contraceptive intercourse on the one hand and intercourse using infertile times on the other, for the sake of the limitation of the family.
But contraceptive intercourse is faulted, not on account of this further intention, but because of the kind of intentional action you are doing. The action is not left by you as the kind of act by which life is transmitted, but is purposely rendered infertile, and so changed to another sort of act altogether.
There's all the world of difference between this and the use of the "rhythm" method. For you use the rhythm method not just by having intercourse now, but by not having it next week, say; and not having it next week isn't something that does something to today's intercourse to turn it into an infertile act; today's intercourse is an ordinary act of intercourse, an ordinary marriage act.  

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/AnscombeChastity.php

I already commented on this once before, but now I'd like to make a more specific criticism of her argument:

i) A basic problem with her argument is that even if you accept her abstract distinction, there's no practical distinction in the case at hand. What motives a Protest couple to practice artificial birth control? (a) the desire to have conjugal relations; (b) the desire to avoid conception.

What motivates a Catholic couple to practice natural family planning? (a) the desire to have conjugal relations; (b) the desire to avoid conception. 

At the level of intent, their intentions are identical in both cases, whether they practice artificial birth control or natural family planning.

ii) Now, it may be that Anscombe is using "intent" in the technical sense of double effect theory, where the agent did not intend the bad effect insofar as that was an incidental and undesirable effect of what he positively willed. But even if we accept that distinction, it fails to salvage Anscombe's argument:

a) Avoiding conception by exploiting a woman's infertile period isn't an undesirable side-effect of their action; rather, that's a primary motivation. They want to avoid conception. That's their direct intention. And successfully evading procreation is the desired result.

Moreover, their action is a means to that end (pace double effect theory). 

iii) Furthermore, she switches arguments. She begins by distinguishing between different kinds of intent, but then shifts to different kinds of actions. 

"Contraception and chastity"

Here's an oft-quoted statement by Catholic philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe:

If contraceptive intercourse is permissible, then what objection could there be after all to mutual masturbation, or copulation in vase indebito, sodomy, buggery (I should perhaps remark that I am using a legal term here - not indulging in bad language), when normal copulation is impossible or inadvisable (or in any case, according to taste)? It can't be the mere pattern of bodily behaviour in which the stimulation is procured that makes all the difference! But if such things are all right, it becomes perfectly impossible to see anything wrong with homosexual intercourse, for example. I am not saying: if you think contraception all right you will do these other things; not at all. The habit of respectability persists and old prejudices die hard. But I am saying: you will have no solid reason against these things. You will have no answer to someone who proclaims as many do that they are good too. You cannot point to the known fact that Christianity drew people out of the pagan world, always saying no to these things. Because, if you are defending contraception, you will have rejected Christian tradition.

The entire essay is currently available here:

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/AnscombeChastity.php

A few preliminaries:

i) I believe her primary audience is Catholic. She's writing to and for Catholics. As such, she sometimes mounts an argument from authority which is legitimate when addressing a Catholic audience, but begs the question in reference to a Protestant reader. 

ii) Then there's the question of terminology. I don't know the intended distinction between sodomy and buggery. These are often used a synonyms. However, buggery may be broader category, which includes both oral and sex. 

iii) Assuming that's the intended distinction, it doesn't ipso facto follow that if one is wrong, both are wrong. In principle, anal intercourse could be intrinsically wrong whereas oral sex could be morally permissible under some circumstances. To condemn both requires a supporting argument, which she doesn't furnish. She just takes for granted that oral sex is morally equivalent to anal intercourse, both of which are morally equivalent to contraceptive intercourse. That's understandable when addressing a Catholic audience, where certain things are taken for granted. It's more a question of why be Catholic. But given Catholicism, you can simply punt to the authority of the Magisterium–at least in principle. However, that appeal has no sway for a Protestant reader.

iv) Conversely, is she using "sodomy" as a synonym for homosexuality, or a synonym for anal sex? 

v) In addition, there's a potential moral distinction between oral sex involving a heterosexual married couple and a homosexual man performing fellatio on another man. What would make it wrong is not the act itself, but by whom and on whom it's performed. 

To take a comparison, erotic kissing between a man and a woman is morally permissible, whereas erotic kissing between two men is morally impermissible. In both cases it's the same act. What makes it licit in one case and illicit in the other concerns the parties to the act and not the act itself. My purpose is not to argue that point, but simply draw attention to distinctions which she fails to make.

Consensual incest is another example. Copulation between a parent and a grown child involves the same sex act as copulation between a man and wife, yet that doesn't make them morally equivalent. The moral differential factor is not the nature of the act, but the nature of the parties to the act. 

vi) The same issue arises in the case of "mutual masturbation." In principle, that could be homosexual or heterosexual. If the latter, that could be marital, premarital, or extramarital. To say it's wrong in general demands a supporting argument. The fact that homosexual, and heterosexual pre/extramarital mutual masturbation is wrong doesn't entail that heterosexual marital mutual masturbation is wrong. 

