Occasionally a CCL teacher will be accused of teaching an immoral /
questionable method because we teach internal observations. This
started with a statement by Dr. John Billings about 1980 that he had
heard reports that some women found that the internal observations
provided a masturbatory stimulus. Soon his disciples lobbied the
Vatican to call such examinations "immoral". The Pope replied
on July 3,1982, at a meeting of NFP teachers. "It is necessary that
various groups dedicated to this noble work appreciate their respective
work and mutually exchange experiences and results, firmly avoiding
tensions aud disagreements which could threaten so important
and difficult
a work. Since the conditions of couples are so diverse due to diverse
cultures, races, personal situations, etc., it is providential that
diverse methods exist, capable of better
responding to such diverse
situations" (LOR, l2
July 1982, 4, emphasis added). Sometimes we still hear this old and
discredited criticism.
"Lust
is disordered
desire for inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Sexual
pleasure
is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated for its
procreative and unitive purposes."
Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 2351
"So,
chastity
is not to
be understood as a repressive attitude. On the contrary, chastity
should
be understood rather as the purity and temporary stewardship of a
precious
and rich gift of love, in view of the self-giving realized in each
person's
specific vocation. Chastity is thus that 'spiritual energy capable of
defending
love from the perils of selfishness and aggressiveness, and able to
advance
it towards its full realization".
-- (Pope John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio)
The Embryo: A Sign of Contradiction
By Bishop Elio Sgreccia
vice president of the Pontifical Academy for Life
"....At the present day there are two other great questions which have
brought bioethics and biolaw to the center of public attention:
a) the question of in vitro procreation which involves the phenomenon
of the surplus production of embryos which come to be termed
"supernumerary" (a new category of human being) and where a number of
abuses take place:
freezing, transfers which cause death, experiments, periodic
destruction
ordered by governments, and the removal of cells;
b) the question of new products, methods and vaccines which are deemed
contraceptive, interceptive or anti-pregnancy but which are in reality
techniques
of abortion because they prevent the implanting or the process of
implanting
of an ovum which has already been fertilized.
Among these, reference should be made to the IUD, the morning-after
pill, Norplant and vaccines.
I would like to draw attention to a passage from the instruction "Donum
Vitae" which is in turn quoted by the encyclical "Evangelium Vitae":
"From the time that the ovum is fertilized, a new life is begun which
is neither that of the father nor of the mother; it is rather the life
of a
new human being with his own growth. It would never be made human if it
were
not human already. ... Right from fertilization is begun the adventure
of
a human life..." ("Donum Vitae," I,1; "Evangelium Vitae," No. 60).
The proof of this statement is to be found above all else in biological
facts:
1. From the moment of fertilization we are in the presence of a new,
independent, individualized being which develops in continuous fashion.
There is no moment which is less necessary than another, and each stage
is strictly dependent upon the stage which precedes it and which
determines it.
2. Objections based upon the fact of gemination, upon the appearance of
the primitive streak and of the nervous system bud, and upon the
relevance of the implanting as a decisive event for the continuation of
development, do not bear in the least upon the individuality of the
embryo or the continuity of development... The two moments of real
discontinuity in the life of an individual are to be found in the acts
of fertilization and of death...
R. Colombo, a molecular biologist, observes: "None of the scientific
knowledge available to us allows certain support for the objections
raised to the
rational nature of the human embryo and the human fetus and its
individualization."
The original text is at:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/hlthwork/documents/rc_pc_hlthwork_doc_05101997_sgreccia_en.html
"Contraception is to be judged so
profoundly unlawful as never to be, for any reason,
justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to
maintaining that, in human life, situations may arise in which it's
lawful not to recognize God as God".
John Paul II L'Osservatore Romano, October
10, 1983
"It is a very great poverty to decide that a child must die that you might live as you wish"
--Mother
Teresa of Calcutta
"Because it is in the divine plan to use
the love of the flesh as a stepping stone to the love of the divine, it
always happens in a well-regulated moral heart, that as time goes on,
the erotic love diminishes, and the religious love increases.
That is
why in true marriages the love
of God increases through the years, not in the sense that husband and
wife
love one another less, but that they love God more. Love passes from an
affection for outer appearances, to those inner depths of personality
which embody
the divine Spirit."
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen