speaker-0 (00:00.086)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Catching Foxes, a podcast that dares to ask, can two men in their early to mid forties who used to podcast at night and drink now do it in the morning? I am Luke. Here with me as always is my buddy Gomer. Hello, friend.

speaker-1 (00:14.584)
Hey Luke, how are you?

speaker-0 (00:16.312)
Good. Apparently we need to do introductions every in the beginning of every episode now.

speaker-1 (00:20.192)
It's okay. It's okay. The people want it. The people need it.

speaker-0 (00:22.998)
I just miss old podcasts when it was just a conversation and people weren't weren't expecting things.

speaker-1 (00:27.682)
Well it turns out people need a show. Not just two dudes rambling.

speaker-0 (00:34.126)
What the hell do you people need structure for?

speaker-1 (00:37.024)
What do you want from me? What do you want? You want my blood, my kidneys?

speaker-0 (00:42.38)
You it's so funny. Like as

speaker-1 (00:43.404)
Or we just want a the ability to distinguish you two. Someone said to me in the car the other day, they go, I yeah, I I can't tell the difference between you and Luke. And I was like, You can't tell the difference between me and Luke. I was like, Okay. We actually get that all the time.

speaker-0 (00:59.662)
We do, we do. You would think that you know, one of us having a stutter and whatnot. But

speaker-1 (01:05.834)
I didn't wanna say it. I didn't wanna I mean I said it in the car but I didn't want to say it in front of

speaker-0 (01:09.87)
We're debate- I saw your mind. I saw the okay. I saw it. Gilmer, I have a pretty heavy topic. Do you want to just dive into it?

speaker-1 (01:19.07)
you know what? I would love to dive into it.

speaker-0 (01:21.642)
Okay. Are you ready for this?

speaker-1 (01:25.122)
Well, I did my fascia exercises and my lymph node exercises. So I am ready to go. I'm draining. I am spry. Whenever I had to give a talk to that man as you on a webinar right here in my office, I made sure everyone could see those dumbbells behind me.

speaker-0 (01:44.654)
I have a joke that I want to make, but it's very inappropriate. And so let's Okay. Yeah, I'll t I'll t I'll tell you otherwise. So, you know, in in the past I would think, hey, it's gonna be really good to like have a little bit of a preamble if if you will. I to start off with the caveat to try to say here are the nuances that I understand. But instead I want to jump right to and then go to the nuances because I just want to shock everyone. Okay.

speaker-1 (01:48.942)
Start the topic. I'm ready.

speaker-0 (02:15.234)
I've been nervous to talk with you about this. Okay. Yeah, you I have been rethinking our American traditional Catholic to put us in a camp that I hate to do, but I'm gonna do it. I've been rethinking our approach to the church's teaching on birth control for a bed. Let's do this. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

speaker-1 (02:19.018)
So I don't know what's coming.

speaker-1 (02:37.506)
about it.

speaker-0 (02:44.897)
I'm ready.

speaker-1 (02:46.666)
Please.

speaker-0 (02:47.662)
Please, okay, okay. Now, here are the caveats. You are one of the few people that I would actually trust to have this conversation with for the

speaker-1 (02:56.194)
And and all of our friends for listening in on said conversation.

speaker-0 (03:00.982)
Yeah. And that's now it's the people who are like listening that scares me the most because of I don't want to cause scandal, right? And I don't want to like, you know, I'm not really worried about like we're not big enough for people to like get angry about. Yay though I wish. turns out you kind of miss it once it's gone. and then it

I I think quite often the ch the church, church being the institutional church and just the culture of the church, there is th this fear around scandal that will cause us to not go into the important n nuances. And I think given how educated a lot of American Catholics are, just in general, not even about the faith, just as individuals, you can get into some of the nuances. And I think that f fear for the most part is often

hurts and I don't think it's I think it can be a healthy fear, like a holy fear, like a fear of the Lordish kind of a thing. But I also think it can be d a very debilitating fear. And and that's what I want to get into because ultimately it comes down to I think a conversation around and this has been happening in certain Catholic groups. I think there's some and I need to pull up their names 'cause I forget, but I'll I'll make sure to have them in there. where and I'll get into it in in a bit where some people are starting to have some more of these nuanced conversations.

