Cue the neckbearded trolls in 3, 2, 1….

3,2,1..

I disagree with Father Barron when he says the Church encourages both Faith and Reason. What else is he going to say?  Believers first accept a Church teaching such as birth control is intrinsically evil, then they try to rationalize why that is so. When the Pope says that gay marriage, like abortion and euthanasia, poses a threat to world peace, they will turn over every rock and make every kind of argument to prove it is so. Faith comes first to them. Then they try to use reason to prove what they believe, first to themselves, then to anyone who will listen to them.

Bill S,

    instead of smearing believers, can you instead refute their arguments?  For example, what are the rational arguments in favor of artificial contraception, forcing a redefinition of the natural institution of marriage, or murdering people before they cross the birth canal or when they are old?  You bland and unsupported assertion proves nothing.

“what are the rational arguments in favor of artificial
contraception, forcing a redefinition of the natural institution of
marriage, or murdering people before they cross the birth canal or when they
are old? “

Artificial contraception helps couple control the size of their family. It allows couples to have sex without the risk of pregnancy and obviates the need for abortions.

Redefinition of marriage would allow people of the same sex to marry, adopt children, meet needs for health care and avoid certain taxes in the event of the death of one of the partners.

Abortion terminates unwanted pregnancies that could severely impact women’s lives.

And death with dignity allows dying patients to end their suffering.

Bill S
I have to disagree with your assertion that “believers first accept a Church teaching… then try to rationalize why that is so.” That’s a rather broad statement. As a fallen away Catholic Christian that has now returned to the faith, I believed as you did; that contraception was a good thing, that redefining marriage was a good thing, and that while abortion wasn’t necessarily a good thing in and of itself, that the ends could justify the means (i.e., unwanted children would live a terrible life). So, I came from it the other way around—first reason, then faith. I disagreed with the church, but through study and reason, have come to the conclusion that the Church is right—NOT based on matters of faith alone, but through reason.

“I disagreed with the church, but through study and reason, have come to the conclusion that the Church is right—NOT based on matters of faith alone, but through reason.”

So, through reason, you have concluded separately for each disputed issue, that the Church just so happens to be right on every single issue. When our own President, a Harvard graduate with a wife and two daughters supports contraception coverage, gay marriage, and abortion on demand, he is wrong on every single issue. When Benedict says that gay marriage poses a threat to world peace, he is right. What are the chances of that?

Bill S.,

You seem to assert that Catholics would all believe that birth control, abortion, gay marriage, and euthanasia are morally acceptable if the Church didn’t teach them to be evil. That’s a faulty argument. And as someone who was once agnostic/atheist myself, I can say that the entire time I didn’t believe in God I knew abortion and extra-marital sex was wrong. And yes, that also includes using contraception).

I did reason for myself, too, and after taking philosophy courses in epistemology and metaphysics, I could no longer honestly say that it is reasonable to look only to my own feelings to determine whether something was morally right or wrong. This philosophy is called relativism and it destroys all discussion of morality and ethics.

“You seem to assert that Catholics would all believe that birth control, abortion, gay marriage, and euthanasia are morally acceptable if the Church didn’t teach them to be evil.”

There are many non-Catholics and non-practicing Catholics that do not consider these things to be their business and do not necessarily see them as immoral in all cases.  For example, what really is so evil about birth control?  Why isn’t abortion a woman’s choice and no one else’s.  Whose business is it if gays get married and how does it pose a threat to world peace as Benedict has asserted?  And death with dignity is a terminal patient’s right.  These are not evil. Raping young boys is evil.

“Artificial contraception helps couple control the size of their family. It allows couples to have sex without the risk of pregnancy and obviates the need for abortions.”
There is a moral way to do that which does not unnaturally degrade the sex act by severing it from the possibiliy of transmitting life.
“Redefinition of marriage would allow people of the same sex to marry, adopt children, meet needs for health care and avoid certain taxes in the event of the death of one of the partners.”
People of the same sex cannot marry since they lack the complementarity required to form the two-in-one flesh union that marriage is.  One can no more redefine marriage than one can declare that triangles may now have four sides.  Those benefits can be had without attacking marriage.
“Abortion terminates unwanted pregnancies that could severely impact women’s lives.”
It impacts the lives of chhildren, too, by murdering them.  No inconvenience to the parents justifies the deliberate taking of an innocent life.

You are guilty of what you accuse Catholics of:  you establish a moral code based on hedonistic whim which trumps human life and then attempt to rationalize it.  How pathetic and sad. 
Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/matthew-warner/ask-fr.-barron-whats-relationship-between-faith-and-reason-and-the-limits-o#ixzz2MKMCU9Uv

“There is a moral way to do that which does not unnaturally degrade the sex
act by severing it from the possibiliy of transmitting life.”

