Chris D

Submission is the floor of the marital order for Christians, not a prize awarded for the husband's performance. The bond itself constitutes him head; her obedience is owed by the nature of the contract, not suspended until he reaches the ideal. His call to love as Christ loved the Church is the ceiling - the perfection of charity we all fall short of and must continually strive toward. It seals and elevates the natural hierarchy; it does not create the hierarchy as a precondition. To make her submission hinge on whether she judges him sufficiently Christlike is to invert the ends: treating the higher duty as the entry fee for the lower one. The old order never worked that way. Authority is real even when imperfectly exercised; the subordinate's duty does not evaporate because the superior has not yet become a saint. As Christians/Catholics obedience is a requirement to legitimate authority in all things lawful and free of sin. That is the structure Ephesians 5 presupposes, not a mutual veto.

Had some time during lunch so took me a minute cause you had a lot to answer but here is my attempt to respond to your points (points also in book): Plenty of married couples who use condoms or pull out also say "if it fails and God sends a baby anyway, we'll happily welcome the child." Welcoming a surprise baby after your method fails is just basic parental duty, it doesnt mean the method wasn't birth control or wasnt child avoidance. Even Pius XII (in the very 1951 speech that permitted rhythm!) explicitly rejected your exact argument: he said the mere fact that spouses dont physically alter the act and "are even ready to accept and bring up the child, who, notwithstanding their precautions, might be born" is NOT enough to make what they are doing moral. Also notice how you only talked about latex condoms breaking and completely skipped withdrawal (onanism). Pulling out uses zero chemicals, zero barriers, and zero devices. When pulling out fails 4-20% of the time, it fails bc of biology and timing, not "expired storage." Why is it still a sin? Because as Pius XI said in Casti Connubii (quoting st Augustine), marital sex is wicked wherever the conception of offspring is avoided. Withdrawal hides the seed, NFP hides the egg. Leaving the outward physical act intact just means you used a cleaner mechanism to get the same result, the same way embezzlement uses a spreadsheet instead of a gun while still being theft. Nobody tracks hormone strips, waking temps, and mucus rules hoping the protocol fails. They use the protocol so it WONT fail. "Open to life" is a modern slogan/misnomer that confuses not using a physical blocker with ordering the act to its purpose. If you only have sex on friday because the chart says the egg is dead, you arent leaving the door open to life, you're waiting until the room is empty before you walk in. And look at your last point about the mother's health, finances, and concupiscence. If pregnancy is genuinely a serious risk to the mother or the family, the traditional Catholic way to avoid pregnancy is continence (abstaining from sex entirely for the length of the period needed to overcome hardship), which is the exact remedy Pius XI gave in Casti Connubii (which was also the guidance/rule for centuries). Why does an NFP couple keep having sex on sterile days when pregnancy is supposedly a threat, instead of just abstaining? Because of concupiscence! True continence sacrifices the sex act for the good of the family. NFP keeps the sex act and only sacrifices the child. NFP hijacks a woman's own fertility cycle to defeat fertility, turning the bodily signs God made to welcome a child into a radar system to avoid one.

"Using generically natural matter which is ill-disposed for them reaching their end" is a lot of ten-dollar words just to say: waiting until the egg is dead so you can have sex without getting pregnant. you pointed out a difference in biological mechanism, not a difference in what the couple is actually choosing to do. Yes gametes have causal power, but moral theology judges the human act of the spouses, not whether a sperm cell got physically bumped into. Withdrawal hides the seed, NFP hides the egg. one uses geography and the other uses a calendar, but both execute the same plan: take the marital act while arranging for seed and egg not to meet. Calling the infertile window "generically natural matter" leaves out the whole point. An elderly or barren couple receives infertility as a condition of nature. an NFP couple tracks LH strips, mucus, and waking temps to hunt down a barren window and makes it the condition for sex. ask one simple question: would they still have sex on friday if the chart marked Friday as fertile? if the answer is no bc conception has to be avoided, then friday's sterility isnt just passive background scenery. It is the chosen means. You cant split tuesday's abstinence and friday's act into two unrelated choices when the whole plan only exists to get sterile sex on friday. In st Thomas (ST I-II q 18 a 6 and 10), when a circumstance like timing becomes the principal condition of the act chosen, it enters the moral object itself, and separate outward steps coordinated toward one end take one moral character. and how does your gamete rule handle st Augustine? In Morals of the Manicheans (ch 18) he explicitly condemns observing the fertile time after purification and abstaining so no child is conceieved. Their motive was manichean dualism, sure, but Augustine directly condemns the schedule itself as using a wife for passion rather than offspring. Not a single gamete was "acted upon" there either. was Augustine just doing vibe-coded moralizing too? Asking "why are you avoiding children (good reasons exist)" skips the question of means. Under classical theolgy, grave hardship can excuse a couple from the positive duty to procreate by letting them abstain from the act, just like sickness excuses you from sunday Mass by letting you stay home. It doesnt turn a calculated schedule of sterile sex into an act ordered to offspring. you still havent answered the actual question: why does physically blocking gametes violate the procreative order, while deliberately scheduling sex around their failure to meet somehow preserve it?

Wrong on both. Pope Nicholas was writing on clemency/wartime execution, not banning capital punishment, and Pope Pius VII abolished judicial torture, not the death penalty. The Church's traditional teaching has always upheld the state's legitimate authority to execute the guilty.

Popes for centuries had people publicly executed. Catechism of the council of Trent actually says: "The just exercise of this power [capital punishment] is an act of paramount obedience to this divine law which prohibits murder." Way more where too: orthotcat.substack.com/p/the…