Suppose, for instance, a married couple uses that as foreplay. Or suppose, for some reason, that a married couple can't engage in sexual intercourse. Is mutual masturbation wrong in that situation? If so, Anscombe needs to supply an argument. 

To ask, even rhetorically, "what objection could there be after all to…sodomy…when normal copulation is impossible or inadvisable…it becomes perfectly impossible to see anything wrong with homosexual intercourse" is very slack reasoning. Normal copulation refers to heterosexual copulation. If that's impossible or inadvisable, how does it follow that homosexual alternatives would become unobjectionable? If the context begins with heterosexual conjugal relations, how do impediments to that suddenly shift the sexual repertoire to sodomy? Perhaps she's using "sodomy" as a sexual technique (anal sex) rather than sex with a partner of the same gender (man on man). If so, that would keep all the examples within the confines of heterosexual relations. 

vii) There are at least two moral objections to anal intercourse:

a) It's unpleasant to the recipient.

b) It's hazardous–especially to the recipient. 

c) I'd add that there's a potential objection to oral sex on the same grounds: is it hazardous? 

viii) If, however, she's using "sodomy" as a synonym for homosexuality, the insinuation is that once you decouple sex from procreative intent, there's no moral distinction between homosexual and heterosexual activity. But that's not a straightforward inference. There are several moral objections to homosexual activity:

a) It is hazardous. Male and female bodies are sexually complementary in ways that two bodies of the same gender are not. That results in physically destructive behavior as well as diseases that are either unique to homosexual activity or aggravated by homosexual activity. 

b) Humans of the same gender are psychologically unsuited to form erotic emotional bonds with each other. It's a kind of mental illness. 

There are "solid reasons" for (vii) and (viii) alike. It's intellectually irresponsible for Anscombe to say otherwise. Indeed, that's inconsistent with her larger position. There are natural law arguments against anal intercourse and homosexuality. And she herself resorts natural law ethics. 

ix) Then there's the meaning of the phrase "copulation in vase indebito." That's a quaint technical term in Catholic moral theology. I don't know if she's using it to denote anal sex or "Onanism" (i.e. coitus interruptus). If the latter, that begs the question, since the very issue in dispute is whether contraception is morally licit or illicit. If the former, see above. 

Furthermore, while one doesn't have to be learned (nobody has to be learned) or able to give a convincing account of the reasons for a teaching - for remember that the Church teaches with the authority of a divine commission, and the Pope has a prophetical office, not a chair of science or moral philosophy or theology - all the same the moral teaching of the Church, by her own claims, is supposed to be reasonable. Christian moral teachings aren't revealed mysteries like the Trinity. The lack of clear accounts of the reason in the teaching was disturbing to many people. Especially, I believe, to many of the clergy whose job it was to give the teaching to the people.

That exposes a dilemma for Catholic apologists like Anscombe. The argument from authority won't work, even if you acknowledge the religious authority in question, because moral theology is grounded in natural law, and natural law reasoning must rise and fall on the merits of the argument from proper function. The argument should work on its own terms, within the natural law framework. It should be sound apart from appeals to religious authority. The arguments must be reasonable on their own grounds. 

As a Catholic apologist, Anscombe must play the hand she was dealt. But what if her denomination's position on birth control is ad hoc? Then her supporting arguments will be ad hoc. Ultimately, the supporting arguments can't be better than the underlying position they are deployed to defend. 

Again, with effective contraceptive techniques and real physiological knowledge available, a new question came to the fore. I mean that of the rational limitation of families. Because of ignorance, people in former times who did not choose continence could effect such limitation only by obviously vile and disreputable methods. So no one envisaged a policy of seeking to have just a reasonable number of children (by any method other than continence over sufficient periods) as a policy compatible with chastity. Indeed the very notion "a reasonable number of children" could hardly be formulated compatibly with thinking at once decently and realistically. It had to be left to God what children one had.
With society becoming more and more contraceptive, the pressure felt by Catholic married people became great. The restriction of intercourse to infertile periods "for grave reasons" was offered to them as a recourse - at first in a rather gingerly way (as is intelligible in view of the mental background I have sketched) and then with increasing recommendation of it. For in this method the act of copulation was not itself adapted in any way so as to render it infertile, and so the condemnation of acts of contraceptive intercourse as somehow perverse and so as grave breaches of chastity, did not apply to this. All other methods, Catholics were very emphatically taught, were "against the natural law".
The substantive, hard teaching of the Church which all Catholics were given up to 1964 was clear enough: all artificial methods of birth control were taught to be gravely wrong if, before, after, or during intercourse you do something intended to turn that intercourse into an infertile act if it would otherwise have been fertile.
The new knowledge, indeed, does give the best argument I know of that can be devised for allowing that contraceptives are after all permissible according to traditional Christian morals. The argument would run like this: There is not much ancient tradition condemning contraception as a distinct sin. The condemnations which you can find from earliest times were almost all of early abortion (called homicide) or of unnatural vice. But contraception, if it is an evil thing to do, is distinct from these, and so the question is really open.

i) Which is a backdoor admission that artificial contraception doesn't really contradict tradition. It's anachronistic to prooftext opposition to contraception from church fathers or scholastic theologians, for given their primitive scientific understanding, they were unable to distinguish between abortion and contraception. So even if you think we should defer to the wisdom of church fathers and scholastic theologians, you can't invoke their opinion in this case, for it involves a more specialized question than they were in a position to consider at the  time. 

ii) And, of course, this has no cachet for Protestants. It's not that we should simply disregard tradition. Rather, tradition has no inherent authority. We should give the church fathers and scholastic theologians a respectful hearing. But it comes down to the quality of their arguments. They are not authority figures. 

