Contraception???

[rainbowbright]

I don't mean to sound irreverent, but it might be more about the quick turn-around time than the number of kids.

Well, our problem is we get pregnant every other January and knowing that we had plans but they didn't work out like it was supposed to and we got pregnant in November. What can I say I am Fertile Myrtle

 

[gzt]

re: going to Yale.

Honestly, the better colleges like Yale and Harvard have very generous aid packages and students who come out with debt tend to come out with less than even the average state university student. People like to talk about how, oh, gosh, Harvard is expensive, but it's about the same as other private schools and gives far more aid to students. They are more generous than mid-level private schools (such as, say, Grinnell) because they tend to have larger endowments and such.

 

[Monica child of God 1]

Asking questions about "what and why the priests do not have large families" is still a judgment... It is not any better than asking why not all EO christians do not take communion on Sunday...

Philothei, I understand if you cannot comprehend the purpose of asking these questions. Even asking the question in your example (“why do some Orthodox take communion infrequently”) can lead someone to a wonderful, edifying answer (“some Orthodox take communion infrequently because they so respect the Holy Mystery and do not wish to partake so much that it becomes ordinary”). Just because you don’t understand why one asks questions does not mean that the questions do not have merit.

Also, it is judgmental to insist that someone else is judgmental. It implies that one can see into that person’s heart and know where the questions are coming from and the attitude of the person’s heart.

so it is better not to question IMO...

You are entitled to your opinion and I to mine

Romans 14:10 “Why do you criticize and pass judgment on your brother…

But if one is not judging, condemning or criticizing, this does not apply. Can you not imagine that there is a way to question without judging? Just consider the possibility that you are conflating judgment with asking questions. The two are not the same.

also St. John Chrysostome writes about the "Obligation of the laity to the Priest"....

Paul Allen in the book "The Ministry of the Church" writes…

Sister, you are going to have to accept that I can ask questions about contraception and the priesthood while fully respecting the priests as my elders and my leaders. I have no less respect for them because I ask questions about patterns that I see. I might be totally wrong in my perceptions. Asking questions—owning up to what I think in the back of my head—is for me an opportunity to have wrong perceptions corrected. Just like in the Co-redemptrix thread. I ask questions, I draw examples, someone comes along and says think of it this way. And I am left with a better understanding or a different way to look at the matter.

But most importantly: I am sorry if my way of thinking or being open about my thoughts offends you. I think somewhere along the way things got taken in a personal way. I never intended that but in any case I apologize. Please forgive me sister.

For me, for now, the matter is dropped. Let us go into Lent with love for each other,

Monica

 

[heart of peace]

For me, for now, the matter is dropped. Let us go into Lent with love for each other,

Monica

Hello, Monica. I have been following this thread and the dialogue between you and Philothei. I can see where you are coming from in stating that you are merely questioning and not making any decisions about the priest's spiritual health. However, your tone from the beginning of your questioning appeared to be a bit accusatory, if I may be so bold to say. There didn't seem to be simple ignorance and seeking knowledge on a topic but rather it seemed that you have invested much thought over this matter privately and are now voicing your concerns/issues with the situation.

And I don't think it is fair that you gave an entire rebuttal to Philothei and then end it with "this matter is dropped for me" (I will say my peace and decide the convo is over so don't have any thoughts on the matter) . It sets up Philothei as being an antagonizer if she responds to your post (not that I believe she is, just the way it would seem - you trying to "peaceably" end a conversation after you made a long list of challenging commentary to her last post). If your intention was to end a discussion that was unedifying to you, wouldn't it have been better to not offer a rebuttal and simply say that you withdraw from a potentially heated conversation during Lent?

 

[Monica child of God 1]

Hello, Monica. I have been following this thread and the dialogue between you and Philothei. I can see where you are coming from in stating that you are merely questioning and not making any decisions about the priest's spiritual health.

Okay thanks for the benefit of the doubt.

However, your tone from the beginning of your questioning appeared to be a bit accusatory, if I may be so bold to say. There didn't seem to be simple ignorance and seeking knowledge on a topic but rather it seemed that you have invested much thought over this matter privately and are now voicing your concerns/issues with the situation.

No I cannot say that my questions were from a simple ignorance. Sure, I have thought about this issue and wondered about the implications. There are different types of questions. There exists something between wanting simple knowledge and a loaded question with an agenda behind it. I fall somewhere in the middle. My question is sincere but it is more analytical than information gathering. (Even if you don't agree) does that make sense?

