TruthHate

Anglican Contraception Comes Home To Roost

The Anglican Church, the “Mother” Church of Protestantism, accomplished its final full fall from grace at its Lambeth Conference in 1930. Not that the sickness in the church was not a long time in preparation within that ball of cancerous sickness generously called “The Decline of the West.”

The Catholics though similarly infected, tried desperately to inoculate themselves against the Contraception Virus being spread by the Protestants, Humanae Vitae being the near last gasp of that losing struggle, wherein they invented a new category of sin called artificial birth control, which it eagerly condemned, and a new category of virtue euphemistically labeled natural birth control, with the difference between them being exactly zero.

The continuing implosion of The Episcopal Church is a direct consequence of the infamous Lambeth Conference in 1930, where the assembled bishops passed a seemingly innocuous Resolution 15 titled:

“The Life and Witness of the Christian Community Marriage and Sex.”

The pertinent text reads, ” Where there is clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be necessary) in a life of discipline and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience.” The voting was 193 for, and 67 against.

In the Early Church, in the Medieval Church, in the Churches of the Protestant Reformation and in the Christian tradition into the 1920s, any form of birth control in order to make the sexual act sterile was regarded as a serious sin against God’s holy law. In 1930 the Anglican Council of Bishops, for what seemed on the surface to be good pastoral reasons, suggested ways for Christian couples in certain circumstances to reject this law.

By this Resolution, which went around the world like wild-fire, the Anglican Way was changed permanently. No attempt has ever been made to reverse it, and no national or regional synod of the Anglican Communion has ever officially rejected it. Thus it stands as part of the modern, Anglican teaching on sexual relations within marriage.

By giving its approval in 1930 to married heterosexual members purposely seeking sterile sex, the Anglican Church lost, bit by bit, any authority to tell other members – married or unmarried, homosexual or heterosexual – not to do the same. To put the point another way, once heterosexuals start claiming the right to act as homosexuals, it would not be long before homosexuals start claiming the rights of heterosexuals”.

In the fullness of time the consequences of this error in judgment began to bite deeply. It has produced a now suicidal birth rate in England and across the West, and a rush to enthrone homosexuality as the norm for society making Sodom literally the social and religious model for all our cities and towns.

The steps toward this destruction have been predictable from the adoption of artificial birth-control, through marriage without procreation, to the pursuit of sterile sex between homosexual partners, and on to include the following:

(a) The arrival of the “Pill” in the early 1960s and its impact on the easy availability of sterile sex for all kinds of heterosexual couples from then till now;

(b) The major change in the Episcopal Canon of Marriage in 1973, allowing for Divorce and then Remarriage in Church; and making “traditional marriage” as only one of various possibilities.

(c) The new marriage service in the Episcopal 1976/79 prayer book, where procreation is seen as an option within, not a normal part of, the “one flesh” union in healthy married couples.

(d) The widespread encouragement and acceptance of expressive individualism, within which a person seeks his and her self-worth, self fulfillment, self-justification and self-orientation. In this context, marriage is seen as created by the two concerned parties as a personal covenant, according to their own lights and needs. Thus they marry into a subjective rather than an objective reality and order.

(e) The powerful homosexual lobby in the General Conventions and some diocesan synods from 1970 onwards; and the support for this major push given by those whose see morality in terms of human rights and human happiness in terms of expressive individualism as the norm for human identity.

(f) A sense of major support from the culture, its media and progressive Roman Catholics-via the continued major ridiculing of the official Roman Catholic teaching on right Sexual Relations and against birth control and sterile sex, as found in Humanae Vitae.

(g) The election and consecration of the openly-active homosexual Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2004.

Additional facts and details, could be added to this list.

What seems to be the case is that the progressive liberals of The Episcopal Church, who favor full and equal rights for homosexual persons and couples, accept the general truth of this historical chain. They have long made their petition, “Give us what the heterosexuals enjoy in the Episcopal Church.” Even Anglicans who hold to the former doctrine of Marriage generally find this historical chain makes full sense, as do most Roman Catholics.