We have seen that the theological defence of the Church's teaching in modern times did not assimilate contraception to abortion but characterized it as a sort of perversion of the order of nature. The arguments about this were rather uneasy, because it is not in general wrong to interfere with natural processes.

That's a very significant caveat, which she doesn't pursue. To oppose contraception along those lines, you'd need to present and defend a principle according to which interfering with natural processes is generally permissible, but wrong in this particular (or analogous) instance. However, having raised the issue, Anscombe fails to develop that line of thought. Perhaps because that's a dead-end. So she must look elsewhere to bolster her position. But she just leaves it hanging out there. 

At this point she draws hairsplitting distinctions regarding intent. Perhaps that's the principle which distinguishes licit from illicit interference with natural processes–at least in this case:

For it was obvious that if a woman just happened to be in the physical state which such a contraceptive brings her into by art no theologian would have thought the fact, or the knowledge of it, or the use of the knowledge of it, straightaway made intercourse bad. Or, again, if a woman took an anovulant pill for a while to check dysmenorrhea no one would have thought this prohibited intercourse. So, clearly, it was the contraceptive intention that was bad, if contraceptive intercourse was: it is not that the sexual act in these circumstances is physically distorted. This had to be thought out, and it was thought out in the encyclical Humanae Vitae.
Here, however, people still feel intensely confused, because the intention where oral contraceptives are taken seems to be just the same as when intercourse is deliberately restricted to infertile periods. In one way this is true, and its truth is actually pointed out by Humanae Vitae, in a passage I will quote in a moment. But in another way it's not true.
The reason why people are confused about intention, and why they sometimes think there is no difference between contraceptive intercourse and the use of infertile times to avoid conception, is this: They don't notice the difference between "intention" when it means the intentionalness of the thing you're doing - that you're doing this on purpose - and when it means a further or accompanying intention with which you do the thing. For example, I make a table: that's an intentional action because I am doing just that on purpose. I have the further intention of, say, earning my living, doing my job by making the table. Contraceptive intercourse and intercourse using infertile times may be alike in respect of further intention, and these further intentions may be good, justified, excellent. This the Pope has noted. He sketched such a situation and said: "It cannot be denied that in both cases the married couple, for acceptable reasons," (for that's how he imagined the case) "are perfectly clear in their intention to avoid children and mean to secure that none will be born." This is a comment on the two things: contraceptive intercourse on the one hand and intercourse using infertile times on the other, for the sake of the limitation of the family.
But contraceptive intercourse is faulted, not on account of this further intention, but because of the kind of intentional action you are doing. The action is not left by you as the kind of act by which life is transmitted, but is purposely rendered infertile, and so changed to another sort of act altogether.
There's all the world of difference between this and the use of the "rhythm" method. For you use the rhythm method not just by having intercourse now, but by not having it next week, say; and not having it next week isn't something that does something to today's intercourse to turn it into an infertile act; today's intercourse is an ordinary act of intercourse, an ordinary marriage act. 

i) The problem with this argument is that it falls short of what she needs to prove. It is not enough to draw distinctions between one kind of contraceptive intent and another kind of contraceptive intent. For that, by itself, fails to explain what makes one licit and the other illicit. So she needs to take it to the next step by explicating why that's a morally salient distinction. Yet she simply drops the analysis at that crucial juncture of the argument. 

ii) Her omission is striking. She was a very capable philosopher. What is more, she was married to a very capable philosopher. Both were pious Catholics who wrote in defense of traditional moral theology. If, despite putting their heads together, she's unable to explain and defend why "artificial" contraceptive intent is wrong–unlike "natural" contraception intent–then the prospects for making that argument must be pretty dim. This is about as good as it gets. Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Geach were the power couple of Catholic philosophers. 

iii) And remember that by her own admission, it should be possible to mount a purely rational justification for the moral teaching of the church. A rationale that's independent of the church's authority. So she fails to solve the problem she posed for herself, as she herself framed the terms of success. 

