quote:

Men were much bigger and wiser in those days, not like they are now. Just as in the time of Odysseus breaker of horses, and honey-tongued Nestor, these were men bigger than life, men about whom and by whom great books are written. Shortly before Mortimer J. Adler died, my friend Gary Dunn had asked the elder Adler whether any great philosophers had lived during the twentieth century. To Gary's surprise, Adler named three: Henri Bergson, Jacques Maritain, and Etienne Gilson. In my estimation, Adler was wrong. He should have included a fourth: himself.

From:A Tribute to Mortimer J. Adler by Peter Redpath

quote:

Prior to 1983 Dr. Adler had not joined any religious (or similar) community. In 1983 Dr. Adler formally converted to Christianity, specifically to the denomination of his wife, who was Episcopalian. Sixteen years later, in December, 1999 in San Mateo, California where he lived and shortly thereafter passed away (d. June 28th, 2001), he was formally received into the Catholic Church by His Excellency, Bishop Pierre DuMaine, of San Jose, CA, who was a long-time friend and admirer of Dr. Adler.

The Spiritual Odyssey of Mortimer J. Adler

Adler set forth how we can get from an is to an ought, how to reason from the coupling of descriptive and prescriptive premises to normative conclusions (without really doing violence to the critiques of Kant and Hume but by transcending them). Maritain set forth a way to enlarge our theological and philosophical visions, in both contemplative spirituality and in moral theology (heck, what's the difference, eh?), by affirming and elucidating the roles of the essentialistic and existential perspectives. JPII, in his Theology of the Body, uses his phenomenological approach to bridge the objective and deductive and principled with the subjective and inductive and experiential.

Are all of these metaethical projects related? How are they alike and how do they differ? They certainly all affirm the natural law and a Thomistic take on Aristotle?

Why then do Maritain and JPII come out with different views on artificial contraception, for instance? Could being married have anything to do with it? If Catholic married couples en masse followed JPII's phenomenological methods, rigorously, in dialogue with natural law ethics, is it possible that they, too, could articulate an authentic Theology of the Body that even better articulates both the efficacy and symbolism of the spiritually procreative dimension of the conjugal act?

In John Paul II�s New Vision of Human Sexuality, Marriage and Family Life , Father Richard M. Hogan gives some insight into JPII's thinking:

quote:

... the NFP couple is criticized, even condemned, because, say the critics, their general intention is identical to the general intention of the contracepting couple. These critics are charging the NFP couple not with having the same specific intention in each marital act as the contracepting couple, but with having the same general intention as the contracepting couple. Intentions or thoughts can be sinful, e.g., the thought of hating someone to the point of wanting him dead, or worse, in hell for all eternity, is sinful. However, with regard to individual acts, e.g., acts of conjugal love by married partners, the Church never examines a general intention . Rather, it is always the specific act and the specific intentions which accompany the specific act which weigh as evidence in the judgment. In other words, an NFP couple may have some vague general intention about avoiding children for months or even years, but that does not matter. It is the specific intention which they both have when engaging in an act of love which either contributes to the virtue of the act or to its sinfulness. And, as we have seen, the specific intention of the NFP couple is not contraceptive. Therefore, the NFP couple does not have a contraceptive mentality.

This distinction between the general intention and the specific intention explains one of the effects of NFP on couples. Since the advent of modern NFP, pastoral practice has been to encourage couples to use NFP even if they did not have the most virtuous of general intentions.

Well, there is a concession re: general intentions. Does this distinction, however, between the specific intentions of ABC and NFP couples wash?

Continuing - the distinction between general and specific intent is valid and has been used in both criminal law and in theology. In theology, God's absolute will is equated with general intent and His permissive will with specific intent. IOW, he sometimes allows that which He does not wish. In criminal law, general intent has been taken to mean the basic intention to commit a criminal act in a broad category and, by way of distinction, a specific intent involves a special purpose in addition to the basic intent. For example:

quote:

Over the decades, the common law courts developed the rule that intoxication could be a defence to crimes of specific intent but were never a defence to crimes of general intent. As a result, if someone was acquitted of a crime of specific intent by reason of intoxication, they were almost invariably convicted of an included general intent offence. Therefore someone who might not be convicted of murder because of intoxication would be convicted of manslaughter which required a general intent. CRIMINAL CODE

So, we are not questioning the validity of the distinction between specific and general intents. Rather, we are trying to discern whether or not ABC and NFP truly differ in specific intent.

