DERECHOS: Se entiende por tal el tributo que podrá imponer el municipio por la utilización de sus bienes o a su vez, pago por concesiones, uso de patentes, derechos de auto o derechos análogos

1. One can murder a person after he is conceived.

2. One can deliberately prevent any chance of a person being conceived, through contraceptive means or mentality, or both.

Both statements are contralife or anti-life. Obviously, the second isn’t technically murder, but it accomplishes the same goal: it is against the person that may be conceived if intercourse were not divorced from its deepest, procreative purpose:

1. Contraception is a deliberate act of preventing the conception of Person X who would have been conceived had the couple been open to new life.

2. Therefore, the goal or intention is to obliterate the (earthly) existence of Person X. 3. That is also the goal of a murder: to obliterate the (earthly) existence of Person X. 4. Therefore, in the deepest sense, contraception and murder are alike, and evil. 5. Contraception, however, takes it a step further and disallows even the beginning

of Person X, who might have been or would have been conceived, were it not for contraception.

6. Thus, contraception obliterates not only the earthly existence of Person X but any existence whatsoever of the person, in terms of having an eternal soul.

7. In that sense, contraception is even more anti-life than murder is.

8. Therefore, in a qualified, specific sense, contraception can almost be said to be as heinous and wicked as (and philosophically equal to) murder.

Number 6 is mainly looking back (analogically) to murder, which obliterates a person’s earthly existence. Contraception goes beyond that insofar as it denies even a soul or a spiritual existence to a person who might have been. It goes beyond the body to the soul.

It does make sense to talk of potential persons, based on God’s omniscience, and middle knowledge, as part of that omniscience. God knows what might have been, in all possible situations: things that would have happened, given different variables, as results of actual events. This is not mere speculation. For those who accept the inspiration of Scripture, it’s demonstrated:

Matthew 11:21: “Woe to you, Chorazin! woe to you, Bethsaida! for if the mighty

works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”

Note that God has certain knowledge of what the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon would have done, had conditions been different (if they had seen the works of Jesus and heard His message). God knew that. Yet it was not an actual event; only a potential or conditional one.

Here’s another:

1 Corinthians 2:7-8: But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God

decreed before the ages for our glorification. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. And a third:

Jeremiah 23:21-22: “I did not send the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to

them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my council, then they would have proclaimed my words to my people, and they would have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings.”

Now, with this in mind, let’s look at what happens in contraception and its relation to potential or possible persons who never do actually exist:

1. A couple engages in lovemaking, using contraception (for the sake of argument and simplicity, let’s assume it is 100 percent effective in preventing conception). 2. Had they not done so, there would have been some chance (depending on fertility

and the right conditions) for a person to be conceived. We shall call such potential persons X, Y, and Z.

3. X, Y, and Z might have actually existed, had they not been prevented from coming into existence by a contralife will that wishes to separate the deepest purpose of sexuality (procreation) from sexual acts.

4. God in His perfect will may very well have intended that a person be brought into existence by a particular sexual act. But the contracepting couple have made that perfect will of God impossible by contraception. They want to separate the act from its deepest and most beautiful meaning.

Another way of putting it is this:

1. X, Y, and Z are those persons who would have actually come into existence had contraception been absent during lovemaking (so many times, by so many people). Because of contraception, they do not exist.

2. Therefore, X, Y, and Z have been prevented from having an existence at all — even in terms of having a soul — by contraception. And this is contralife.

3. God actually knows who these persons would have been; what their lives would have been like. And He would have had a plan and a vocation for each of them. We know He knows this because of His middle knowledge (scientia media), as shown in Matthew 11:21 and two other passages.

4. Moreover, we know it from Jeremiah 1:5:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

5. God knew this about an actual person, Jeremiah. But He would also know it about potential persons, on the same basis that He knew what the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon would have done, under different conditions.

Abstinence from sex is not contralife. No contralife will or act occurs by simply abstaining, nor by, for example, having sex during infertile periods or after menopause or in the case of a person being infertile through no deliberate intention of his own. None of that is contralife, nor is mere spacing of children, provided that natural law is upheld, and the couple abstains during fertile periods.

The contralife will lies in not being open to a possible conception: to new life, as a result of the sexual act. It’s contralife and evil to prevent deliberately any life from being conceived, while simultaneously enjoying the pleasure of sexuality. This is what is perverse and against natural law.

And it is easily shown to be so by analogy. Suppose we have a person who eats only for pleasure and not for nutrition at all. He wants to eat Butterfinger bars and donuts all day long, and for dessert it’s lemon meringue pie and cotton candy. You get the point. Now what do we instinctively think of such a person? We think he is a nut, that he is unbalanced, acting like a spoiled and very immature child. And why is that? Because we know that food is not just for pleasure; it is primarily for nutrition.

The same could be said (in a little different way) about the folks in the old Roman vomitoria. For them, food was for pleasure, only to be regurgitated up after being devoured and enjoyed. Likewise, anorexia and bulimia are seen as abnormal and psychologically disordered.

God gave us taste buds, too, but the two things must be kept in balance. So we think a person is weird if he cares only about the taste of food and not at all about its nutritional value.

And we think the same of the extreme health food nut who seems to separate all pleasure from food and eats bark and grubs and other such goodies, because they have a

high protein or fiber content. We think that person is as odd as the junk-food junkie. Yet in secular society and among Christians who have bought secularism and bought into the sexual revolution to some extent, sexuality that separates procreation from the pleasure of sexuality is not viewed as abnormal or disordered at all. That’s just, well, personal freedom and the “right” to engage in unlimited pleasurable activity.

Perhaps someone can explain to me why sexuality is viewed that way, while eating food is not.

66