A severe morality holds that intercourse (and may hold this of eating, too) has something wrong about it if it is ever done except explicitly as being required for that preservation of human life which is what makes intercourse a good kind of action. But this involves thoroughly faulty moral psychology. God gave us our physical appetite, and its arousal without our calculation is part of the working of our sort of life. Given moderation and right circumstances, acts prompted by inclination can be taken in a general way to accomplish what makes them good in kind and there's no need for them to be individually necessary or useful for the end that makes them good kinds of action. Intercourse is a normal part of married life through the whole life of the partners in a marriage and is normally engaged in without any distinct purpose other than to have it, just as such a part of married life.

A problem with that comparison is that some of our food consumption is purely for pleasure. It has no practical justification. Take deserts. We don't do that for the nutritional value. And the pleasure isn't a side-effect of nutrition. Rather, pleasure is the only motivation, and not an incidental consequence. Some deserts may have a bit of nutritional value, but we'd consume the desert absent nutritional value. That's not even a secondary consideration, much less the primary consideration. 

The Quiverfull movement

In this post I'm just sketching the lay of the land. 

i) The Duggar scandal has drawn attention to some related issues. There's an overlap between the homeschooling movement, the Quiverfull movement, and the Patriarchy movement. These are separable, and they are often separate in practice, but some members of one group belong to two or all three groups. 

ii) I think much of the hostility towards the Duggars is due to the fact that some young liberals find the very idea of childbearing offensive. An antinatalist philosophy is taking hold in secular circles. Couples who prefer dogs to kids. They disapprove of childbearing. They're into "saving the planet" from "overpopulation." 

iii) I don't know much about the Patriarchy movement. I'm guessing that Doug Wilson is probably its best representative. By that I mean, if you wish to evaluate the Patriarchy movement, he's probably the most articulate, responsible, and nuanced spokesman. I expect that he makes the best case that can be made for it.

I believe the Patriarchy movement intersects with the "Christian courtship" movement–as an alternative to dating. Likewise, the headcovering movement. 

There's a "family" of positions. 

I believe the Bayly brothers straddle some of these positions. 

Keep in mind that the liberal media and "progressive Christians" use "patriarchy" as an abusive synonym for complementarianism. The go-to site for complementarianism is the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. 

iv) I don't know much about the Quiverfull movement, but even though it's Protestant, it seems to take the Roman Catholic position to its logical conclusion.

Although I disagree with his position, I think Bryan C. Hodge has made what is the most scholarly case for traditional opposition to contraception, from an evangelical perspective. 

v) Critics of complementarianism can point to cases of abuse. That, however, needs to be counterbalanced against horrors stories involving feminism. In a fallen world, whoever has power is in a position to abuse their authority. In a fallen world, abuse of power is inevitable. 

Islam's depopulation bomb

I recently read a prediction that Islam is the world's fastest growing religion, on track to overtake Christianity in a few decades. I find that wildly implausible. Islam has very little appeal.

But be that as it may, here's another trend that may undercut that prediction:

http://www.hoover.org/research/fertility-decline-muslim-world

http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/03/09/the-islamic-worlds-quiet-revolution/

Rabbity Catholics

Papal lackey Dave Armstrong has been defending the pope's statement about Catholic who breed like rabbits. What's striking is the pushback from normally loyal Catholics. The pope's remark hit a sore nerve among the faithful:

wfee said...

I appear to be one of those "irresponsible parents". My wife has had 7 c-sections.
I agree with your facebook visitor.

Multiple C-sections are grave matters and should be considered carefully -- but in many cases the "danger" statistics are overhyped.

Examine your wikipedia statistics:
13 per 100k c-sections result in death -- That means that 99,987 did not die. Yes it is mathematically 3x worse chances, but it still a small chance.

On our firstborn, my wife experienced a partial accreta. Thank God we had a very expert OB/GYN who was able to effectively dig it out. We were warned every time that the odds were increasingly worse to have this occur with each subsequent pregnancy -- the likely fix would be a hysterectomy. 6 additional c-sections later... no accretas.

Your Wikipedia statistics say we were up to a "6.74% [chance of accreta] after six or more. " That's still 93% chance of no problems.
The chance of a car accident on the way to the hospital is probably higher. (Maybe not higher than the chance of a deadly accident, but you'd have a pregnant lady in the car...)

Our OB/GYN would portray these statistics in such a manner that would scare my wife all the time -- If I followed the verbal math she gave us, by the 3rd c-section we had a 175% chance of accreta and certain death. Of course we were offered sterilization options with every c-section.

If I told you that I had a financial investment that promised a slow growing return of 20 years that would cause you to lose all of your investment only 3% of the time would that scare you away? What about 7% of the time? If you still invest it at at 7% risk are you financially irresponsible? Of course not, there is still a 93% chance of good return. Those are significantly good odds of everything going well.

I disagree with the appeal to medical knowledge & statistics here. The culture I witnessed going though this scenario for real was that the medical facility wanted to sterilize us so that we couldn't have children after the very first c-section.

I disagree with having multiple c-sections being characterized as a "mistaken perspective". Your facebook friend is correct -- the pregnant woman & her husband's reasoning is very much required to determine "irresponsibility".

JT WIlson said...