I am participating on another discussion board and am trying to solicit contributions from a new audience. I would invite you there, w.c., Terri, Phil et al, but it is presently closed down.

pax,
jb

What I don't get is how a 99-100% rate of effectiveness for NFP as a contraceptive method differs in specific intent from ABC?

see Method Effectiveness Of Natural Family Planning by John Kippley

Maritain writes:

quote:

In 1948, from Princeton, Maritain sent a letter to Journet, accompanied by a note titled "Apropos of Birth Control" which is important and surprising enough to be quoted in its entirety. He wrote: "In order that intercourse between spouses may not be hindered from attaining its natural finalities and in order that it be morally correct: It is not necessary that the intention of procreating children be present. (The woman may have undergone an operation that made her sterile, or she might be beyond childbearing age.) Moreover, the intention not to procreate may be present, as in the case of the Ogino method [the rhythm method], which the church has not condemned. So it is not the intention of the agent, the intention not to procreate, which makes the practice of birth control sinful. Then what does make it sinful? Certainly not an intention (finis operantis) extrinsic to the act of intercourse itself, but rather an alteration introduced into the very exercise of that act, which turns it away from its finality in its very excellence. (For example: the case of Onan.)

"So let us suppose that one day science invents a product which, taken orally in the form of a pill or subcutaneously by injection, renders a woman sterile for a given period of time. Will spouses who use this drug for a proper and acceptable motive and in order to have a child only when their reason tells them it is good to do so be guilty of a moral failing? By no means! Their human reason intervened actively at the same point where with the Ogino method human reason calculated very simply to profit by what nature was doing on its own: it is impossible to see how this could in any way be culpable .

Journet wrote to Maritain:

quote:

"Jacques, for this terrible question of eugenics, I'm afraid that as a support for you I'm rather unsteady on my own feet. What I wanted to say is that since moralists say that everything is saved if the conjugal act can be accomplished to all appearances, they should have no objection to hormonal injections. Will they then argue that this is a case of mutilation? They do so in the case where Fallopian tubes are tied...So they consider mutilation in a functional sense....I have always had a problem admitting (though I do so by authority) an essential difference between the Ogino method and contraceptive precautions. It seems to me they are hypnotized by the physical. So an injection becomes an objection that vexes the moralists" (III, 986).

Maybe I should content myself knowing that Journet and Maritain were similarly befuddled?

See SILENT DISSENTER : Jacques Maritain on contraception , Commonweal, Bernard Doering

Hi JB,
I haven't read all the links yet, but, I thought I'd throw out a couple of thoughts. Bear in mind, though, that I didn't grow up under the Catholic tutilage about contraception so this is new territory for me (in the last couple of years as I've begun to study some of the Catholic teachings). If I say something that could be offensive or something, just know it's out of my own ignorance...k?

Well, there is a concession re: general intentions. Does this distinction, however, between the specific intentions of ABC and NFP couples wash?

In watching discussions about this on various boards, it seems to me that the answer is "no". Maybe it's because I don't fully understand the importance of placing procreation as the be all/end all of marital relations. However, I realize not all Catholics view it that way. To the best of my recollection a comment I read once was that marital relations were supposed to be two fold..for the intimacy of man and wife and their souls and for procreation.

It seems to me that if we want to use a biblical case for NFP, then we'd have to abide by the Laws of the Torah and the number of days a woman is considered "unclean". It would amount to somewhere around 14 days or more depending on how her body works. Also, we would have to take into account that marital relations in the earliest times wasn't even viewed in the same way. Those early Jews and even early Christians often abstained completely from marital relations in order to dedicate their time to God.

Basically, it appears to me that NFP is just the same as ABC only hidden behind a cloud of religious and scriptural terminology.

The general intent and specific intent idea seems to muddy up the waters for me. If you're contracepting, isn't the general intent not to have children right then...and the specific intent the same?

Thoughts?

God bless,
Terri

What I don't get is how a 99-100% rate of effectiveness for NFP as a contraceptive method differs in specific intent from ABC?

Okay, I read that particular one. I just gotta ask...do people seriously think that in biblical times anyone sat around doing these charts and checking mucous!?! I realize we aren't living in biblical times, but still...this kind of calendar juggling just seems to reduce the entire act down to a scheduled appointment. Somehow I don't think that's what God had in mind. (I'll hush now ..lol)

And no, I don't see a difference at all. If anything I see a calculated specific intent even more complex and thought out than popping a pill.

God bless,
Terri

JB, as we discussed during my visit in Baton Rouge recently, the Church has emphasized preserving the objective structure of the sex act moreso than the issues of intent and circumstances. If that were not the case, then, yes, the fact that artificial contraception and NFP are motivated by the same circumstances and intent would make them virtually indistinguishable. I think you are quite right in noting this, Terri.

Some have argued that even at the "objective" leve, NFP when used during the infertile period is objectively no different from artificial contraception. That may be true, but artificial contraception actively thwarts the fertility of the act per se while NFP does nothing to destroy fertility. Of course, I'm not sure if that in itself is enough to distinguish NFP from contraception in light of the Church's teachings about the morality of sex acts, or if it's simply stating how NFP is different from other contraceptive practices.

