TERPFAN 1890 POSTS: Personally I'm cheering for Hannity. He is what some would call a reformed Catholic. Perhaps reformed is the wrong word, and for that I apologize. In anycase, he's not an absolutely stringent Catholic who blindly follows the teachings of the church even when he believes those teachings may be morally wrong.
There's apparently been a raft of discussion in the blogging community about this issue, which I've apparently missed thanks to being busy with work and life and such. Oh well, either way, I'm glad to see Hannity take the Catholic church on over these issues and others in which they really don't hold the higher ground. It's high time someone with influence called them to task.
I couldn't disagree with you more Terpfan.
I'm Catholic and will be the first one to say that of all the moral teachings of the Catholic Church (CC), none is more disputed, misunderstood and rejected than her persistent condemnation of contraception.
I think the "pill" came out in the 60's and from then on, we've seen a bust of "cafeteria" Catholics, Hannity being one of the most famous. I hadn't heard about the interview between Hannity and Fr. Euteneuer until I read your blog. I tried several times but was unable to open the clip to see or hear it. Someone told me that Fr. E told Hannity that he would not give him Holy Communion if Hannity presented himself to receive it. If that is so, Father put Hannity in his proper place. The problem is Hannity could easily find numerous professedly Catholic moral theologians who openly defend contraception claiming it's really a matter of conscience.
A cafeteria Catholic is one who thinks he can pick and choose from which of God's commandments he wants to obey or not. The Church's teachings and doctrines are based on all of Jesus' teachings. In His final commission to the Apostles, Jesus told them to teach all nations, "to observe all that I have commanded you." As a Catholic, Hannity ought to understand that the CC teaches infallible doctrine in faith and morals. The infallible teaching is done by the Church's extraordinary (ex cathedra) authority and by her ordinary universal magisterium. The grave sinfulness of contraception is taught infallibly by the Church's ordinary teaching authority. Therefore, the Church's irreversible doctrines include truths that we are obliged to believe and precepts that we are universally bound to obey. Contraception will remain a grave sin until the end of time and that's why Fr. Euteneuer rightly and for Hannity's good told him that he shouldn't present himself to recieve Holy Communion if he insists in using contraception.
Over the years since the developments gradually made by anthropology and the human sciences regarding the meanings and values of human sexuality, the Church has been able to give a broad, systematic development to the theological foundations of her moral doctrine in the area of human life and the divine plan. The Church has published several encyclicals which shed light on contraception as being a sinful matter. Casti connubii states, "No reason, however grave, can make what is intrnsically contrary to nature to be in conformity with nature and morally right. And since the conjugal act by its very nature is destined for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and prupose are acting agasint nature, and are doing something that is base and intrinsically immoral." On its seriousness of intrinsic immorality, "The CC....raises her voice as a sign of her divine mission, and through our mouth proclaims anew: any use of marriage exercised in such a way that through human effort the act is deprived of its natural pwere to procreate human life violates the law of God and of nature, and those who commit such an action are stained with the guilt of grave sin."
After that, in 1968, Pope Paul VI published his prophetic Encyclical Humanae Vitae, in which he teaches further that the use of contraception will lead to abortion and euthanasia. Gaudium et Spes further teaches that the conjugal act is seen as the privileged and characteristic expression of conjugal love and in its turn conjugal love is to be consittutionally ordered to the transmission of life or procreation. In short, love and life are the two essential values at stake in the conjugal act.
In Familiaris consortio, Pope John Paul II continued with this theme. He offered this for teaching of the values destroyed by contraception. "When couples, by means of recourse to contraception, separate these two meanings that God the Creator has inscribed in the being of man and woman and in the dynamism of their sexual communion, they act as "arbiter" of the divine plan and they "manipulate" and degrade human sexuality ---and with it themselves and their married partner---by altering its value of "total" self-giving. Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictiory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification on the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality." n.32.
TERPFAN 1980 POSTS: Oh well, either way, I'm glad to see Hannity take the Catholic church on over these issues and others in which they really don't hold the higher ground. It's high time someone with influence called them to task.
Actually, Hannity isn't taking on the CC over these issues. He simply on national airtime is telling everyone that he is a sinner. The "no" to life, which the use of contraception cries out by its very name, can be seen first and foremost as a "no" to God.
What has happened to Catholic families since the advent of contraception in the 60's and since once firmly believing Catholics become confused or simply uncertain about the moral evil of using contraception? We've seen a constant rise of broken families, broken homes, divorce, abortion, and homosexuality. Oh, yes, Hannity might have influence, but he's not on the high ground on this one. No, sir, he isn't.
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