If I'm following this reasoning, there is a significant risk of mortality with the woman's c-section, making in it wrong for her to bear another child. What happens when that logic is applied to prior centuries?

In the 1850s, a British woman's chance of death in childbirth (forget limiting to c-section) was 5/1000. Should any woman in prior centuries have risked more than one child? Certainly there was a great risk of orphaning the first. Looks like a population problem to me.

David L Alexander Uh, if that is indeed what he [Pope Francis] did, and given what little he could possibly know of the circumstances … probably not.

Jesus Perez Dave. Interesting article. Is your contention that the simple fact of having 8 C-sections [is] irresponsible parenthood or that plus a number of other factors? I have difficulty with this.

Michael Liccione Even granted that the Pope's view of that particular woman’s choices is correct, I think it was an error to cite a particular individual. Doing that only caused some women with many children to sympathize with her and resent the Pope's remark.

Jesus Perez This is a tough one Dave. My wife has had three c-sections and we were told not to have more children after our second child. I don't think we're being irresponsible. We want to have more, and we know many faithful couples who've had multiple c-sections.

David L Alexander Dave: "It's not about having eight children, but about having eight c-sections. The two scenarios are vastly different from each other. But …" … but those are medical judgments, not strictly moral ones, and the Holy Father risks being outside his area of competence, much less his authority. Thus it is no surprise if "that only caused some women with many children to sympathize with her and resent the Pope's remark."

David Palm Scott and Kimberly Hahn have six children and I think all of them were born via c-section.

David Palm Were the Hahns irresponsible to have six children via c-section?

David L Alexander Dave: My son from a prior union was born via c-section, and his mother had three miscarriages (one before, at least two after that we know of), and any subsequent births would most likely be c-section, as she was of small stature. We were in consultation with more doctors than I could shake a stick at. 

I question that such public displays are an appropriate venue for such rebukes, whether it's the Pope, or the pastor who lives down the lane. That it was indelicate and ill-mannered is my argument. I don't need to copy and paste from medical journals, and I don't need schooling from you on the risks involved. I had a ringside seat, and saw lives and a marriage ruined. Including mine.

Brendan Malone Dave, I love your work, but I've got to disagree with you on this one - as others have already said here, the issue is whether or not it was appropriate to actually publicly utilise that woman, and that specific scenario as an example of parental irresponsibility.

Surely her human dignity demands more than to be treated as an object lesson in irresponsibility for all the world's media?

Brendan Malone One other thing - I know of two very responsible and faithful local Catholic families who have been really hurt by the fact that Pope Francis used their specific family situation as an example of parental irresponsibility in front of the world's media.

Earlier today the wife of one of those families posed an important question on Facebook: 

"Everyone talks like NFP works all the time. It doesn't. I'm thankful for that cos I wouldn't have had all my kids if it did! But what if the woman highlighted by the pope HAD used it and was still in the same situation? Irresponsible then too?"

Paul Croarkin "There are many thousands of pro-life doctors". BS. Try finding one who won't prescribe contraception.

Paul Croarkin So, what was our option? Abort? V-bac was out of the question.

Rachel LaPointe I have to disagree with your comment a few up about whether nfp working or not has to do with this. In a way, it has everything to do with it. If NFP is unreliable, then responsible parenthood becomes extremely difficult for those who need to not have more kids. Say a young couple has six kids, by way of csection, can't risk another, but she's only 35. Do they have to abstain completely for the next 15-20 years, due to unreliable NFP? If you can't rely on NFP then you are risking a whole host of other issues.

Rachel LaPointe Paul, I know several people who have tried every modern method, and all have failed to correctly identify the fertile window. For most women, one method will work at least, whether creighton, Marquette, sympto thermal or billings (or any of the others). But I know at least one person, who right now is considering leaving the church because no method works and she can't justify using contraceptives or being sterilized and remaining in the church.

Rachel LaPointe And diocese support is crap in so many places. Excuse my language, but I've known too many people to get zero support. Some areas may be good, but many are not.

Rachel LaPointe Dave you can have unreliable signs. Constant mucus screws up lots of methods. Unreliable temps is easy to obtain for any mom if there's a sick kid or any other disturbance. And methods that rely on hormones can miss peak leaving you in unending highs and never ending abstinence if you struggle with cycles of varying lengths. 

This isn't the norm that I'm talking about. But never-ending abstinence when constantly hoping you might get one or two days every month or two is destroying marriages and faiths. The church teaches us that sex is important for marriage right? Celibate marriage is NOT the norm.

Rachel LaPointe Her husband is involved. It's a big burden for both of them.

Mary Ellen Wilhelm DeLong The pope chose a poor example to to make his point.. He should have chosen a woman with cancer who ABSTAINS as an example of responsible parenthood or an impoverished family with no means to sustain themselves or a mother with a serious heart condition etc. The example he used was subjective and poorly chosen.

Rachel LaPointe What if the woman in the example was perfectly following an NFP method, and had a method failure?

