The People Speak Out

Local voices connecting globally

This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good.  (Pope Francis)

Canon Law 212 calls upon the laity to speak up:

2 - The Christian faithful are free to make known to the pastors of the Church their needs, especially spiritual ones, and their desires.

§3. - According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.

I like to point out that even Pope Paul 6 in Humanae Vitae did recognize and accept some of the developments in our present understanding of Human Sexuality.

He recognized and acknowledged that it is according to the Laws of Nature (Natural Law) for humans that conception is possible only when the ovum is released and is present to be fertilized.
Yet sexual intercourse is permissable anytime in the woman’s cycle/ He even recommended that as a means of achieving “Responsible Parenthood”. In effect, he contradicts himself when he allows that a couple can be morally allowed to engage in sexual intercourse at a time when they have (hopefully) carefully planned and fully intend that their intercourse cannot lead to conception, and therefore is not “open to the transmission of life”.
Eventually, I contend, Humanae Vitae itself will come to be seen as the basis for a development in Church Doctrine.
If the Virtue of Prudence requires the practice of Responsible Parenthood, then the means to achieve it must be available and used. People, generally, have had the sense enough to realize that fact.
That gives the basis for claing “Contraceptive Rights are Women’s Rights are Human Rights.”

Today many are even claiming “Reproductive Rights” as following from the moral obligation to practice Prudence and Responsible Parenthood.

I can at least understand the reasoning. It asserts the right of the parents, especially the woman, to choose and decide which conception will be brought to term. If some 40% of conceptions are “aborted” by nature in miscarriage, then deliberately causing a “miscarriage” by abortion is not that much different.

Catholis will likely find that reasoning hard to accept, with all of our “murder” language; but we at least ought to be able to recognize that our “Responsible Parenthood” is the basis for seeing and claiming “Reproductive Rights”.{jcomments on}