And I don't think it is fair that you gave an entire rebuttal to Philothei and then end it with "this matter is dropped for me" (I will say my peace and decide the convo is over so don't have any thoughts on the matter) . It sets up Philothei as being an antagonizer if she responds to your post (not that I believe she is, just the way it would seem - you trying to "peaceably" end a conversation after you made a long list of challenging commentary to her last post). If your intention was to end a discussion that was unedifying to you, wouldn't it have been better to not offer a rebuttal and simply say that you withdraw from a potentially heated conversation during Lent?

If Philothei would like to answer, I have no problem with that. What I mean is that I will not be pursuing my questions in this thread any longer. The contribution to the discussion that have made is now ending. My son will be baptized tomorrow. Sunday is the Vespers of Forgiveness. This Monday begins Clean Week. I am simply tying off loose ends rather than stirring a pot and leaving abruptly (to use a mixed metaphor).

M.

 

[Philothei]

Thanks for your reply. I do not wish to any more discuss this issue either. I said more of what I wanted to say and I would have been better of to stay away from the CF in general.

True, your son is getting baptized and that is the more important thing for you now. I am truly happy for you and your family. I do not wish this little "disagreement" become an obstacle to our relation... as both Orthodox Christians. I apologize if I hurt, offend or belittled you and missunderstood your intentions. I do not want to blame it solemly on cuture but being from another country sometimes complicates things and some of us take things personally...

Have a fruitfull and blessed Lent and again congrats on your son's baptism



Please forgive me sister.



Forgive me too...



Lord have mercy,
Philothei

 

[Monica child of God 1]

Thanks for your reply. I do not wish to any more discuss this issue either. I said more of what I wanted to say and I would have been better of to stay away from the CF in general.

Yes, I feel the same way

True, your son is getting baptized and that is the more important thing for you now. I am truly happy for you and your family. I do not wish this little "disagreement" become an obstacle to our relation... as both Orthodox Christians..

Me either

I apologize if I hurt, offend or belittled you and missunderstood your intentions. I do not want to blame it solemly on cuture but being from another country sometimes complicates things and some of us take things personally...

No offense remains here. Our slate is clean in my mind.

Have a fruitfull and blessed Lent and again congrats on your son's baptism

Thank you. And you do the same!

May the Lord have mercy on me a sinner,

M.

 

[Lotar]

Asking questions about "what and why the priests do not have large families" is still a judgment... It is not any better than asking why not all EO christians do not take communion on Sunday...
so it is better not to question IMO... as:

Philothei,

We are supposed to pass judgement on lifestyles and actions. St. John Chrysostom once advised fathers to take their sons late at night to see the old drunks exiting bars, so that they might show the boys what fools the old men are. As a set of people they are fools and should be called so, but he aslo said that once the person becomes a face, that is, an individual, you from then on see them as the image of Christ and a better person than yourself.

So, we certainly can make judgements about "Why do most priests have small families?" or "Why do not all Orthodox Christians partake of the Eucharist every Sunday?" It is a sin for a priest and presvetera to use contraception, just as it is for the laity - even moreso since they are to be the example. That does not mean that every priest with a small family is using contraception; they may merely have fertility problems or may be great ascetics. It is also possible that a priest has a large family but for some reason sinfully uses contraception to regulate the spacing of children. Still, it is quite obvious that those cases are the exception, and most of the former are merely using contraception - either out of ignorance or out of selfwill - and the majority of the later are not using contraception.

So, I cannot look at you and say you are in sin because you only have one child, just as you cannot do the same to me. I can say that the majority of priests in general are in the grips of the sin of contraception, and not be sinning myself in making the judgement.

 

[Thekla]

family size does not necessarily correlate with the use of contraception; also, contraception (barrier) merely limits (but does not eliminate) the possibility of conceiving.

there could be large families where contraception repeatedly failed
there could be small families where no contraception was used

as we cannot know which applies, better not to condemn ourselves by 'guessing ourselves into someones bedroom'

 

[SaintMarina]

family size does not necessarily correlate with the use of contraception; also, contraception (barrier) merely limits (but does not eliminate) the possibility of conceiving.

there could be large families where contraception repeatedly failed
there could be small families where no contraception was used

as we cannot know which applies, better not to condemn ourselves by 'guessing ourselves into someones bedroom'

 

[Philothei]

I can say that the majority of priests in general are in the grips of the sin of contraception, and not be sinning myself in making the judgement.


if you all think that is such a big problem with you and like Thekla said it is so "important " for your spiritual life what kind of ethical decision your priest is making in his bedrooom... why and I mean it with all honesty... take this up with his higher ups... the Bishops... That would be a good question for the next GOA clergy/laity conference meeting... I will also keep it in mind to ask my Bishop about it... I am sure they (as the ultimate spiritual guides in the Church) could give us a more clear view on the issue...

what do y'all think?