Rachel LaPointe I'm going to point out some hurdles to the advice given (all of which she's heard before, and I won't be pointing out again). 1. Money. NFP doctors aren't cheap, and insurance coverage can vary. 2. Every method has a method failure rate. It is possible that a woman could have such varying signs, without major underlying health issues, where she would fall into the category of none of the current methods working. 3. At some point, after numerous methods have failed to be accurate, there is a distinct lack of trust. Part of this stems from what I consider to be a normal response to nothing working. Another large part stems from a general vibe in the NFP community that something will just work or you aren't doing it right, or you aren't holy enough, or whatever. I doubt that those vibes are intentional, but the people who have issues ARE shot down and told they are imagining or it's otherwise their fault. That's "gaslighting" and is an abuse tactic. I'm part of a fairly large group of friends who have experienced these things, it's not an isolated experience of just a small handful of people.

I'm also only saying all this in an effort to bring our stories to light. We're all in the minority of people who do practice NFP. We don't want church teaching to change, because we see the wisdom in it. We love JP2 and the theology of the body. But that doesn't discount the trials, and I think when we are just told "suck it up" it's not enough, because that could mean life or death, or a baby coming that we can't afford or any number of very serious things. Not everyone is able to be like St Gianna. 

For this group, we were excited with the pope's remarks.. to us it was a pat on the back of "You are doing the right things by being prudent and avoiding pregnancy". It wasn't a "Well, if you get pregnant in life or death circumstances, you'll be happy anyway because NFP makes you open to life" (a common common thing to hear on certain very large NFP groups here on facebook). The NFP offices seem to put an emphasis on the "rainbows and butterflies", which makes anyone who experiences major struggles feel abnormal. Most of us probably don't look like the happy couples on the brochures. And combine that with experiences of people who get shot down when they ask for help, well, there's an issue. It's much larger than what I could put in a facebook comment, and it is something dear to my heart.

Benjamin Baxter Part of the problem is that this explanations adds suppositions which, while plausible, Pope Francis isn't mentioning. He's leaving a lot to guess at. It is certainly a failure of communication (as a remark made to everyone.) Pope Francis is not a good public speaker. He's a personal communicator, one-on-one. Trouble is, he's speaking publicly. 

Now, being a good communicator is not a requirement for sanctity. However, being a good communicator has been a quality of the papacy for the last thirty years. People listening to the pope and expecting that are understandably distressed. 

Bottom line: The role of someone who "gets the Pope" is not to condescend or assume hostile motives but first to recognize that someone is angry and, more likely than not, has a very understandable reason for it. 

Someone I know talked about these remarks as brilliant. They aren't. They're likely interpersonally effective in the moment but they are publicly scandalous because they are shared around the world. If someone is going to speak to "the little ones" about Pope Francis, recognizing the genuine distress is a huge first step, and recognizing it as a legitimate distress is the most important second step.

Kathy Jones When I was growing up , our family doctor (a wonderful Catholic guy) and his wife had 11 children......all by c-section. All healthy, beautiful etc. I can see the Holy Father's point....still he picks his spots to say "Who am I to judge."

John D. Lewis How many c-sections is responsible then?

John D. Lewis How many natural births is responsible then? (I ask this because I think the same logic can be obtained perhaps; for example, as teacher of NFP, my wife and I would usually flippantly say something like "The Church calls us to 'responsible parenthood' which means, most likely, God does not want us to have 0 or 1.3 children nor 25 children." But having just thrown that big 25 number out there, now I'm wondering what a truly "irresponsible" number would be? And how would one distinguish between "irresponsibility" and "providentialism" I wonder? I would think that having 0 children due to selfishness would be the worse sin than having 25 children due to irresponsibility. Am I wrong there? In conclusion, one thing I think we can all agree upon is that whether it's the 3rd or 13th c-section, when one looks at that precious new LIFE smiling at ya, you'd have to say "Oh happy fault!!!!"

"Pregnant by chance"

Papal lackey Scott Eric Alt is once again attempting to save the pope's rancid bacon. 

Now, per­haps Mr. Hays has heard of a fal­lacy that goes by the name of argu­men­tum ad vere­cun­diam. It’s the obverse of an appeal to author­ity, and the gist of it is that some­one who has no creden­tials in some area lacks cred­i­bil­ity. The rea­son it is a fal­lacy is because you should judge an argu­ment based on its own mer­its, not any pre­sumed inex­per­tise in the per­son who makes the argument.

It's always nice to see a Catholic apologist openly admit that the claims of Rome are logically fallacious. At one stroke, Alt invalidates Catholicism by pointing out that appealing to the Magisterium is an illicit argument from authority. 

Actu­ally, all I really meant was that the woman was con­sciously set­ting out to get preg­nant.

So does he know that? Even if she wanted to get pregnant again, what makes him assume that she was "consciously setting out get pregnant again"? 

After all, having regular conjugal relations is good in its own right. And if in the process of having conjugal relations, pregnancy results, so much the better. That's a boon. A windfall. 

They do so by delib­er­ately hav­ing sex when the woman cal­cu­lates that she is most fer­tile. 

