Fun with Catholics
A while ago Andrew Sullivan had a few posts about the odds of a fertilized egg failing to implant and grow into a fetus. He took some flak for asking the question, but let's go ahead and play through the logic.
To a Catholic, a fertilized egg is a human being (a deeply flawed one if it's gay, but still human). When one fails to implant in the wall of the uterus, it's just as tragic as when a five year old gets hit by a car and dies. Actually, it's more tragic, since a fetus is innocent and can't protect itself. Imagine that a relatively high percentage of eggs (say 5%) get fertilized but fail to implant when a couple is having sex regularly. This means that if you have unprotected sex, and you know biology, you are recklessly killing a child on average every 20 months. Similar behavior (say, driving drunk or hitting kids on the head really hard, potentially killing them) would be considered sinful. Unprotected sex is therefore sinful.
This means that a century ago, Catholics couldn't ethically reproduce (evidence suggests that many Catholics have children, but this is a grave sin). Today, you could fertilize an egg in a test tube and then implant it manually, assuming the risk of failure is sufficiently low. Now, it's immoral to masturbate, so the sperm would have to be extracted directly from the testicle with a syringe. All possibility of orgasm would evaporate (except for nocturnal emission). This isn't so tragic, though, since orgasm is already immoral for gays and women who need clitoral stimulation to climax.
Catholics might not like this rule, but they can't be "cafeteria Christians" and select the moral doctrines they happen to like. It's wrong to kill, and having unprotected sex kills innocent little babies. I eagerly await the Vatican pronouncement banning all sexual intercourse. It would be hypocritical not to issue such a command, and you don't think the Vatican is hypocritical, do you?
[UPDATE: my sister, a med student, tells me that as many as 1/3 of fertilized eggs are miscarried]
To a Catholic, a fertilized egg is a human being (a deeply flawed one if it's gay, but still human). When one fails to implant in the wall of the uterus, it's just as tragic as when a five year old gets hit by a car and dies. Actually, it's more tragic, since a fetus is innocent and can't protect itself. Imagine that a relatively high percentage of eggs (say 5%) get fertilized but fail to implant when a couple is having sex regularly. This means that if you have unprotected sex, and you know biology, you are recklessly killing a child on average every 20 months. Similar behavior (say, driving drunk or hitting kids on the head really hard, potentially killing them) would be considered sinful. Unprotected sex is therefore sinful.
This means that a century ago, Catholics couldn't ethically reproduce (evidence suggests that many Catholics have children, but this is a grave sin). Today, you could fertilize an egg in a test tube and then implant it manually, assuming the risk of failure is sufficiently low. Now, it's immoral to masturbate, so the sperm would have to be extracted directly from the testicle with a syringe. All possibility of orgasm would evaporate (except for nocturnal emission). This isn't so tragic, though, since orgasm is already immoral for gays and women who need clitoral stimulation to climax.
Catholics might not like this rule, but they can't be "cafeteria Christians" and select the moral doctrines they happen to like. It's wrong to kill, and having unprotected sex kills innocent little babies. I eagerly await the Vatican pronouncement banning all sexual intercourse. It would be hypocritical not to issue such a command, and you don't think the Vatican is hypocritical, do you?
[UPDATE: my sister, a med student, tells me that as many as 1/3 of fertilized eggs are miscarried]
posted by James | 12:33 PM
2 Comments:
oh james, you slay me
i mean, in the way that is not murder. which would be sinful. no sin, no sin.
Post a Comment
<< Home