Because there are people who need the nuance who are experiencing things. And and that's kind of where all of this has come from. So and so I want to say that like I'm not here to argue church teaching. I'm not here to say this is wrong. I'm not here to say any of that. I'm here to say I want to get into some of the nuances around the around this. And specifically as it relates to our will or full consent around mortal sin.

Sound fair to you?

speaker-1 (04:58.463)
Love it.

speaker-0 (04:59.456)
Okay. So I also want to say that I'm not here to argue the church's teaching on birth control either. I think that Humanivite is a wonderful document that profoundly impacted my life and and it was I'm like really I talked about this before, but it's the document that when I read that my intellectual part of my

formation was kind of converted on a deeper level to the church being the church. Because it made a lot. It's not that I was questioning that per se, but it's just when I when I studied it in in college, it was the first time I had really almost read anything about the church, about like modern from the church on like modern topic where I was like, they were right. Like they called all of this. Everything that he predicts is going to happen happened. And it just and it and

It made a lot of sense to me from a just from a like a logical standpoint, a coherent standpoint, as it related to the Lord, all this stuff. So again, I'm not here to argue the church's teaching. I'm here to discuss how we live that out. And I think that it's more complicated than a lot of us get than a l than s some of us that

speaker-1 (06:18.328)
Cool. Okay. I mean I was just I was just talking about some of these very issues with my tenth grade theology class on you know, when I was talking about the angels and stuff and why the angels are irredeemable and stuff and so had to go into the nature of knowledge, the nature of consent to the gravity of grave sin, you know, things like that that people don't really understand. So

speaker-0 (06:26.456)
Good.

speaker-0 (06:44.206)
Good, good. And I also want to add too that I know this is a really sensitive topic for a lot of people because just as there are people who struggle with they're unsure how many kids to have, some of my best friends in in the world cannot have any kids. Right. And I know the cross that that is for for for them. And they've been pretty public about it, so I'm tempted to even say who it is, but like I I just I want to be very aware that there are some people where this is a devastating issue because they can't. And

That sucks. Like I don't know w other any other way to put that. Like my heart breaks f for you know, for that. So I that that's a lot of caveats here. So

speaker-1 (07:23.217)
Okay. Let's get into it.

speaker-0 (07:24.606)
All right. My the thing that is causing me to

speaker-1 (07:26.988)
Can tell also you can tell we're we're recording this early in the morning where we're like hey, who needs Witty banter? Let's just talk about the topic. And you know there are some listeners who are like I've been waiting all my life. Go on

speaker-0 (07:43.286)
No, we really did. This turns out it wasn't just we need twenty minutes. It's just us. It's just our ego.

speaker-1 (07:49.87)
It's just us. Justice. It's just us. Okay, go.

speaker-0 (07:53.964)
Okay, so I think the issue for me is around full consent. Because when you take a look at what and I I full dis full disclosure, a a lot of this came from the Pope Francis Generation podcast, as in two their episode on this, and it was very, very, very good. And when you look at NFP and a lot of people, I think when you take a look at full consent and how th the will and how I think quite often when when we talk about this, we we say that the

Exception is around addiction or different things like that. And when you look at a thing like birth control, if sex has both a po a pro-creative aspect and it has a unitive aspect to it, we tend to focus on the pro-creative part a lot. But if you don't have sex within your marriage, your marriage crumbles, right? So like the unitive thing is super, super important too. And what if your

your freedom is greatly impacted due to you have severe postpartum issues, regardless of what happens when you get pr you know, if if when you are pregnant, if NFP doesn't really work well for you, if you like these are real things that a lot of people face. These are not just the one or two pet like there are enough exceptions for different people that I think this is a real thing. And I don't think there's a lot I think that it makes it

This is a very this is just a heart of conversation for like a whole bunch of people to have. And so I'd like for us to be able to start to like have it a bit because I think it is important and a lot of people are going through this on their own. And that's where my that's where like some of my stuff is coming in, is that like when you when I take a look at the full consent part, when people's when they're