Philothei

 

[MariaRegina]

I got married late in life and was at first considered infertile by my doctor. Furthermore, it was only through taking a thyroid supplement that I was finally able to conceive. After delivery, my doctor immediately took me off the thyroid and would not give me another prescription, and so I suffered another miscarriage as a result. I am grateful to God that I was able to have one son.

Therefore, we cannot judge a person by the number of children that they have borne. If a person gets married late in life or has an infertility problem, it is not their fault.

Furthermore, recent studies have shown that the plasticides and estrogens in our food chain and the impurities in the water we drink are contributing to a rise in infertility and the feminization of men. More men and women are now found to be infertile.

 

[heart of peace]

Philothei,

We are supposed to pass judgement on lifestyles and actions. St. John Chrysostom once advised fathers to take their sons late at night to see the old drunks exiting bars, so that they might show the boys what fools the old men are. As a set of people they are fools and should be called so, but he aslo said that once the person becomes a face, that is, an individual, you from then on see them as the image of Christ and a better person than yourself.

So, we certainly can make judgements about "Why do most priests have small families?" or "Why do not all Orthodox Christians partake of the Eucharist every Sunday?" It is a sin for a priest and presvetera to use contraception, just as it is for the laity - even moreso since they are to be the example. That does not mean that every priest with a small family is using contraception; they may merely have fertility problems or may be great ascetics. It is also possible that a priest has a large family but for some reason sinfully uses contraception to regulate the spacing of children. Still, it is quite obvious that those cases are the exception, and most of the former are merely using contraception - either out of ignorance or out of selfwill - and the majority of the later are not using contraception.

So, I cannot look at you and say you are in sin because you only have one child, just as you cannot do the same to me. I can say that the majority of priests in general are in the grips of the sin of contraception, and not be sinning myself in making the judgement.

I feel extremely disheartened by your commentary.

 

[OnTheWay]

There's more to rasing children that just being able to scrape together enough resources to provide low quality food for them. Poverty and constant lack are terrible conditions that take years off people's lives. I'm not going to stand in judgement of people because they don't want to make their lives an exercise in misery trying to make ends meet every month because they have too many children.
In a rural soceity it's not an issue, in fact the more children you have the more free labor you have access to and the better off you'd be in a farming situation. In an urban soceity that's not the case. With a world population in excess of 6 billion there's nothing wrong with taking a quality over quanity approach. Nor is there anything wrong with having 2-3 kids who have the basics and a few of the extras modern soceity affords.

 

[Matrona]

Well, first, I posed the question to bring up the possibility that our situation in the Orthodox Church may be more complex because we have married priests. If we had celebate clergy it would be another story. Generally I think there needs to be more openness about the issue. Because the American norm is having 2.5 children, it would be normal for someone living in modern society to assume that a priest with a small family is preventing conception. If nothing else, priests should be aware that an assumption can/will be made and take pains to stress the Orthodox position on the issue.

I'm not naive, and I wouldn't assume or guess that about anybody. If someone is scandalized by the number of kids their priest has, that's their own problem. And this isn't like what St. Paul wrote about staying away from food offered to idols in order to avoid scandalizing others - there is really not much the priest can do about the number of kids he has, and nothing he should do about that if he only means to keep people from thinking he uses contraception. If we accept that this kind of speculation even has the right to exist, where does it end? When the communities around Ss. Joachim, Anna, Elizabeth, and Zechariah, all assumed that these were horrible, accursed people for not having kids, was that a reasonable assumption?

I've actually seen priests driven and nearly driven out of their parishes and the priesthood because of parishioners becoming overly concerned with the priest's personal lives - the priests having done nothing wrong - so no, I don't consider this a harmless question. And since I wasn't the only person to read your comment that way, I don't appreciate your accusation that I was putting words in your mouth.

The world has changed. Contraception is advertised on TV now along with Viagra and Cialis. Contraception is an unquestioned fact of modern life for many people. Because we have married priests who are presumably sexually active, they have the potential to sound a legitimate voice about contraception, childbearing and other modern dilemmas about sexuality. It should not be the responsibility of the laity to ask. It should be articulated clearly like all of the other things in the Christian life that we state firmly.

We don't publicize our policy on divorce either. Heck, the policies on that vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. And as far as I can tell, the reason there's no publicized consensus on the sinfulness of non-abortive contraception is because there is no such consensus. This contraception didn't exist in what's commonly called the "patristic era". There was no reason to distinguish between contraception and abortion when there was essentially no such difference. Now that we are able to prevent conception without killing a child, it changes the playing field.

Additionally, if priests are being granted economia to use NFP or ABC, it must be considered how that may affect the icon of Christ and the Church in parish. Modeling family life is one reason that having married priests in the parish is so important. In the case having children, how are priests and their wives modeling the Orthodox attitude toward this issue?

