Pope says, Sex can become 'like a drug'

Principessa

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Pope: Sex can become 'like a drug'

VATICAN CITY, Italy (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged Saturday that the Vatican's teaching against birth control was difficult as he praised a 1968 Church document that condemned contraception.

In a speech marking the 40th anniversary of the document, Benedict reiterated the Church's ban against artificial birth control as well as more recent teaching against using artificial procreation methods.

Pope Paul VI's 1968 "Humanae vitae" ("On Human Life") encyclical prohibits Catholics from using artificial birth control. "The teaching laid out in the 'Humanae vitae' encyclical isn't easy," Benedict said.
"What was true yesterday remains true even today. The truth expressed in 'Humanae vitae' doesn't change; on the contrary, in the light of new scientific discoveries, it is ever more up to date," the pope added.

Benedict appeared to be referring to artificial procreation methods, which in the Church's view offend the dignity of life and go against Vatican teaching that the only way to conceive a child is through intercourse between husband and wife. "No mechanical technique can substitute the act of love that two married people exchange as a sign of a greater mystery," Benedict said.

Benedict expressed concern that human life risks losing its value in today's culture and worried that sex could "transform itself into a drug" that one partner had to have even against the will of the other.

"What must be defended is not only the true concept of life but above all the dignity of the very person," the pope added.

Paul VI was said to have agonized over whether to allow artificial conception in preparing the encyclical. Benedict described Paul's decision as the fruit of much suffering and the document as "a significant gesture of courage."

"Forty years after its publication, that teaching not only shows itself to be unchanged in its truth, but it reveals the farsightedness with which the problem was tackled," the pope said.

I'm not Catholic, so I hope you can forgive my ignorance on this subject. :redface:

I'm a bit confused as to how The Pope can be pro-life, yet anti-artificial insemination and anti-invitro fertilization?

It has been my experience that, usually couples who have to use other means to bear children value those children as a miracle or blessed event, as much, if not moreso than parents who are able to conceive naturally. I don't believe that these people devalue sex because they are doing it for intimacy or pleasures sake, rather than for the purposes of creating life.

Hmmm, I guess it's a good thing I'm not Catholic. :biggrin1:
 

Altitude

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Well it makes sense if you look at where he's coming from. Basically anything diverting from natural intercourse to create a child is "offensive" merely because it's not (in their view) the way God intended children to be made. He's not saying that he's against something like adoption, but he is saying that it devalues life when scientific 'methods' like in-vitro and such are used as a substitute for intercourse. I'm hardly agreeing with him but I can see where he's coming from.
 

Guy-jin

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I'm a bit confused as to how The Pope can be pro-life, yet anti-artificial insemination and anti-invitro fertilization?

From a moral standpoint, you shouldn't be able to have it both ways because artificial insemination/in vitro fertilization creates embryos that are destroyed, just like abortion does. The mind-boggling thing is the people who are pro-life and yet in favor of in vitro fertilization. Even worse are people who are in favor of in vitro fertilization but anti-stem cells. What do they think happens to the extra embryos? They don't eventually grow into adult humans... they're stored away until doomsday or destroyed.

Anyway, I'm getting jittery. I need me some more sex!
 

sdbg

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Sex is better than drugs. If you're careful with it, there are no bad side effects. I was raised Catholic, but I think the ban against birth control is stupid and totally out of step with our current world. The earth is already overpopulated. Sex is natural and humans have an instinctual need to mate. It only makes sense to me to use condoms. I have turned away from religion because of this stupid kind of brainwashing that makes people ashamed of being human and enjoying this very basic need. I'm still deprogramming all the negative bullshit that has hung me up for decades.
 

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"What was true yesterday remains true even today."

Yes, so there can be no room for growth of understanding of the human condition, or of science, or technology or anything else that does not fit so long as the truth is narrowly defined by yesterdays doctrines. The world is more complex than that. People are more complex than that. I fail to see how anyone can take any of this stuff seriously; and you can lump all religious doctrines into the same bucket, I don't discriminate! LOL
 

pronatalist

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The natural flow of human life, should be always welcomed to flow and surge naturally and unhindered.

Sex is better than drugs. If you're careful with it, there are no bad side effects. I was raised Catholic, but I think the ban against birth control is stupid and totally out of step with our current world. The earth is already overpopulated. Sex is natural and humans have an instinctual need to mate. It only makes sense to me to use condoms. I have turned away from religion because of this stupid kind of brainwashing that makes people ashamed of being human and enjoying this very basic need. I'm still deprogramming all the negative bullshit that has hung me up for decades.

Sure, sex can be a bit like some habit-forming but safe "drug." People have historically been "addicted" to it, perhaps that's partly how there came to be some 6.7 billion of us now upon the planet.

The Catholic position makes some sense, I agree that human life is sacred and we ought not to interfere with its creation, nor to profane sex by denying the prospect of "overflowing" love to allow the possibility of additional people coming to life. But the Catholic position is too inconsistant. Somebody at work said that rhythm seeks to prevent human life, so shouldn't it be discouraged as well? That's long been more my position. So "artificial" methods have those nasty side-effects. But the world balks and says that rhythm requires too much will-power. Well doesn't that leave discussing the virtues of the "no method" method of "family planning?" Welcoming families everywhere to grow naturally, the natural flow of human life unhindered.