When their freedom has been severely impacted. I think to go along with just the do NFP. Well, if that doesn't work, what do you do? Right? Like what do you do if you're going to have a mental breakdown? If you have more kids, or you can't like what do you do? And so that's kind of what I want. That's that that's where I'm coming out of it. Like, there could be some things here that like, you know, all right. That's that that that's a bunch from me. I'm gonna turn it o over to you for a bit.

speaker-1 (10:16.706)
Yeah, okay, let me give you for instance for my personal life. So we had we had three miscarriages, for those who don't know, go back three years and listen to those episodes where I'm crying all the time. gosh, the more things change, the more they stay the same. so we had three miscarriages. The third miscarriage almost killed my wife, it was an ectopic pregnancy, and then we were told by the doctors that we would

That the risks of having another child could kill my wife. And then we talked about, she said, but I can't just rem because I can't just remove your uterus because unless there's an underlying dysfunction that allows me to do that, that would be a contraceptive act. And she's a Catholic physician at Catholic practice. She said, So I can't do that. So y you may have to abstain

until your wife goes through menopause. Okay, so that was a fifteen, twenty year potentially

you know, ten to ten to twenty year thing that was just laid upon me and my wife. Yeah, yeah. And then so I was like, wait, wait, wait, you gotta walk me through that. What? And mostly because I was still reeling from the reality of everything that would just happen. And she said, Well, if you think about it right, so your uterus has a lot of problems in terms of sustaining life and it could cause

massive issues. If you were to get pregnant again, this could happen again. And we wouldn't have the outcome of your wife being miraculously saved. So what are we gonna do? Well, I if if it's just the problem, you know, with yeah, anyw, if you can't sustain life in a healthy way, we have a problem. Like we have to deal with this. But if it's not, you know, there's this

speaker-1 (12:24.158)
notion co in Catholic ethics called the principle of totality, which is like, yeah, you can chop off someone's arm if it saves the totality of the human person, right? But you can't chop off someone's arm just because they want their arm chopped off. Right. So you can't mutilate the body, which would involve surgery. You can't violate the the integrity of the body without it saving the wholeness of the body. And so you know it so anyhow, long story short, me and my wife are like, whoa.

This is this is some pretty heavy stuff.

speaker-0 (12:57.686)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This is

speaker-1 (12:59.554)
This is immediately a sexless marriage. This is

This is gonna recontextualize and reframe how we show intimacy to one another because it really can't be super physical, because let's be honest, when her a wife says to a husband, Hey, my shoulders are will you give me an a back rub? It's ending it sex. I don't care if that was her intention at all.

speaker-0 (13:24.814)
Let's get it on.

speaker-1 (13:27.054)
Yeah, sure. Let me just play this Marvin Gay album. It's a sacramental. You sexy thing. so all of a sudden, right? Like, so just picture that. All the things that you and your spouse do that you know will lead to sex ends up being like, whoa, I gotta pull back, I gotta modify, I gotta like really think about this. And the weight of that was intense. And she said.

Unless we can establish that your uterus was diseased, problematic outside of the sexual context, and that the organ itself has is failing or has failed, then that doesn't violate the principle of totality. That doesn't become a contraceptive act, it becomes a medical act with with these side effects of sterilization. And so I was like, okay, what does that mean? And she said, Well.

I gotta review your whole history in order to understand this. And she knew Shannon's recent history. But then she's like, and so then she was going through it. She's like, Yeah, I think you know, you have all these issues. You've always had all these issues since you were 21 years old and started tracking this stuff. The hysterectomy is recommended. Okay, so I do have personal skin in the game. I know when these things are

thrust upon you and you didn't choose it, you would love to have the normal decision. You would love to operate normally. you would love to be able to say, yes, I want to be generous with my fertility and not, you know, stingy or whatever or selfish or, you know, I don't want to separate the unitive and the procreative. But then all of a sudden you get a diagnosis like this and you're like, you're telling me, Mr. Doctor, that if I have sex with my wife and she gets pregnant, she will die. That's heavy.

