Actually, I did get your point about the baby, and was responding to that. “Abort” is used, as a euphemism (and I say that it is an evil euphemism), to mean “kill”. One can remove a fetus and do what one can to help it live - and as our technologies continue to develop, for better and for worse, this becomes increasingly possible.
If a priest gives a wrong answer, a layman is right to speak against it. If I am dead certain the priest has gone wrong, I cannot, and mustn’t, be silent. I do not assert my individual authority (I have none) in doing so. I assert what has always been taught, (as well as the logical inferences of that) against a modern spirit that is coming into the Church through its members (and could do so through me as well, of which I should be mindful, as they say, with fear and trembling). I’d better be sure I am in line with Scripture, the fathers, and Tradition. I find nothing that supports our attempts to control whether we have children and how many, and I find plenty that shows up the wrongness and failure of such attempts.
So yes, there MAY be a case where contraception is actually right and the best thing, and yes, a priest MAY actually determine that. But everyone clamors to be the exception, and priests almost always cave in, and so, what should be exceptional becomes the rule, and nearly everyone in the Church is doing it, as they do in the world. Exhortation to resist that desire to be excepted, to get the “Get Out of Jail Free” card, is close to non-existent, and from where I stand, it has reached a point where lay people think that ONLY a priest may even SUGGEST that they try to live a more holy life. Close to half of the families with multiple children have gotten divorced in my parish, and even my wife thinks that if “the chips were down”, divorce could be an option. And everyone is expected to walk around on eggshells and not talk about those “personal choices”. It’s become perfectly OK to break up families in an Orthodox church, and for everyone to carry on as if nothing has happened. They don’t even admit that it ought to be an exception anymore. It has become, “Well, if it doesn’t work out...”
People lived through the Great Depression and contraception was still generally frowned upon, even after the Lambeth Conference, which the Orthodox Church didn’t even take part in. It is we moderns who have changed our attitudes. It has become OK because it is OK in the world. It is in the world and of the world. I can conceive of an exception that says we should relax a rule which forbids it. Many here can no longer conceive of a rule which forbids it.