The world doesn't have too many people. Most everywhere we can look, there can be found, or made, lots more room for lots more people.

Many Catholics who believe hindering the natural procreative aspect of sex, to be wrong, also believe artificial assistance of infertility problems, to be against God's will. I disagree partly. They have a point, but it's a virtue to promote human life, and the best I can tell, even "test tube" babies enjoy living as well. I don't see that people are obligated to resort to "artificial" infertility assistance, as God could obviously heal infertility problems no fault of the people themselves. But I just don't see how we are prohibitted morally, from some reasonable level of "artificial" treatment of infertility problems, as wouldn't such medical care be consistant also, with choosing life? (See Deut. 30:19.) But as there are moral problems with suspected "abortifacient" methods of "birth control," there's also moral problems with "designer babies" or "selective reductions" or abandoning embryos to be forgotten in deep-freeze storage as well. Some people have expressed interest in adopting "snowflake" babies, as I believe they should. Because of various moral quandries of trying to "play God," there's much elegance and beauty in encouraging mainly the old, tried and true, "natural" method of conceiving babies.

Yes, sex is natural, and humans have an instinctual need to mate. But human population growth is beautiful as it allows all the more people to experience life, and so sex in its proper unselfish procreative context is beautiful as well, and the numbers of people enjoying it and producing babies, should be welcome to rise naturally unhindered. The natural remedy for powerful human reproductive urges is of course, pregnancy. The natural remedy for pregnancy is childbirth. By allowing the world to naturally populate denser and denser with people, all the more people can experience life, and people may go on enjoying having their progeny. It's God who commanded people to Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, so it's then God's responsibility to determine how populous he would make us to become, not ours. To try to "control" our birthrates, is just another evil example of humans trying to "play God," that is forbidden and should still be thought of as taboo, or at the very least, impractical and contrary to basic freedom.

I don't believe humans should be ashamed to be human and to be procreating naturally-growing families. People should be welcome to enjoy having all the children they were meant to have, no matter where they live, whether in the spacious countryside, or in the huge megacities perhaps growing larger and closer together. Urbanize the planet to whatever extent needed. People in big cities have their need for sexual relief too, and children are glad to come alive, even if into already big families, or into overcrowded cities or shantytowns. I have long advocated large families, and more people marrying young too, and reject the trendy fallacy that humans should use any means of nasty, shoddy, anti-life "birth control," that we were never designed to use.
 

pronatalist

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omg really? Sex....Addictive.....noooooooooo

Sex is hereditory. If your parents didn't do it, neither would you.

You probably could claim eating food is "addictive" as well? People who eat food, seem to do it again, and again and ...

It's the natural rhythm of life.
 

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In reality most modern Catholics ignore the pope in some of his mediaval views . I was raised Catholic but this religion like others have a huge mistakes with some of their dogmas in the modern world .
 

pronatalist

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Pronatalist said:
Sex is hereditory. If your parents didn't do it, neither would you.

If our parents didn't do it, we wouldn't be here to talk about it...

I know that, so I advocate that parents go on enjoy sex naturally and reproducing ever more people, so that future generations can come to be around, to talk about it as well.

"World population is barely large enough for you and I to have been born." some poster on the internet

Good thing our ancestors weren't population phobic.

The natural and elegant outlet for our powerful reproductive urges, is proper commitment in marriage for the security of families, and of course reproduction.
 

pronatalist

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Sex is a vital healthy part of the natural rhythm of life.

Yes sex can become like a drug but not nearly as much as .....religon :tongue:

Maybe it's no so much whether sex is "addictive" like a drug, but whether it's a proper healthy addiction. People tend to habitually eat and sleep and pee, so maybe we should stop doing those things? Of course not. There's a proper place for those things, as there is for people pairing up, marrying, and working productive jobs and such to better support their natural proliferating of their numbers.

The liberal war protesters of the rebellious 1960s were partially right about "Make love, not war." Having children gives people something productive to do, to stay out of trouble, so yeah "making love" is a great idea, if it's all about building lasting families and welcoming children to come to life, rather than fighting amongst ourselves needlessly. We all need such useful things to do. Besides, having babies is generally very good for growing and stimulating the economy, far more safely with so much less mess, than war ever was.
 

pronatalist

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A growing world of people, very much needs more pronatalists with some vision of where we should be headed.

I really like this new pope. He looks kinda scary, but he's actually done really good things for the church. For a pope, he's pretty progressive.

Well I hope they will still advocate large families. Somebody has to do it. So much of the Church has become so worldly, sounding too much like the world, and not enough of the ways of God.

Progressive? Is that good or bad? Is that liberal or conservative?

I seem to recall something about the Pope scolding the West for not having enough children. But that may have been the previous Pope?

I would count that the Pope says not to use "artificial" birth control, fairly low on the very long list of moral and practical reasons to let families grow possibly large, as I am Protestant, not Catholic. If the Popes and priests think large families are such a good idea, then why the celibacy? That I have never understood so well. As I don't see it commanded in my Bible. Set the example, and let moral people with large families, be priests, bishops, preachers or whatever. Maybe that's partly why Protestants don't seem to have quite the same problems, that Catholicism sometimes gets in the news for?

And good parents need ready excuses to reject the anti-faith message of the "family planners" ever pushing their shoddy, promiscuity-promoting experimental contraceptive potions and poisons.