So okay, so I I can understand it from like in a large part my consent is taken away. Wouldn't you wouldn't you agree?

speaker-0 (15:28.534)
Yes, yeah, like that impacts your freedom greatly. And I think you have a out of almost everyone I know, you have an incredibly well formed conscience. And so I think you be I think you're a person that I would trust, like with whatever you ended up, whatever decision you guys came to, I would trust that because you're not trying to get away with anything here.

speaker-1 (15:54.892)
Yeah. I mean when it comes to sex maybe that's different, but

speaker-0 (16:00.934)
There's a lot of jokes that I wanna make, but it's very early and I also wanna respect the fact that you are like using a very personal example here, so

speaker-1 (16:08.268)
In a surprise twist, Michael and Shannon became Episcopalian.

speaker-1 (16:18.274)
But okay, so you're you're right. Like what do we do when these things bear down and weigh down upon us in a way that is deeply deeply wounding and life upending? Yeah, like what what were your initial thoughts with with some of this so I can think through it?

speaker-0 (16:39.18)
Yeah. I I think it was that it makes a lot of sense, you know, because it

speaker-0 (16:49.356)
My experience has been that when we speak about what is necessary for immortal sin, just make sure that we're all on the same page, it has to be a grave and serious matter, and it has to you have to have full and complete knowledge and you have to have full consent to what you are doing. For a long time now, I have s I have been contemplating that idea of what consent do people of our generation have when it comes to our sex.

sexual choices given that we were so we grew up in a culture of death. That we grew up when pornography was the norm, pre premarital sex was the norm that I was in a junior high, you know, when I was in junior high school in Beaver Creek for three months. Sorry, for three quarters at the age of twelve, about to turn thirteen, hearing a boy and a girl behind me talk about her giving a guy oral sex.

And just being like, I don't understand. What are you talking about? Like like you know, like that was that was very normal for like a lot of us. And not, you know, and some people, you know, they were abused and they or they engaged in it themselves because they didn't have Catholic formation or anything like that, right? I was raised to think like, hey, don't do this stuff. It's good, that this stuff is good, but it's good in the context of marriage and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so it was kind of it was very challenging to then have to navigate that when everyone around you is engaging in it. No, or at least talking as if they are.

Right. I know there's a when you get to there's also a lot of talk and not a lot of action around that age too. Right. So I want to be clear about that. But there but everyone is talking about it. And and it's in all of your songs, it's in all of your movies, it's in everything, right? It's in everything. And so I think that for a lot of people, I I do think that we have this culture of like you're expected to have as many kids as you can.

And that looks like a high number of kids. And when I say a high number of kids, I mean eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. And I don't think that's bad. I'm not saying that that is bad. I'm not trying to say that that is bad. But it's also like, I wanna I think it's not ideal either. And when I say ideal, I just mean it's not the thing all of us should be striving for. Because for like there are some families and some people who

speaker-0 (19:15.01)
grew up in like gigantic families who had terrible experiences because of it. And there are some people who had fantastic who like I I remember when I first encountered that at college, everyone I heard in the beginning when I was there, like they all loved it. They all loved it. And that really changed my because I was just it was such a foreign thing to me. There was like one family at our parish. I was kind of I'm like that, right? And then to he see whole bunch of people, you know, and then there are, and then as I've gotten older, you know, people kind of start to start to

Process more stuff, and there are some people who are like, well, that actually wasn't really great for me. Some still had a great, you know. So I think where I what I'm dealing with is that I think we apply this sometimes like it is it is an objective truth, right? The church is teaching on birth control because it is dogma. That is correct, right? Okay. But

That doesn't mean that everyone has the same objective experience of its teachings.

And if as as as a mom, if you or dad, whoever, if you cannot psychologically be there for eight kids, that it is actually going to be impossible for you to do that. Or with the cost of just existing right now being so incredibly high for some people, what and the toll that that because it's it's

It's not, it's hard. It's not easy, right? It's not and I'm I'm not saying that like you shouldn't do it because it's hard. That's not what I'm saying. But for some people, it might actually be too much. And then for us in this kind of camp here to act like to judge people, I don't really feel judged because I have one kid for the most part. And no one's ever

speaker-0 (21:11.864)
critiqued me for that. But I do know people who have had three or four kids who have felt critiqued by other people or have felt judged. Or it's just it's it's it's almost like the dating culture at Steubenville when we were in college. It's not like anyone was doing anything wrong, but I feel like all of our collective attitudes around it created this weird thing where it just kind of made it unhealthy. But no one could really like we it's it's almost like we all had an unhealthy thought around it.