Since natural family planning allows the possibility of not working, thereby transmitting life, it is considered moral. Condoms and other more reliable methods are evil because of their reliability. At least with NFP allows God’s will to be done by not working. Got it.

“People of the same sex cannot marry since they lack the complementarity required to form the two-in-one flesh union that marriage is.”
Well, that doesn’t seem like a moral issue. Why not let them work out the logistics?

“No inconvenience to the parents justifies the deliberate taking of an innocent life.”
This is absolutely no one’s business but the woman’s. how dare anyone to try to force her to go through to full term on an unwanted pregnancy.

“How pathetic and sad.”
Yeah. The Church’s attempt to control people. That’s pathetic and sad.

Leave the Church out of it.  Your positions are wrong on purely moral and logical grounds, informed as they are by an insidious anti-life premise.  The fact that the Church is right on these things is a good argument for Catholicism, but these issues are accessible to any person gifted with reasoning powers independent of divine revelation.

“The fact that the Church is right on these things is a good argument for Catholicism”

Who said that the Church is right on these things?  By whose definition of right?  How can the Church be right by its own definition of right?  It’s like saying that the Bible is true because it says so in the Bible.

The Church’s position on birth control where it allows the unreliable NFP but prohibits the more reliable condoms and the pill can only be described as bizarre. Its attitude toward gays is bigoted. Benedict’s statement that gay marriage poses a threat to world peace is outrageous and has sparked a White House petition to list the Catholic Church as a hate group.

It has no business telling women what they can and can’t do with their own bodies.  It claims that the soul enters a person at conception which is just a superstition.

You think that the Church has the moral high ground but all I see is misguided self-righteousness.

Human reason says that the Church is right. Intercourse exists for the purpose of procreation, a fact of nature on which the human species depends for its continued existence.  This is not in dispute—it is reason bolstered by scientific fact.  Humans reproduce via the coupling of sexually complementary pairs, thus those unions rightfully hold special recognition since they are the basic building block of human societies.  It is not bigotry to recognize the simple fact that same-sex partnerships do not deserve this recognition any more than ordinary, platonic friendships.  As for the woman’s body, that is absurd since if the child in question is not a separate person but rather a part of the woman’s body, it must follow that the woman has two heads, eight limbs, etc (and in the case of a boy she has a penis).  We need not speculate on the theology of ensoulment to recognize a new life which deserves protection—DNA evidence is enough to confirm this.  On the contrary it is pro-abortionists who are guilty of superstition with their belief that personhood is magically conveyed by transiting the birth canal when there is no science to back up this fanciful claim and there is no moral differece between children on either side of that arbitrary divide. NFP is quite reliable, by the way, or I’d have eight kids already.

Mr Barker,

How can I put this. The Catholic morality that you espouse is over the top. If that is true morality, then the next question is “why be moral?”  Why not just obey the laws of the land and just let moralists like you think, do and say whatever they want as long as they don’t try to impose their morals on those who choose not to accept them?

By your standards, we are all immoral at one time or another, if not by our actions, then by what we condone. The Supreme Court has ruled that abortion must be legal in all states. It will likely rule the same for gay marriage. Contraception is not only legal but is covered on most employer health plans.

The President of the United States is a Harvard graduate with a wife and two daughters. He strives to guarantee the individual freedoms and benefits that the Catholic Church would deny us. It tries to intimidate people into doing its will by calling it the “will of God” and by threatening punishment in an afterlife for those who disobey. Therefore, as well intended as it may be, I join those who disregard your so-called morality.

My response hasn’t gotten through the NCR thought police. I see that you have very strict morals. I hope that you don’t try to impose them on others. You have no right to tell a girl in trouble or a rape or incest victim that she cannot have an abortion. Or a same sex couple that they can’t marry. Or someone that doesn’t want any or any more children that they can’t practice birth control other than NFP.

Your morals come from the Catholic Church. You can say they come from reason and logic but they are neither reasonable nor logical to me. You may get another response that I sent earlier as well.

Yes, the Nazis had a certain logic, devoid of faith, which justified their murders, too.  I have every right to stand up for life and true marriage which is rooted in incontrovertible human nature.  Will you next insist that I have no right to assert that triangles have three sides?

As to birth control, the Church is not imposing its view in civil law, only warning people against sin.  Rather it is the civil authority which is attacking the Church and her members by forcing us to pay for morally objectionable contraceptives, many of which are abortifacients which take innocent lives.  So much for the First Amendment.

If I had a filler for every comparison of my worldview to that of the Nazis.