Even the rebelling Anglicans, who describe themselves as “orthodox” or “traditional,” or both, believe that the historical chain does not even begin with the Resolution of Lambeth 1930, and not even with the new Canon on Marriage of 1973 and the new Marriage Service of 1976/79. In fact, many of them have no quarrel with what these three teach.

Rather, they believe that The Episcopal Church got its first homosexually-active Bishop in 2004, and provided before then for the blessing of same-sex couples in varied dioceses, because during the 1980s and on into the 1990, the General Convention of the Church, followed by diocesan conventions, knowingly rejected the teaching of the Scriptures on sexuality in its traditional and straightforward meaning.

That is, the supporters of same-sex arrangements worked over-hard to seek justification for their position by new and involved interpretations of Scripture, thereby twisting the meaning of the Bible to make it say the very opposite of what it actually says and had been heard to say by millions over millennia. And all this, it was alleged, was to avoid the clear sense and meaning of the Bible, which is that God has willed marriage for a man and a woman.

For many conservative Anglicans the primary question and issue has been, and remains, primarily hetero- or homo- sexuality. And for them absolutely and clearly hetero is seen as the only Scriptural way. On this basis and from this mindset, it seems that, usually, they are happy to fall in with the Episcopal Church’s Canon Law and its 1976/79 Marriage Service.

Why? Because they accept the “pastoral” need for divorce and remarriage in modern society and also they do not see any problems with “sterile” sex, if engaged lovingly and tenderly within a marriage. In real terms, one may observe they have accepted some if not all of the expressive individualism of modern society and are “realists,” not denying the full biblical doctrine of the one-flesh union (of the BCP 1662 Marriage Service), but seeing it as an “ideal” for which to strive, not a commandment to follow now.

Finally, let us recall that the famous Resolution on sexuality of the Lambeth Conference of 1998, cited universally as a modern statement of Anglican orthodoxy, is, of course, the “orthodoxy” of post-1930, and it is within what we may call the modern, partial Anglican Christian doctrine of marriage.

Conclusion

While it is clearly the case that Anglican married couples are not prevented from following the full Christian doctrine of sexual relations within marriage, they do not as Anglicans belong to a visible branch or part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, which can claim to receive and proclaim the teaching of the Bible, the Early Church, and the Fathers on sexual relations in holy matrimony. And this situation will not change in the immediate future!

In fact, the Anglican Way may be said to have been permanently weakened and disturbed in its morality and teaching office. This means, in brief, that the Anglican Way has constantly to fight the harder to keep at bay innovations even in basic sexual morality. What it has endured in the last decade is merely a foretaste of that which is to come!

The point cannot be made too often that the fact that large numbers of conservative Christians cannot see the connections here is evidence of just how powerful is Satan’s influence is on the spirit of the age.

The Orthodox Church is not much better off in allowing second marriages after divorce to the innocent party in a limited number of circumstances, while concurrently upholding the indissoluble character of the sacramental bond of marriage by not according the rite of second marriage a sacrament, by requiring abstinence from communion for an extended, but finite, time, and by allowing no more than three marriages in any one lifetime.

To be honest the problem is not just alone these identified links in a causal chain since 1930, but can be traced back to 19th century Enlightenment’s disregard for tradition, and to the details of the beginning of the English Reformation and the disobedient posture it implies, and to the numerous Roman Catholic outrages that occasioned the Reformation in the first place. One might even blame some of it on St. Augustine of Hippo.

Original sin was, after all, the disobedience of the first man and woman. Everything else is just logical consequences. Thus the Anglican story is everyone’s story. But for the grace of God, we are all Episcopalians. This, of course does not mean we should not struggle against all this, but just that these pernicious vines have very deep roots.

And keep in mind that no major teachers of the Orthodox church, the other lung of the catholic churches, have declared any position against birth control.

A good part of the turmoil in the world today stems from the universalization of these “Western” practices, and their enforcement by military force. The root villainy is the acceptance of the “pastoral” need for divorce and remarriage in modern society, ignoring the fact that all of Christendom, understood the “pastoral” need for divorce and remarriage approximately 2000 years ago, yet somehow did not slide into the abyss of Lambeth despite that. Obviously there is something more is at work here in our modern age.

