https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/contraceptive-mandate-battle-still-states-fight-religious-exemptions
MGB: The moral law is for all of us to reason about and the guiding principal in Humanae and Evangelicuum is Aristotelian, not from Christ. If there is doubt about the existence of the humanity of the blastocyst, the blastocyst gets the benefit of the doubt. It binds individuals, not the civil law and gastrulation provides enough certainty as to why blastocystic development is controlled only by the mother as to infer it is her life force and not the offspring's controlling development. Sadly, the hierarchy shows no desire to examine this issue, so they lack credibility, largely because doing so would cast doubt on prior statements that were issued infallibly. The marital love issues having to do with whether the hierarchy is entitled to a means-ends discussion on marital sexuality and conception are simply ignored by married Catholics, as they should be.
As to the extant case, it will likely be dismissed, although it may be considered open because Beckett is dragging its feet on agreeing to a mechanism to communicate with their insurance company without feeling morally culpable for doing so. According to the principle of the double effect, they are not, even if you grant the wrongness of contraception on either life or moral sexual philosophy grounds Of course, the latter exception has no grounds for legal enforcement upon Church employees in receiving services under a public benefit program because of their right of privacy, to wit, the Church cannot ask the state to enforce on employees what it cannot seek to enact under the civil law. Griswold v. Connecticut has already ruled that it is none of society’s business whether couples have sex for procreation or for pleasure for its own sake).
I predict they will settle quickly to moot the question. If not, then I wonder if the legal team reads this thread. A Griswold argument on the issue of sex for pleasure would be fun in arguments.
Gay_morality is not our concern unless have harmed us. Fraternal correction in the Gospel applies to direct harm to an individual, not offending their doctrinal sensibilities. t is the gay commuity that is entitled to exercise fraternal correction, not the hierarchs.
Some cities have gay populations that subgroup, some don't. Dallas does. DC certainly does. New York, San Fracisco and Miami do. My point is that the Church has made gays decidedly unwelcome, whether it be denial that being gay is some kind of choice rather than being differently made (and not having a sexuality that is disordered) or going so far as trying to cure them. That is like trying to cure white people because they are prone to skin cancer.
A blastocyst is not an embryo. Prior to gastrulation, development is controled only by the maternal life force, aka her soul. The DNA of the father must be operative in development to infer the offspring is operating under its own steam. Any doctor or patient who is certain of this can use contraception. If the Church were to become certain of it (and Lambreth is, which is why Casti Connubii was written in reaction), the issue would go away. Of course, the Church has some humility problems to work out first as to admitting it has been wrong, but the rest of us are not letting that get in our way.
The immorality is conditional based on the lack of knowledge for when the embryo or blastocyst deserves protection. Science has fully established that a blastocyst develops under the genetics of the mother's genes alone. If you are sure no one is a person until the parents of both genes actively control development, then contraception is only a matter of sexual ethics, not life.
If Lambreth had not first decided to follow the science, the Church might have rather than taking a position for the sake of brand identity. Birth control did not invent recreational sexuality. Every generation thinks it invented sex. Its always a silly notion. Regardless of the Anglican ruminations on ensoulment, mine are correct, being grounded in both Aristotle on the soul and modern Embryology.
What the Church says is what Aristotle said about protecting life. Before gastrulation, its an blastocyst. After, it is an embryo (the whole term embryonic stem cell research is erroneous). We DO know what a blastocyst is and does and can safely act as if they were cells of the mother because that is how they behave. We know that the male DNA has no say in development until gastrulation. When they become embryoes, they deserve moral protection (legal protection is another matter). Regardless, birth control does not violate a right to life, just the peculiar sexual idealism of our asexual clergy. No doctrine says potential human life demands respect, provided we are sure of that status. Most are and the only reason not to be is to defend the infallibility of prior Church teaching which we now know is error.
The Church considers such destruction (of blastocysts) wrong not because it is certain about conception being the start of life, but because it is not. What is sad is that it does not examine the biological evidence because getting a different answer would take some explaining as to infallibility issues. Everyone was part sperm and part egg, but until gastrulation, no one had individuality or was operating as a child of their father. No one is fully human until then and unless Heaven or Limbo are filled with failed blastocysts, it is no loss.
The Church's philosophy is based on Aristotelian and Thomistic ethics, which provide both personal and group answers for judgments by individuals. The principle that life is to be protected if it is possibly present is like that. Anyone who has studied enough embryology to be fluent in what happens at gastrulation will make up their minds differently than you have. The Church refuses to look, largely because it does not want to admit error, which is why Ottoviani intervened on Humanae Vitae, which as originally drafted would have overturned much of Casti Connubii, both on the science and the marital sexuality fronts. The natural reasoning of the people in the pews rejected what he had to say regarding both human sexuality and its ends and the nature of birth control, which is not abortive because a blastocyst is not under the control of the genetics of both parents, just the mother. The Senses Fidelium did not assert the latter, but their doctors know and the Curia does not.
