Rising Christian nationalism: a threat to us all

It's also hard for the Old Testament to communicate clear ideas about abortion that fit with our understanding today, because people had a different understanding of how babies were made compared to niw...

People in the ancient world didn't have the technology we have so they didnt have any way of knowing that conception happens when the sperm meets the egg or that half the genetic material comes from the father and half from the mother. There was debate, but men like Aristotle assumed it was most likely that the man contributed all the actual essence (Id say DNA but they didn't know what DNA was) and women were basically the container (for want of a better word sorry) it grows in.
Early theologians like Augustine also went with this line. It sounds sexist but they had no way of knowing otherwise. What that meant though was that there was debate about when life/the soul actually begins. They didn't think life began "at conception" because they didn't know about conception (as we define it). So usually the line at which "life began" was put at 40 days into the pregnancy for baby boys. This continued into medieval times.
Contraception/abortions might have been considered sins in.the time of the early church/medieval times. But not because it was murder, instead because of the fornication element. "Life starts at conception" "abortion is murder" only became a thing once people realised women contributed half the genetic material. No-one mainstream thought male sperm was life before then because, well, then men would be committing genocide on a regular basis.

Lots of people I respect believe life starts at conception. That's a really valid thing to think. And it's one of those personal judgements people have to make for themselves. But it's not the case that the Bible has always taught this. Looking through the Bible for winning quotes to win an argument is a bit of a fools stand anyway.

Totally agree. I remember learning that about Aquinas & rape in RS and everyone feeling a bit ill. I agree he said a lot of wise things
-my opinion on people like Aquinas is simular to people like Gandhi - ascetic/hermit types who mean well & have great spirituality/insight but at the same time seem detached somewhat from everyday life. I also think his Five Proofs are a bit overrated as Catholic apologetics.

thinking, didn't he say at the end of his life that he'd had a vision and wouldn't write again as everything he had written 'looked like straw'? Must check that...

I agree about masturbation. I've read about seminarians being told even recently in Italy & possibly elsewhere that's it's awful and will even make you blind. It does seem esp harsh for priests who have to be celibate otherwise. I know some are happy that way but I don't think the celibacy rule is good overall.

Theologians like Aquinas were opposed to contraception/early abortion for the same reason they were against masturbation. It was a crime against nature - basically sex/satisfying sexual urges for reasons other than procreation. (Hence why Aquinas thought rape was a sin but less of a sin than masturbation because rape could still theoretically result in pregnancy so wasn't a unnatural act in the way that masturbation was). The Catholic church is still against masturbation officially, but it seems to be used less often as an "Ahah gotcha" than contraception is. I'm not a Catholic, but I wouldn't insist that Catholics can't really be Catholics if they also masturbate or ever have sex with their spouse just for fun. It's weirdly overinvested in someone else's life apart from anything else. And I don't think would go down in a conversation well. At the end of the day, other people have their own relationship with God and with their religion/faith that is complicated and personal to them. I don't like leaning in from outside with the assumption they just haven't thought about the issues properly

I also dislike the veneration of people like Aquinas. He was a beautiful thinker. Probably one of the greatest thinkers from that time period and hugely influential in how later generations thought about faith. But he wasn't infallible. He was a man of his time, writing with all the limits and prejudices of his time. But he gets quoted out of context nowadays in debates, and Twitter arguments as if he was the voice of God..he wasn't. He was just someone who thought deeply about god and religion.

Rant over.

Yes, despite the OT being gruesome in parts I do like the larger-than-life saga elements a lot. Agree about Onan, the issue was more about refusing to give her children, rather than just about wasting seed. Poor Tamar having to do that. Not as bad as Lot's daughters having to sleep with their father, at least!

I'll need to check on abortion but yes I does seem less than obvious on either.

Onan refused to impregnate his dead brother's widow Tamar (and died for that) thereby obliging her, years later, to dress up as a prostitute and get her father-in-law to do the needful, thus earning her place in the genealogy of Jesus.

The Bible is ACTION PACKED.

But has nothing to say about contraception, or I think abortion, though it is quite critical of people killing pregnant women.

sorry, edited to reduce the therebys

In addition, Jewish tradition did see it as acceptable in some circumstances for a long way back.

It's not as if the OT or NT make a huge thing of contraception being a sin. There is Onan I suppose...but that's not exactly unambiguous.
It's true a lot of early Church fathers did condemn contraception, but the Bible itself is vaguer

Or I might say the Catholic church has been around since St Peter, and the ruling on contraception was in the 1960s, so I'll balance out over 1900 years, and the centuries before that are recorded in Scripture, against the last 50 years.

I look at things in a fairly black and white way. In my view either you follow what the Catholic Church says (including contraception and abortion bad) or I don't understand why you would say you're a catholic.

I can understand religions evolving a little, but if you're claiming god says contraception and abortion are bad, then the story changes completely, then I don't see how the religion (or denomination) survives with any credibility at all.

I don't see why someone would claim to love football, but then argue that the rules should be changed so you're allowed to use your hands. If you want to use you hands play rugby!

To be honest I find the idea that god exists and we know roughly what he wants to be pretty ludicrous, without adding "and not only that, us Catholics have it correct, unlike the Protestants". If I were a Christian I can imagine myself thinking of myself as a follower of the key message of Jesus, nothing more. I might attend whatever local church that felt most right, but I cannot imagine myself claiming that I'm a particular denomination.

Given the likelihood of infant mortality in those days I expect the whole.emotional landscape was very different to say the least.

I have read that the distance some mothers may feel towards babies in the early days may be a holdover from ancient times when abandoning the baby might have been necessary for the rest to survive. Disturbing and not sure how accurate, but may be a little truth...