“I have every right to stand up for life and true marriage which is rooted in incontrovertible human nature.”

Yes. But you wouldn’t intrude into someone else’s personal life, would you?

“Will you next insist that I have no right to assert that triangles have three sides?”

For me, only if I ask you how many sides are there in a triangle. If I choose to go through life thinking a triangle has four sides that’s my business not yours.

“As to birth control, the Church is not imposing its view in civil law, only warning people against sin.”

What sin. What makes you think contraception has to involve sin?  Or do you really believe that contraception itself is sinful?  I’m not asking what the Church says. We’re talking about reason and logic and how Catholics twist it in order to be consistent with the Church. Does your reason and logic conclude that all contraception is immoral?  Really?

“Rather it is the civil authority which is attacking the Church and her members by forcing us to pay for morally objectionable contraceptives, many of which are abortifacients which take innocent lives.  So much for the First Amendment.”

Then take it up with the courts. If it violates the First Amendment, the courts will concur. If they don’t, then it doesn’t.

No one cares about “abortifacients”. Abortion is legal anyway.

My response was blocked again. Every time I write up a good response the NCR thought police block it.

I would hope that you would not impose your morals on those who do not share your faith. Maybe you will get my full response.

Someone’s morals always get imposed in law regardless of faith.  The notion that you cannot impose morality is itself a moral stance, albeit that of an anarchist.  When it comes to murder, a government is not only permitted to abolish the practice, it is duty bound to do so.  That is its reason for being; a polity’s very legitimacy stems from the extent to which it fulfills the obligation to protect life and liberty (and the pursuit of happiness in the sense of eudaimonia, see:  Declaration of Independence). Just because a religious tradition happens to agree with this, it does not relieve the government of the duty.

Most governments do not define abortion as murder. Except for Ireland, the Catholic Church has no say in whether abortion is legal or not. I am not an anarchist. I am 100% behind the government.

Then you favor using the government to impose your (im)moral view that murder of the unborn should be permitted, contra your earlier claim that morals should not be imposed.  Plus you reject the science on when human life begins to protect your prior ideological commitment to sexual activity without responsibility.  So it is your side that rejects reason.  Having no rational argument, your side imposes its moral view through the force of positive law and state coercion.  Thus we not only have legalized murder, we also have the DHS forcing us all to finance abortifacients.  And this from the same relativists who insist that no moral view be imposed.  Not only evil, but hypocritical in the bargain.

My responses also get eaten, by the way.  So you support using the force of government to impose your moral view that abortion be permitted, even though you earlier stated that morals should not be imposed?  I know, you really meant that only your morals should be imposed.  Thus we have the HHS Mandate.  So per your earlier claim that Catholics do not use reason, it is your side which is guilty of this.  You irrationally reject the science on when human life begins in order to insulate sexual activity from responsibility.  You rely on the brute force of positive law to force your view on others without appeal to reason and label dissenters from your faith to be theocrats.  But law must have a basis in reason to be legitimate or else it is arbitrary despotism.  I suppose if we must isolate morality from our politics, then there is nothing wrong with despotism, right?  The Nazis broke no positive law, by the way (they wrote the laws.)  And yet we judge them.  How?  By imposing our moral view as in the Nuremburg Trials for their violation of natural law, based on reason.  Thank God the Catholic Church still stands for natural law.

 
” Then take it up with the courts. If it violates the First Amendment, the courts will concur. If they don’t, then it doesn’t.
No one cares about “abortifacients”. Abortion is legal anyway.”—-

-So was slavery——and for the longest time!  Look up the Dred Scott Decision.  It was not all that long ago. 

    It is so wonderful that somehow, some way, human beings actually can ‘reason’ their way to objective truth, if they want to.  The fact is, a bad law is no law, and just as in the laws that made slavery ‘Legal’, they never made it right, did they?  Throughout all human history, It does not matter how many people believe a wrong thing to be right, it will not make ‘right.’

  Additionally, forcing people and institutions to pay for something that they believe to be inherently wrong, is the fastest way to completely erode the entire country’s hold on any and all true Freedom.  Our forefathers warned that we would need to be “...Vigilant…” in order to preserve our Democracy/Republic.  My real concern is that we do not really even know what that means, or how to be ” Vigilant…”.  ‘Vigilance’ at this time would result in incredible outrage across the Nation that any people, religious institutions or any other institutions would be threatened to act against their Conscience Rights at any time, for any reason.  That is one of the most basic cornerstones of all the building blocks that has made America such a desirable Nation for many others to come to. 

  And, lots and lots of people who care about unborn babies care a great deal about abortifacients.  They kill a innocent babies and have also often resulted in the deaths of the mothers. 

  Peace.
 