Unless they're passing out condoms with the antidoron, how would this come up?

Of course there are privacy concerns, but somehow a balance should be sought. If the parish looks at the priest’s family and sees two working parents and 2-3 children, that communicates something. If they see one parent with a secular job and another who stays at home* with the smallest of their brood of 8, that communicates something else.

I know a priest with 2-3 kids and the wife works. I know a priest who was twice his presvytera's age when they got married. I know a priest whose wife is taller than he is. I know a priest who fathered his youngest child when he was closer to 60 than 50. Big deal. I would trust any of them for advice on marriage and children, thank you very much, whether I'm a young woman who carries a genetic disease or the old woman who lives in a shoe.

 

[Lotar]

family size does not necessarily correlate with the use of contraception; also, contraception (barrier) merely limits (but does not eliminate) the possibility of conceiving.

there could be large families where contraception repeatedly failed
there could be small families where no contraception was used

as we cannot know which applies, better not to condemn ourselves by 'guessing ourselves into someones bedroom'

Exactly. Which is another reason why we cannot judge individuals. Groups is another question.

 

[Lotar]

if you all think that is such a big problem with you and like Thekla said it is so "important " for your spiritual life what kind of ethical decision your priest is making in his bedrooom... why and I mean it with all honesty... take this up with his higher ups... the Bishops... That would be a good question for the next GOA clergy/laity conference meeting... I will also keep it in mind to ask my Bishop about it... I am sure they (as the ultimate spiritual guides in the Church) could give us a more clear view on the issue...

what do y'all think?

Philothei

1.) The types of moral decisions my spiritual father makes in any facet of his life can definitely have an effect on my spiritual life, as it would for anyone.

2.)My priest is exceedingly faithful to the Church in this regard. No need to talk to the bishop.

3.)No offense, but I'll take the Church Fathers over GOArch bishops (I know of great traditional GOArch priests, but this is the jurisdiction that tonsured a woman reader and openly states that it disagrees with Tradition on the subject of Contraception).

 

[MariaRegina]

No, it's a case of Planned Parenthood, along with other interests in PP's campaign of racism and genocide, pulling a fast one on gynecologists and innocent women.

You probably learned that pregnancy begins when the sperm meets the egg and the two gametes form one cell, a zygote. And that anything that comes along and keeps said zygote from developing into an embryo, implanting, and sprouting into a screaming baby several months later is ending the pregnancy, whether unintentionally (miscarriage, a.k.a. spontaneous abortion) or intentionally (elective abortion). And for a long time, that's what medical schools taught, too.

But ever since the debate on abortion started being taken seriously and birth control methods that expel an unimplanted baby came along (as well as in vitro fertilization), they decided to start defining pregnancy at implantation rather than fertilization. This allows the goose-stepping fiends at Planned Genocide, and the gynecologists in their pockets, to claim that birth control methods that interfere with implantation don't cause abortion, because according to their determination, the pregnancy hasn't begun yet. Consequently, women everywhere are being fooled into using contraceptive methods that kill their babies instead of merely preventing them from coming into being.

This is so true that it bears being repeated. Thanks Matrona.

Taking pills, injections, surgically implanting rods, or using an intrauterine device can cause an abortion by preventing the newly conceived baby from implanting in the uterus.

Research has shown that artificial birth control pills, injections, implantable rods, and intrauterine devices, and/or a prior abortion can result in a higher risk of having an ectopic pregnancy, which is caused when the new life detects an inhospitable environment in the womb. Life is intelligent, miraculous, and God-given.

Of course, there is also the research which links artificial birth control and abortion to increased cancer risks.

 

[MariaRegina]

It seems you are referring to the morning after pill which is not the same as the birth control pill. The former prevents a fertilized egg from implanting (i.e. early stage abortion) and the latter prevents ovulation.

The birth control pill is designed to work in two ways with abortion as a backup contraceptive:
(1) to prevent ovulation
(2) to prevent implantation in case ovulation occurs by forming an inhospitable situation in the womb = abortion.

Remember that many women fail to take the pill regularly and so the second option frequently occurs.

With the low dose pill available today, abortion is even more frequent.

Sometimes heavy bleeding that results from use of the pill, injection, implantable rod, or IUD is actually a miscarriage of which the woman is not even aware.

 

[MariaRegina]

I know women who get pregnant consistently a year or less after giving birth, and they are some of the healthiest women I know.

One funny thing I notice is that it is very rare to find an over weight woman with more than four children.

Yes, they are busy running after their children, cooking for them, doing the laundry, etc. So, they have little time to eat.