What are your thoughts on condoms?
I believe with the Church, so "intrinsically immoral".
Care to elaborate, why do you see them as immoral?
The Church saying so is enough, but I have also studied why. They separate the two necessary elements to the "marital act" (sex): unitive and procreative. Condoms remove the procreative element from sex, therefore making a lie out of sex.
With sex, the Church is a romantic. The Church wants it only to be within marriage between spouses. In marriage, you give yourself entirely to the other. If you hold something back, you're lying to them.
Therefore, by condoms holding back the procreative part of sex, the spouse is lying to the other- the act says "I give myself entirely" but the reality of the condom says "except this".
That's why the Church, if grave need is present, opts for NFP.
Is there any room for the idea that, for example, in parts of Africa or Eastern Europe where HIV and AIDS are rampant, that condoms are the lesser of two evils in sustaining human life, so we may be uniting and procreating without spreading disease that kills in a terrible way?
I don't ask this to be provocative, I simply am a big believer in radical acceptance of reality, and I don't really think abstinence answers this question effectively. It'd be nice if this wasn't the situation, but that isn't reality, and it would be helpful if the catholic church could answer this question in a way that addresses reality. I mean, we could work on education, but these are impoverished areas that still practice genital mutilation and breast ironing as measures to deter intercourse, and yet it keeps happening anyhow. So, can the church find some sort of balance between faith and reality, so people don't spread disease and die before fulfilling God's plan for them?
You'll have to see the Pope. I think condoms are still "intrinsically immoral". As for the rest, the Church doesn't want us mutilating people.
Do you believe that things may be "intrinsically immoral" despite not being decreed so by the Bible, or by the Church? I would appreciate if you could expand on your meaning of "intrinsically immoral so that I may understand what you are implying.
The Church does not rely on the Bible alone. That would be Protestants. We also have tradition and the magisterium.
So having sex should be for procreation, but here is a way that the Catholic church recommends that allows you to have sex without it resulting in a child.
Huh.
No. Sex is meant to be unitive and procreative, not "just for children". Children are the natural 'fruit' of sex, but that's not the sole purpose.
Also, as I mentioned, grave necessity must be present for the use of NFP.