Right. Like it was just it was but it's not like anyone was doing anything wrong. There wasn't any one person that could say, that what you said, what you did, that was wrong. It's almost like 'cause culture also comes from attitudes, right? Which impacts behavior. And I think I and I'm starting to wonder is our attitude do we need to be a lot more compassionate and understanding w with this with regards to

full the full consent piece and the conscious piece because

It is incredibly difficult. And for some reason we had we just default to these ex and I I I hate to use the word extremes, but like it's like this or you're wrong, right? And I just don't, I'm just like, I don't know. I don't know if that's the case for everyone. Because again, like if you have I mean, tr truly, if you have ADHD, I don't know. Some people I could see could

thrive if they had like a whole bunch of kids and there was a lot of chaos. But there's but like everyone's experience of A ADHD is unique. And I could see particularly with ADHD in attentive, that'd be incredibly damaging. Incredibly damaging if you you were a stay at home parent and whether it be like a a dad or a mom and you had ADHD in attentive. And you had a lot of I I think that would be I I don't know how you could, I mean honestly I I think it would be very

speaker-0 (23:13.762)
Very d and that would impact your your freedom severely.

speaker-0 (23:21.966)
Does that make sense?

speaker-1 (23:23.232)
It does. It does. I think I think there

speaker-0 (23:27.47)
And it's hard. I'm not I'm I I and I like I I feel like when you start to like have this stuff, I'm not trying to say that like the church is wrong. That's not what I'm trying to say at all. I'm saying like our interpretation and the way that like we do this, I think w it is going through a bit of a re examining right now in certain circles. I think that is a good thing.

speaker-1 (23:48.482)
Yeah. Let me say this. these debates, like while not totally accessible by the general population, have like you were talking about how you intro the show with the nuance and all of that stuff. These things have been having happening for well before Humana Evite in academic theological circles, medical circles, like all of this stuff. Like these things are a a facet, you know, Catholic pastoral life.

Like when you go and look at the this actually caused a moral panic among stupid Puritans when the bishops, the Bishop of New England, when his confession book, his penitentiary, was discovered and it had all this stuff on sins against the sixth commandment, and it was just like brutally obvious and direct, which the the Puritan mind could not fathom why you cared about female orgasm and things like that. Like this is a

This is a part of the Catholic tradition to think through these things in a in a moral way. and often the church chooses a metaphysical and like a metaphysical understanding combined with Thomas St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle and Augustine's and blah, blah, blah. Their the kind of scholastic approach to having a law, applying the law, and all that stuff.

The other side of it is the human, all too human side, which of course people don't care about St. Thomas Aquinas only see him as the lawgiver and not the actual stuff that he actually wrote. But you're talking about a lot of the like the nuanced conversations. There is certain settled things in church teaching about this, and then there are areas where the church like is lawfully exploring these things.

through her theologians and through her bishops and whatnot of like how do we discern like new cre procreative technologies that don't interrupt the act of you know the the unitive and the procreative act it doesn't separate them but it assists you know reproduction for people who are trying to do that. and also, you know, obviously with NFP and total abstinence and stuff, there is a way of legitimate spacing

speaker-1 (26:11.894)
of of children that that occurs. Okay. I remember one time here's an analogy. An atheist asked me, you know, there are people born without consciences, like psychopaths. Are they just created to burn in hell? And I said, Well what does the Bible say about about that? And they're like, Well what if they do a bunch of evil things but they don't have a conscience. They don't have emotions. They don't have empathy so they don't feel that I said, Okay. So again

What does scripture say about what how God judges versus how we judge? Is it licit for a judge to send someone to life in prison or the death penalty if a psychopath murdered a bunch of people? I say, is that licit? And he'd be like, Of course it is. Why? Because you got to protect society. Cool. And he goes, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about sending someone to hell just because of the way they were born. And I said, Okay, again, we go back to what the Bible says. God sees