 

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/matthew-warner/ask-fr.-barron-whats-relationship-between-faith-and-reason-and-the-limits-o/#ixzz2Mi7uOATe

“And, lots and lots of people who care about unborn babies care a great deal
about abortifacients. They kill a innocent babies and have also often
resulted in the deaths of the mothers.”

Just what I’d expect someone to say who has swallowed the Church’s condemnation of contraception hook, line and sinker.

Since the Church clearly has alterior reasons for its teachings on the dignity of life, please enlighten us on what these alterior motives are Mr. Bill S.

You take a catchy phrase like “the dignity of life” or “the culture of death” and you use it to polarize what would otherwise be legitimate differences of opinion.  They are like campaign slogans.

Your side stands for life and the other side stands for death. You can’t accept the fact that death is a natural occurrence and it happens to every living being. It took trillions of deaths for natural selection to create humans like you and me. There are billions of miscarriages each year, most of which the mother is not even aware that she has had one. Other than for its genome, there is nothing special about any one fertilized egg, embryo or fetus. It never experiences life outside the womb so it is not aware of anything bad happening when it dies.

Now lets look at the people who would be impacted if the Church ever were to regain the power over our lives that it once had and that you allow it to have over yours. First, couples could never enjoy lovemaking without the risk of pregnancy. A rape victim or a woman whose a mistake could never end her pregnancy by taking a morning after pill or having an abortion. The world would be severely overpopulated. I could go on and on.

I am happy living in a country that allows abortion and has provided us with free contraceptives. I see no way for the Catholic Church to take those freedoms or benefits away.

So, if i am reading this correctly, you believe that the Chuch’s ulterior motive is to be some sexual big brother and deprive people of their sexual needs. Now onto your assumptions: 1)i am highly aware of death, thank you. 2)that “embryo” is aware of the world. Children in the womb can learn and recognize sounds. They are also aware of pain. There is, in fact, a video of an abortion where the unborn child backs away from the abortion tools. 3)Lack of consciousness does not justify murder. Eg. If there is a patient in a coma it would be murder to take that person off life support. 
READ THIS CAREFULLY. The Church receives no benefits from defending human life, and yes that child inside the womb is living, other then the human life itself. This teaching of the Church is very controversial, and most people strongly disagree with it. And since there is little chance of changing your mind, why don’t you read Theology of the Body by John Paul II or Theology of the Body for Beginners by Christopher West to see what Catholic sex teaching is all about. I will be praying for you.

Thank you for praying for me Kyle. If I haven’t stated this already, I was a believer in the supernatural for most of my life. However, I have done a lot of research which has led me to believe that there is no supernatural anything. I guess that would make me an atheist and materialist. “Theology of the Body” discusses the relationship of the body to the spirit and the soul which I see as two words for the same thing which is mythical and not real. I did not exist in body, mind, soul or spirit before I was conceived and I will not exist (other than as a memory and as an obscure historical figure) after I die. It would have been of no real consequence should my mother not have wanted me at any stage of my development and terminated her pregnancy. And within a generation or two there will be no significance to me ever having existed. None of this is good news but it is reality. All else is a delusion or allusion, take your pick.

Make that “illusion”

Actually theology of the body discusses Catholic teachings on sex. Which would clarify the Catholic standpoint on life a whole lot if you were to read it. And “If there was no God there would be no atheists” - G.K. Chesterton (you should read his books too). But i’m not here to argue that. Any who just read the book and you will understand the Catholic viewpoint much better. Have a good day.

Ok. Thank you.

Bill S. - may I ask what changed since this exchange about two months ago:
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/matthew-warner/ask-fr.-barron-single-most-important-thing-to-build-up-life-of-church/
There, you indicated that you weren’t even sure you were an atheist, you expressed the belief that the universe was the result of some kind of transcendent intelligent creator, and you expressed an interest in reading more about various theistic arguments.
Now you say you have “done a lot of research which has led me to believe that there is no supernatural anything.” I am very curious what that research is.

“Now you say you have “done a lot of research which has led me to believe that there is no supernatural anything.” I am very curious what that research is.”

Mike, back then I wrote:
“Given what I have recently learned about fine-tuning and intelligent design, I’m not even sure I’m an atheist.”

I find it too confusing not to just say I am an atheist and that I don’t believe in any supernatural anything. But actually, I do believe in whatever intelligence gave us life and the laws of nature. If that is supernatural, it is the only supernatural thing I do believe in.

Good to hear from you again.  say I am an atheist and that I don’t believe in any supernatural anything. But actually, I do believe in whatever intelligence gave us life and the laws of nature. If that is supernatural, it is the only supernatural thing I do believe in.

Good to hear from you again.