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mishalakIn a recent screed (that I feel no need to reply to or tear apart in full) John C. Wright has a line that I think may need explanation for people with the good fortune to have not taken an old school class in Catholic theology. "Uncle Screwtape reminds me the any form of sex that is sterile and selfish wins the approval of the Lowerarchy."
Today Catholics, alongside the Amish and a few dissenting evangelicals, are among the few holdouts in a world that has come to accept contraception or never had anything against it. At the time The Screwtape Letters, a group of essays on Christian apologetics with a fictional framing device, were written by C.S. Lewis this was not at all the case. The Anglican Church had only recently allowed contraception and there was still a great deal of older thinking that sex, even between a married couple, was only acceptable if there were the possibility of procreation attached to it.
All this happened in Christianity due to Genesis 38:6-10.
Christians ended up interpreting this as forbidding any sexual act not intended for procreation. There have been more or less rigid interpretations, but it was always the same. For eighteen centuries the theology was clearly on the side of no masturbation, no coitus interruptus (pulling out just before ejaculation to reduce the possibility of children), no oral sex, no sexual toys, and no homosexual sex. And when someone came along and invented a primitive condom that was forbidden too. Fellatio was especially forbidden because of the primitive view of women being just a sort of hollow in which to plant a seed elevating semen to containing little tiny fetuses, making its consumption cannibalism.
Now just to be totally clear the current Catholic position is that sex does not have to result in a child. It just has to have that possibility. So the hugely imperfect rhythm method of contraception is acceptable, but a little bit of rubber is not. Apparently they have too low a rate of failure, though of course the Catholic Church is happy to argue that they're too imperfect when it comes to preventing the sexual transmission of diseases. Ah, what a piece of work is a man.
Which brings us back to John C. Wright, the screed writer, who has three children. Just three and apparently no more on the way even though he converted to Catholicism in 2008. Catholics, I remind you, still equate contraception as being a sin just like homosexuality just like in those old screwtape letters unlike all the other sects that have decided to join the 20th Century if not the 21st. So John C. Wright, just what kind of hypocrite are you?
Today Catholics, alongside the Amish and a few dissenting evangelicals, are among the few holdouts in a world that has come to accept contraception or never had anything against it. At the time The Screwtape Letters, a group of essays on Christian apologetics with a fictional framing device, were written by C.S. Lewis this was not at all the case. The Anglican Church had only recently allowed contraception and there was still a great deal of older thinking that sex, even between a married couple, was only acceptable if there were the possibility of procreation attached to it.
All this happened in Christianity due to Genesis 38:6-10.
Judah got a wife for Er, his first-born; her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah's first born, was displeasing to the Lord and the Lord took his life. Then Judah said to Onan, "Join with your brother's wife and do your duty by her as a brother-in-law, and provide offspring for your brother." But Onan, knowing that the seed would not count as his, let it go to waste whenever he joined with his brother's wife, so as not to provide offspring for his brother. What he did was displeasing to the Lord, and He took his life also.The original, correct, interpretation of this passage was that Onan refused his duty and the Jewish God punished him for it. Problem was that eventually levirate marriage, the marriage of a brother to a dead man's wife with the intention of producing a male heir, fell out of practice due to unpopularity. But this left the theologians with a problem, their God can never be wrong! And they've already defined their holy book as perfect!! So there must be some other sin here that god is punishing!!!
Christians ended up interpreting this as forbidding any sexual act not intended for procreation. There have been more or less rigid interpretations, but it was always the same. For eighteen centuries the theology was clearly on the side of no masturbation, no coitus interruptus (pulling out just before ejaculation to reduce the possibility of children), no oral sex, no sexual toys, and no homosexual sex. And when someone came along and invented a primitive condom that was forbidden too. Fellatio was especially forbidden because of the primitive view of women being just a sort of hollow in which to plant a seed elevating semen to containing little tiny fetuses, making its consumption cannibalism.
Now just to be totally clear the current Catholic position is that sex does not have to result in a child. It just has to have that possibility. So the hugely imperfect rhythm method of contraception is acceptable, but a little bit of rubber is not. Apparently they have too low a rate of failure, though of course the Catholic Church is happy to argue that they're too imperfect when it comes to preventing the sexual transmission of diseases. Ah, what a piece of work is a man.
Which brings us back to John C. Wright, the screed writer, who has three children. Just three and apparently no more on the way even though he converted to Catholicism in 2008. Catholics, I remind you, still equate contraception as being a sin just like homosexuality just like in those old screwtape letters unlike all the other sects that have decided to join the 20th Century if not the 21st. So John C. Wright, just what kind of hypocrite are you?