I think there's definitely a push, at least online, for people to consider NFP, with some valid reasons, also bc it requires a lot of effort to be reliable (so more chance of oops babies). Maybe the government will try and restrict dating apps given how they've caused havoc.

Coparenting & other solutions mean that it's easier for lesbians especially to have children. I think the government should copy Germany, who have websites for gay men and lesbians to connect and get to know to see if coparenting will work. Surrogacy is banned so gay men aren't tempted. That way the child knows both biological parents, whereas sperm/egg donated children often are saddened to not have had that experience.

Hopefully the government will try & bring back stuff like SureStart and make streets etc more child friendly.

Someone mentioned in the thread that Christians were unwilling to accept the Roman practice of exposing infants. Their attitude to abortion is from the exact same roots, they did not consider a human being not yet born differernt from any other human being, in the same way they did not consider one not yet accepted as a family member to be not a real person yet.

I'm slightly dubious about how much it would have been possible to have hard and fast rules either way.

I think humans, like other animals have a drive to care for their young from birth because if they didn't no baby would survive. How on earth would you get through the first year of child birth or even caring for a toddler if you weren't driven by something instinctive?

On the other hand, people would have known that sometimes (perhaps often?) a baby would not survive, or that caring for an additional baby would be at the expense of the survival of the rest of the family.

Weirdly enough, I was just thinking about papal infallibility, because I checked the news this morning and saw that the Mormon prophet, Russell Nelson, has died at 101. There's an old LDS joke which isn't correct about Catholic doctrine but is still funny - that Catholics believe the Pope is infallible but nobody acts like it, while Mormons believe the Prophet is fallible but nobody acts like it.

That bit of Mormon doctrine goes right back to Joseph Smith, who taught, don't take my word for anything, pray to God and ask for confirmation that I'm right.

But the second half of the joke works perfectly. Sometimes I look at the LDS subreddits, and when the conversation comes around to Brigham Young's theological innovations, almost all of which are disavowed by church leadership, you still can't find anyone who will admit that Brigham was wrong. The standard answer is that he was inspired in his time, and the current leaders have got improved inspiration.

It seems that a top-down leadership style (and the late Russell Nelson was a surgeon before he was a church leader, so he was definitely top-down in his style) and a conformist culture beats formal doctrine any time.

I have theories about conformism in Irish culture. As we know, it hasn't gone away with the collapse of Catholicism, it's just taken a different form.

Thank you, I appreciate that point - Ireland was more restrictive than other places but there were ways of getting round it.

Which brings up the question of women in poverty limiting their family size by infanticide, sometimes carried out by not feeding the baby. Well known in Ireland but not much written about.

There is an episode of Call the Midwife where sister Julienne finds a new born baby affected by thalidomide left in the cold next to a hospital window to die more quickly. The implication is that this is normal practice, even in a hospital in the 1960s. Even allowing for some exaggeration for the benefit of drama, I suspect there is a grain of truth in it.

I was in a convent school in Ireland in the mid 70s with a girl who was on the pill as a cycle regulator. A GP in the local market town was known for prescribing it, a pharmacist was prepared to dispense it. Women chose to live there. Check out when average family sizes began to drop.

Wasn't access to the pill at the discretion of GPs and LAs until 1974 when family planning was incorporated in the the NHS? I wonder how much that was motivated by a drive towards administrative improvements and how much by ethical considerations.

The existence of the pill has certainly changed social attitudes to marriage and women's rights.

I wonder how much attitudes to sexuality and marriage are driven by pragmatic concerns and how much by religion?

In a society that depends on manual labour and the stability of the family unit to survive, homosexuality is a threat, and unmarried mothers are vulnerable. The flip side of the social pressure to have a shot gun marriage is the shame of being an unmarried mother and being a 'bastard'.

Will the decline in the birth rate also affect how society views marriage and sexuality?

Thanks for the clarification! That makes a lot of sense. It's would be hard to demand absolute Papal infallibility when there's clear disagreements between Popes.

While I disagree with the Catholic line on abortion, I am grateful it takes a stance against euthanasia and death penalty.

That's truly horrible...I have read about somof cases of that happening... It's not something you think of happening so recently but ofc that's not true..
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Papal infallibility is confined to declarations made ex cathedra, of which there has been one (1) in the last nearly 2000 years - the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1950).

We are free to sin by disagreeing with the male dominated Church re sex in general and contraception in particular. Matters about taking life, including abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, are much more grave. Which brings up the question of women in poverty limiting their family size by infanticide, sometimes carried out by not feeding the baby. Well known in Ireland but not much written about.

Being poor sucks. At all times and in all places. Being poor and female brings extra horrors.

I know that position of the early Christians.

Ofc you can't judge a system as good just bc it allows those things. The Soviet Union decriminalised abortion & contraception for a while and that was hardly a moral system, for one.

For myself, I would judge a system more poorly if it forbade all of those- though I definitely think abortion should only be allowed up to 12 weeks. I don't know why the UK has a longer limit than most of Europe...

But ofc there are many other things a moral system should do.

There's plenty of examples of Popes being wrong in the past, including some pretty immoral ones (Alexandre Borgia, for one) ...do you then believe in Papal infallibility....?

Do you then see all the people disagreeing as not actually Catholic, then...?

Ofc not. But do you really see following the contraceptive laws as on the same level as believing in God- you reference the Pope, but we have many examples of recent Popes disagreeing with each other on important things. Francis is known to have been more liberal on birth control than Benefict, John Paul II or Paul VI, as well as other matters.

Or do you see him as a false Pope, and the others as the ones Catholics should follow?

Do you believe that it's possible to be a catholic without believing in god?