How does Alt happen to have such intimate knowledge of this couple's sex life? Does he have a hidden camera planted in their bedroom? 

What about sexual spontaneity in marriage? Is that a foreign concept to Alt? What about a married couple having conjugal relations whenever the mood strikes–which may or may not coincide with ovulation? 

First, he poses this ques­tion: “Do fer­tile cou­ples who engage in reg­u­lar con­ju­gal rela­tions delib­er­ately seek to achieve preg­nancy, or is that sim­ply the nat­ural out­come?”

Well, again, that misses the point.

That hardly misses the point when that is the very point which Alt is laboring to make.

 The pope was speak­ing to a woman who wanted another pregnancy. She was try­ing to get preg­nant. This wasn’t a sit­u­a­tion where the woman just became preg­nant by chance. 

"Pregnant by chance"? Isn't copulation designed to procreate?

His point to her was that she should make an effort to avoid pregnancy. If preg­nancy had hap­pened any­way, in spite of her effort to avoid it, there would have been no rebuke.

How should she avoid it? By refusing to have sex if her husband initiates a sexual overture at the "wrong" time? If you're going to abstain from sex, why get married in the first place? 

Surely it's easier to practice abstinence if you're not sleeping right next to a member of the opposite sex. Shouldn't you avoid putting yourself in that tempting situation in the first place? 

Sec­ond, Mr. Hays attempts to apply a sort of Pascal’s wager to another preg­nancy for this woman. If she got preg­nant again and the baby should die, is that child worse off than if he had never been conceived at all?
Of course, what Mr. Hays neglects to men­tion here is that Ms. Wahlund does not merely say that there is a grave risk to the baby’s life—there is a grave risk to the mother’s life too. “Her uterus,” she says, “is paper-thin.” Now, think about that. There is a grave risk that her liv­ing chil­dren will be left with­out a mother. So the wager that Mr. Hays pro­poses here is just non­sense, since we’re talking about both lives.

Alt continues to miss the point. How is it a risk to the baby at all given the alternative (i.e. certain nonexistence)? 

“Con­tra­cep­tion,” he con­cludes, “is far riskier to the baby than a risky preg­nancy.” I frankly don’t know what Mr. Hays means here. How is con­tra­cep­tion risky to an unborn child? If a woman has already con­ceived, pre­sum­ably she’s not going to be using con­tra­cep­tion; she can’t get simul­ta­ne­ously preg­nant. If a woman is not preg­nant, and is using NFP rather than some illicit form of contracep­tion that, say, pre­vents implan­ta­tion only, then there’s no baby in the first place. You can’t put a life at risk that does not exist. So Mr. Hays just makes me scratch my head at this point.

I see that Alt is intellectually challenged. The alternative to a high-risk pregnancy is contraception–in which case (if successful) the existence of the baby is preempted. Therefore, contraception poses a greater threat to the baby than a high-risk pregnancy. How can you save "both lives" if you prevent one from ever existing? One scenario involves total deprivation. A lost opportunity.

To recur to my illustration: take a cancer patient who has a choice between terminal cancer and life-threatening treatment. Considering the alternate to treatment, the cancer is riskier than the treatment. Absent treatment, the patient has everything to lose. With treatment, the patient has a chance to survive. 

Third, Mr. Hays shifts the ground of argu­ment and tries to make it a ques­tion of risks due to age rather than risks due to poor uter­ine health. He asks: “Since when has it been church pol­icy to tell Catholic moth­ers to stop hav­ing chil­dren above a cer­tain num­ber or above a cer­tain age?”
Well, it’s not, and that’s not the issue here. The issue here is the health of the mother, not the age of the mother or how many chil­dren she already has. There may be issues that arise, in this woman or that woman, as a result of the aging process, which also make it fair to dis­cuss whether avoid­ing preg­nancy would be wise. But the real issue is the woman’s health, not the woman’s age.

Is Alt really that clueless? It's a question of consistency. Given increasing risk factors with advancing age or additional children, if it is "irresponsible" and "tempting God" to have a risky pregnancy, then the Vatican should tell Catholic wives to stop after having X number of babies due to mounting risk factors, or to stop having babies after a certain age due to mounting risk factors. 

But when in the history of the papacy has that ever been the case? Throughout church history, women kept having babies until they either hit menopause or died in childbirth. Since when did the papacy tell them to stop due to multiplying risk factors? 

I will, how­ever, say this. The idea that NFP is some­thing that is just “easy for celi­bate clergy to say” shows that Mr. Hays is deeply igno­rant of the defenses of NFP that have been writ­ten by married Catholics. He should take a look at this one. Sim­cha Fisher is very hon­est about how dif­fi­cult NFP is.

To  his credit, when Alt is confused, he's consistently confused. I didn't say NFP was easy for couples to practice. Rather, I said it was easy to people who don't have to practice NFP to impose that on others. It's easy for Catholic clergy to say it. The Magisterium is just like the Pharisees who "tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger" (Mt 23:4).