Not as man sees, for the Lord looks to the heart. Okay. So if God understands that this person is born without a conscience, quote unquote, or without empathy, or without the appropriate number of mirror neurons that generates things like empathy, and then becomes, you know, engages in psychopathic pathology that, you know, starts hurting people and then it escalates to murder or whatever. you don't think God's gonna take that into account? Right? Like

There there are mental disorders and there are drugs you can take that make you hyper promiscuous. Right? Like that's just like schizophr I I wanna say that. gosh, I can't remember. The whole Silver Linings playbook, I brought this up before, but I remember Jennifer Lawrence's character in Silver Linings playbook, how these older men or like and she was like what nineteen twenty, twenty-one in in in the movie. All the these older men kept trying to find her because she was hyper promiscuous.

Right, and they and she would sleep with them and you know all that stuff, and her dad had to like fight these guys off and all this. It was so it's such a bizarre thing. But there are mental conditions that mental impairments that make one hyper promiscuous. So then you ask, does that lessen the moral culpability of making a decision? Right. So you're we you know, we just summarize it in the word consent. But the church's thing is like you're it has to be gravely wrong, which you said birth control.

speaker-1 (28:36.99)
The church is teaching it is gravely wrong. It has to be gravely wrong. You have to have full knowledge of its gravity, and you have to have sufficient consent of your will, for these things, right? For it to be a sin that you choose. So this is again, we talk about the sin of the angels. Why are they irredeemable? Because they didn't just have full knowledge, they had perfect knowledge and perfect consent of the will. They didn't have a body that

processes information and could be incorrect and there's you know they didn't have these potencies and acts and all these you know gaps in their reasoning process they had perfect knowledge okay so then you take that and we apply that to our case here with human persons and we say when when do we have now this new age of psychology and all this stuff has opened us the human mind. People have obsessive thoughts, intrusive thoughts. When does that stuff

Become consensual. Okay. You have compulsions that you didn't that's not a result of, you know, drug abuse and and you know a life of dissipation. But there are also things that are a result of drug abuse, alcohol abuse, chemical abuse, you know, addictive addictions that then wreck you that you might be morally responsible for, even if you didn't intend it, you're doing the behaviors that cause it. Okay. Yeah. So like that's a big thing.

To talk about in terms of like the relationship between a individual human being acting according to or in contradiction of the natural moral law that God wrote on every human heart to do the good and avoid the evil. The other side of it is like, okay, so let's presuppose that someone is properly morally formed and then they're confronted with this overwhelming thing, like we have a ton of kids, it's exhausting. Society, life is insanely expensive right now.

It is brutal. We just launched another war. We have these high tariffs that are preventing, you know, downward pressure on prices from happening. and so you have all of these things that are going on that just seems to make life intolerable and make life have no end. I mean, my wife found a receipt from like a few years ago of a grocery bill that was $125 for a week's worth of groceries, and now we have to fight.

speaker-1 (30:58.092)
And go to Aldi to make it less than 400 for a family of six. This is and this is when I'm making the least amount of money because, like an idiot, I decided to hang out with my kids and spend more time at home than traveling three weekends a month. So you have you we do have moral consideration that has to enter. Are you cool with what I've said so far? Do you want to put

speaker-0 (31:20.966)
yeah, yeah, no no no no no no no no no no I I I agree with you. I completely agree with you. I I I I think I'm sorry.

speaker-1 (31:26.914)
Yeah. So

No, no, you go, you go, you tell me more. I I do have another component that I wanted to address about the judgy and cultural thing, but w where where you're

speaker-0 (31:38.156)
Yeah. I think one of the things that I want to get to are you said there are certain things the church has said no, like this for sure. And there are certain things that are still like undefined. I I I think I want to get into some of the examples there. And then because like, okay, so here's what I mean by that. Like one of the things that I think is very interesting about birth birth control is like when it's used and I I I

I'm like not an expert in this. We are podcasters. We are blind people talking about color here. So, I mean except for you about when it comes to like morality and stuff, right? But

speaker-1 (32:13.452)
So funny. I know. I still think about that.

speaker-0 (32:17.408)
Just I was like, that is just the I'm I'm angry that Brian created that when we were in college. And I'm 43 and never thought of it like that. That is just brilliant. But like some practical examples of that, you know, so like when you take a look at the pill, I know there's a lot of debate around how it impacts the hormones of a like of a woman and stuff, right? And how there are certain instances I've I've heard with people where they're on different meds.