Phil

P.S. When I saw this thread, I initially thought it was about Albert Adler, Maritain, and JPII. I couldn't imagine how these three could be related on a thread. Oh well. . .

Thanks Terri and Phil, your answers made perfect sense. I don't think that a further investment of my time, in trying to satisfy my understanding about the distinction between general and specific intents is going to have a payoff where this issue is concerned. I think I just view a moral object, or human act, more integrally, which is to say that a merely physicalistic description leaves me ... what ??? ... feeling rather undignified??? cold ??? whatever!

CHANGING the approach. Consider this:

quote:

It is the universal experience of the Church in the last twenty years all over the world that couples who began using NFP with the intention to exclude children in their marriage for a long time or to have only one or two, usually "change their minds." Pastors have often met couples whose marriages they witnessed years before who have five, six and even more children and often they are closely spaced. When asked, the couples who more often than not only wanted two and those widely spaced, will say: "We changed our minds." Partly this is attributable to their discovering through NFP that they are "fearfully and wonderfully made." (See Psalm 139:14.) They encountered their wonder and dignity by learning the theology of the body through the practice of NFP.

Another quote from Fr. Hogan

This inspires me to do a little more research. What I am wondering is this: When JPII speaks of the inductive, the experiential and the subjective, such as in his phenomenalistic/personalistic approach to the theology of the body where married couples are concerned and when folks like Fr. Hogan speak of the universal experience of the Church in the last twenty years all over the world that couples who ... ... precisely what experience are they talking about? Are they referring to rigorous scientific surveys as derived from suitable sociological and statistical methods that have experimental and control groups and such? Are they in dialogue and gathering this so-called inductive and subjective and experiential information from large demographic cross-sections of the Catholic married population and also from a wide spectrum of clergy and pastoral counsellors and such? I would be interested in reading the supporting documentation for something as important as the universal experience of the Church.

Also, where JPII's Theology of the Body is concerned, obviously his attempt to translate the Church's essentialistic perspective, which is to say its objective and deductive and principle-centered approach, into the subjective and inductive and experiential/existential approach is a syntactical exercise, a linguistic work, and is less so a semantical exercise wherein he is drawing on his own personal experience and articulating therefrom. I appreciate the attempt but that might account for the disconnect many of us experience vis a vis his Language of Love. I could write at length about a woman's experience of being pregnant and labor and giving birth but, along the way, much meaning is going to get lost and my lack of having been there will inevitably get found out by my readers.

Well, I have strayed ... what I am now interested in is where do I find the supporting studies that set forth the universal experience of the Church re: married life?

Thanks.

pax, amor et bonum,
jb

Okay...this is about your straying there..lol.

I appreciate the attempt but that might account for the disconnect many of us experience vis a vis his Language of Love. I could write at length about a woman's experience of being pregnant and labor and giving birth but, along the way, much meaning is going to get lost and my lack of having been there will inevitably get found out by my readers.

That was a question I wanted to pose earlier but wasn't sure if it would be tacky or not . I guess I don't understand how celibate males (granted I know that some who enter a monastery or the priesthood do it later in life after having been widowed or whatever) have one teensy little idea about marriage, family, marital intimacy. How can they give advice about this? How can nuns for that matter if they've never experienced it (again, I know that some nuns join later after marriage, widowhood, etc). But...it doesn't make sense to me. Just like you said...if you haven't been there, then how in the world can you guide or teach or even understand it?!

Another question I have is this...in this terrible economy is it wrong to consider having no children or even limiting it to 1 or 2? Is this a matter of faith that God will provide if it's decided to have 10? That seems irresponsible in some ways...but in other ways I get the drift about faith.

God bless,
Terri

Yes, Terri, I think the question has merit. I do grant that, through extensive pastoral counseling with hundreds of couples over the years, even a single pastor can gather a very informed perspective. Such a perspective can surpass what you and I might know about married life, in general, in many ways and about many things, to be sure. I don't deny this. Still, when it comes to the deeply personal and profoundly intimate nature of the conjugal act and the experience of human sexuality, which far transcends what you have much barnyard knowledge of as a farmgirl, one has to believe that WE have a perspective that cannot be replaced, too. We need the clergy's pastoral perspective and they need our lived experiences. What I find suspicious is this universal experience of the Church re: NFP couples. Those claims may be true indeed and I have no reason to doubt they are. I just really wonder if the Church is also properly drawing on the experience of the other 97% of its married couples who could testify to the enhanced spirtually procreative dimension of their sexual lives and especially those of us whose physically procreative lives are on par, through time, with the NFP cohorts?

I think we answer questions of how many children we have as we make any other stewardship decisions: accepting the limited dominion we've been given over our time, talent, treasure, technology and bodies.

pax,
jb