Not the mother's body, the DNA in the blastocyst. Maternal DNA is active, paternal is not. Paternal is not turned on until gastrulation. Sentience has nothing to do with the soul. Integral development does, at least in the Aristotelian ethical modality used by the Catholic Church. Integral or regulative development happens at gastrulation. Get a college level embryology text and see for yourself. It won't talk about the soul, but looking at it with a knowledge of what the Church says about the soul, repeating Aristotle, makes it clear, assuming you know how to integrate knowledge from a variety of sources. You seem to want to treat this using scholasticism, i.e., you are trying to prove the Church right rather than find the truth. Ultimately, such an approach is not useful for either personal ethics or the Church itself.
Ontology follows the soul. Blastocysts divide according to the DNA of the egg and the egg alone.
The ontology, the being of the blastocyst, shows it is not governed by the DNA of both parents, just the mother. Her DNA, her soul. Her right to take Plan B to stop it.
No one is integrated unitl gastrulation. No integration, no soul and unless they are shutting this thing off after COB tomorrow, I think I have the last word.
BTW, Catholic theologians used to say that ensoulment could not happen while twinning could occur, for the same reason. The recent theory, for which there was no evidence was one soul at fertilization and another at twinning, but that is pure sophistry.
Integral means the parts are working. Not until gastrulation. At twinning, you could keep cutting the blastocyst in two again and again with no loss. Its only a real person if you cut off a piece and that piece is missing at birth._Before gastrulation, you can take out stem cells with no effect. After gastrulation, taking out cells is damaging.
Twinning happens prior to gastrulation, not after. It does not harm twin 1 because twin one is not an integratede individual. It is a bunch of stem cells sitting in what will become the placenta.
Again, before gastrulation, all stem cells are both interchangeable and any amount are-expendable. After, all are necessary. Seems like the essence of potential v. actual life to me. It is for every scientist and doctor. Sounds definitive to me.
Potential means not actual. Stem cells withinn a blastocyst are simply cells and until gastrulation, they are not even "proven", meaning that until gastrulation occurs, no one but God knows whether the stem cells are viable. Most often they are not because of chromosomal damage or simple parental genetic incompatibility. Unless limbo is filled with really freaky beings that genetically impossible, life does not begin until gastrulation sorts out what is and is not a possible person.
As for the unborn, no one is out to kill them unless they are dangerous and that is an economic decision in most cases, with a cure in public finance (higher tax subsidies for families). Cases where the pregnancy is dangerous to the mother usual occur in the second trimester and the innocence of the fetus should be of no consequence if it will never survive anyway. Sometimes women know they should never carry a child. They are entitled to birth control or sterizlization, healthy uterus or not. This belief that they should avoid sex instead is idiotic neo-platonism. It has nothing to do with Christ.
It is true that after 8 years, 53% of chemical birth cotrol users will get pregnant, many use it to space conception, not prevent it entirely. Those that absolutely don’t want to conceive add barrier methods or get their tubes tied or use abortion as birth control if all else fails, but this is rare as a cause for abortion. Economics is still more important.
Not being aborted is a positive right, like not being murdered when born. That means it takes an action to secure, it is not automatic. Until Congress grants personhood under its 14th Amendment powers not shared by the states, the only treatmetn is increasing the child tax credit by more than $1,600 per year.
Your Congress and President can both, although it dropped the ball on the latter with what are unconcionable tax cuts on the Executive Class and corporations. You have a year to make personhood start earlier, but you have to figure out a way to ban first trimester abortions without having to investigate miscarriages within equal proection principles. That would be threadingn the needle in a way that Jay Sukalow is not smart enough to do. You would also have to either make all contract killing legal or accept that fact that women who order abortions would be in legal jeapordy (regardless of what movement lawyers say, for they are not very good).
First trimester abortions were banned pre-Roe not because the fetus had personhood rights but as a banned medical procedure, where the physician was reported to the local medical society and fined. Abortion was not considered murder. With privacy, that type of action is not allowed. It is personhood or nothing, which can only be changed by Congress.
I am not a monster. I don’t put a notch on my belt for every blastocyst terminated by birth control methods. Neither are the doctors who prescribe birth control or the ones who do stem cell research. If any of us thought the science indicated that life began at conception, there would be no chemical birth control or stem cell research. The Church is doing itself a great disservice for not listenning to our POV.