The crazy uncle of the papacy

One of this pope's many self-appointed handlers, in this case a lay blogger named Scott Eric Alt, attempted to reply to some comments I recently made about Pope Francis.

It's revealing that Francis requires a phalanx of official and unofficial handlers to "clarify" his statements. That's usually a sure sign that a public figure is either losing his marbles or never had the Tombowlers to begin with.

In the com­box, Steve “Pur­ple” Hays (who also posts at Fail­ablogue) gives us a list of obser­va­tions, only a few of which inter­est me. 

Since purple is the color of episcopal vestments, I've flattered by Alt's honorific epithet, but I must decline the promotion. 

The first is a ques­tion: “What’s so bad about a C-section?” Well, noth­ing at all is “bad about a C-section,” Mr. Hays; and in fact, if you had both­ered to read the tran­script, you would have noticed that the pope was speak­ing of a woman who had already had seven of them and was going out of her way to get preg­nant again. 

i) Evidently, Alt's dad never told him about the birds and the bees. A woman who's been pregnant eight times doesn't need to "go out of her way" to become pregnant. Rather, that's the natural result of regular conjugal relations. 

ii) It is only in the case of infertile couples that the woman must go out of her way to get pregnant–by visiting fertility clinics. But, clearly, fertility isn't this woman's problem.

iii) A woman who's been pregnant eight times would need to go out of her way not to become pregnant again. Alt has it precisely backwards. In her case, the challenge isn't getting pregnant, but avoiding pregnancy–assuming, for the sake of argument, that that's even desirable. 

A Face­book friend and fel­low Catholic blog­ger, JoAnna Wahlund, explains why the pope was right to be con­cerned. (This was in a Face­book thread on my own page.)

Another one of this pope's ubiquitous handlers. Whatever else you might say about Ratzinger, he can speak for himself. 

All preg­nan­cies have the poten­tial to be risky. But seven C-sections dras­ti­cally increases the risk of pla­centa acc­reta, which can cause the uterus to rup­ture (killing both mom and baby). If a woman has had seven C-sections, her uterus is paper thin, and doc­tors tell her, “Another preg­nancy could very well kill you and your child,” then yes, it is risky and irre­spon­si­ble to delib­er­ately seek to achieve pregnancy in that sit­u­a­tion.

Several problems with that analysis:

i) Do fertile couples who engage in regular conjugal relations deliberately seek to achieve pregnancy, or is that simply the natural outcome? 

ii) Risky for whom? Not for the baby. In that situation, the baby has everything to gain and nothing to lose. Yes, there's a danger that the baby will die. If, however, the baby was never conceived in the first place, then he inevitably loses out. In a choice between possibly losing out and inevitably losing out, contraception is far riskier to the baby than a risky pregnancy. 

To take a comparison, if it's a choice between terminal cancer and life-threatening therapy, a patient will opt for therapy. With therapy, he may live or die. Without therapy, he's bound to die. The risk assessment speaks for itself. A chance at life trumps no chance at life. 

iii) To my knowledge, the risk of medical complications increases with the age of the mother as well as the number of pregnancies. Yet throughout church history, and in many parts of the Third World today, Catholic wives have continued to become pregnant until they either hit menopause or died in childbirth. 

Since when has it been church policy to tell Catholic mothers to stop having children above a certain number or above a certain age? Since the risk factors increase over time, with added age or added children, then by Alt's logic and Walhlund's logic, it is irresponsible for Catholic wives to keep having babies until they pass the childbearing years. If so, where can that be found in canon law? 

Now, what the pope says, in effect (if Mr. Hays had both­ered to read the tran­script and not just the lib­eral media), is not, Don’t have a C-section but, If you’ve had seven of them, maybe going out of your way to get preg­nant again isn’t the best thing. 

Since it's the husband who impregnates the wife, why blame the wife? If you insist on framing the issue that way, then isn't it the husband who's going out of his way to make another baby? 

Don’t tempt God. 

Have Catholic wives throughout church history (as well as Catholic wives in Third World countries today) been guilty of tempting God by continuing to conceive babies until the clock runs out? 

There are licit ways for you to avoid preg­nancy, which you should use. 

Of course, that's easy for "celibate" clergy to say. Catholic clergy practice contraception by having sex with altar boys. That's clerical family planning. Sodomy is a surefire way to avoid pregnancy. Pedophilia is the perfect prophylactic. 

If you do oth­er­wise, you risk that you will die, your baby will die, and your other chil­dren will be left with­out a mother. Respon­si­ble par­ent­hood.

Since when did patristic popes, medieval popes, Renaissance popes, Enlightenment popes, et al., set the maximum age beyond which it is unsafe (hence, "irresponsible") for Catholic wives to reproduce? When did patristic popes, medieval popes, Renaissance popes, Enlightenment popes, set the maximum limit on the number of children beyond which it is unsafe (hence, "irresponsible") for Catholic wives to procreate? I'd like to see the documentation.