There is, of course, the inherent irony of an ecclesial community, the Anglicans, that owes its existence to the need for dissolubility in marriage (and whose founder, Henry VIII, took advantage of this twice) trying to make a stalwart defense of the indissolubility of marriage in the first place. Perhaps it is partly that kind of dichotomy that also lies at the heart of the problem.

Jesus made a point of condemning Moses for condescending to human weakness by allowing for divorce under certain circumstances. He, Jesus, said, that “It was not so from the beginning” and that God intended marriages to be for all eternity. Even Paul denied divorce unless, and until, the un-Christian spouse actually leaves the Christian partner.

Human frailty can be pleaded till the cows come home, but that is no sign the church has to cave into such whining.

The issue then is how to deal with the consequences of this “human frailty.” There seems to be three approaches. 1. The classic or traditional Western approach is to set a standard and insist that everyone live by it, and impose penalties on those who do not. 2. The classic Eastern approach is to set a standard and encourage everyone to attempt to live up to it, making necessary concessions to help them come as close as possible. 3. The modern approach, which takes two forms: first, recognizing that nobody can live up to the traditional standard, but unwilling to penalize anyone for weakness, and thus dilute the standard almost to (and sometimes beyond) the point of nullity; and second, simply declaring that all standards are arbitrary and historically conditioned, and we must settle for a squishy “follow-your-heart-all-you-need-is-love” doctrine. Both of these number three approaches seem to be the ones gaining ground.

The choices we face range from, Tradition as unchanging, to change is ok in a dynamic response to the action of the Holy Spirit within the Church, and on to, be your own god in your own personal church. Indisputably, in the age of the Fathers of the Church, contraception and abortion were considered generally synonymous, and therefore prohibitions against the latter applied equally to the former.

Some say, it has been the case in the Church, at least since the time of Tertullian, that there are some who stand for rigor, and others who stand for mercy, and the Church in her wisdom has managed to hold both in dynamic tension. Each then counterbalances the excesses of the other. But, Jesus stood for mercy only for the saved, righteous, and repentant, certainly not just mercy on the grounds of human frailty. Thus Jesus stood for justice, before mercy, not mercy as a substitute for justice.

One thing for sure, baby-killing is no less wrong for being done early.

But, the Catholic Church allows, and sometimes encourages, NFP, “Natural Family Planning,” used with the intention of avoiding or limiting or spacing out births, and teaches that such an intention can be morally acceptable or morally unacceptable, depending on circumstances. This illogic creates a gigantic loophole for destroying children.

It is false logic to say that “Couples using NFP may do so with right or wrong intentions, but their sexual act remains simply the natural sexual act. If they sin, the sin lies in their inner disposition and not in what they actually do.” The fact is, the act is just as corrupt as the intention. The end and means mutually contaminate each other. And it is a further false logic to say, “Couples who make use of condoms, pills, sponges, etc., have taken direct and deliberate action against their sexual purpose. The moral quality of their action may be magnified or mitigated by their intent and circumstances, but the basic act is still wrong.” This so-called “basic act” is no more wrong or right for it being done artificially or naturally.

Note: One should always agree with Rome when they are right, and conversely, disagree with Rome when they are wrong.

Chesterton is credited for noting that a man does not need a Church that is right where he is right, but rather a Church that is right where he is in error, which is why he should have been a Presbyterian.

An ethic based on intentionality is not an adequate foundation upon which a Christian can base his view of contraception. A man who gets behind the wheel of a car after having indulged normally has no intention to kill anyone, but he knows (or at least he did while sober) that is a possible consequence of his actions. He simply hopes it will not happen, or thinks he is immune. It is a similar hope with the couple using the possibly killing methods of birth control they don’t know whether or not they are ending a human life, but if they are, their defense is, they didn’t intend it. They simply hope their actions do not result in the ending of a human life but they can never know what will be the end of their actions.

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