That actually negate the contraceptive aspect of the pill, but they're on the pill for other reasons, which is kind of fascinating. And I so I could and I understand why, like I I I guess what I'm getting into, like, you know, when you take a look, like I there's ar I guess what I'm trying say is like I I acknowledge their arguments around the impact of the pill on a woman reg outside of her fertility, right? Yeah. I understand that that so I want to kind of take that.

out of the equation because that's like a you know that takes a different set of information that I just don't have access to. But when it comes to like practically speaking, then if you were to abstain and you hurt and if if abstaining were to hurt like unitive part of your marriage, which like is absolutely true, read between the lines, like what then like

I guess where I'm at, like, is it wrong to use I forget what you're like an IUD or something or a condom or to pull out or like what I guess I want to get a bit more into like the practical examples of like what does that almost look like and what if do has the church talked about any of that with regards to if your will is impacted, your you have a limit to your

To your freedom and if NFP doesn't really work for you, what do you do? Yeah. Is there anything that has been defined there? And if not, that is that is okay. But that then I think it I don't I would be curious to get your take on like, what do you do then? Like, yeah, is there one thing that might be better, like less contraceptive than the other? Right? Like, you know, that's you know.

speaker-1 (34:16.682)
Mm, mm.

speaker-0 (34:34.092)
And I don't know. I'm like we're not doctors. And so I just and I know like you tend to like read up on like a bunch of this a lot more than I do. And this could be a thing that we need to talk about down the road with like a guest after doing a bit more research on our end.

speaker-1 (34:49.323)
Yeah, the ch look okay, so so it's it's fun to like do moral theology where you wrestle with one issue and then you hit your head against things like, yeah, but and you come up with these scenarios that are very real, right? Not just trolley.

speaker-0 (35:03.926)
Yeah, it's not it's not like the junior high thing where it's like, Well, like what if it's this? You know, and it's like that doesn't unravel the entire thing. Yeah.

speaker-1 (35:10.132)
Yeah, yeah. These are very real. These are very real. But then like pulling back out, pun intended, to the larger picture of moral principles and stuff, like outside of this, right? Because the psychological weight is very heavy and all that stuff. So like the church teaches that psychological impairment and affective, like emotional things are factors in the the level of consent you're able to give. Right.

Like your freedom is constrained by these things, deep-seated psychological trauma, severe anxiety, addiction, overwhelming fear. That impairs your rational control of your will. Right. Right. We all know, like I had a kid, I had a kid, that sounds so weird. I have a friend who has a child who was constantly misbehaving in class.

And my wife said, and they couldn't figure out why. She took him to the doctor, took them to all these things, didn't necessarily want to put them on ADHD meds and stuff like that. They couldn't afford the diagnosis process at that time. And my wife said, You know what would be funny? Just take them off things like food coloring. And she's like, What? And he's like, Yeah, don't let them have any like food coloring, foods with food color. Like, take out weird things that are really easy to take away.

So my wife made this suggestion. The lady did it, and within 14 days, her kid's behavior had done an about face because of allegedly red dye, right? Like that red food coloring. Yep. Remove it. So the reason why I'm saying that is like, okay, well, if his if an input like that, like you know, him eating too many jolly ranchers that are red, you know, fake strawberry flavored and all that stuff, that caused him to be disruptive to the point where he's getting in trouble every day and all this stuff.

It's like, what other things do we have present in the human person who has lived 25 years in this horrible culture, hypersexualized, hyper whatever, and then is trying to live a Catholic life, you know, not you know, all these things. And so the the church understands that there are things that can diminish your or constrain your capability to say yes or no to a thing, to even an action that you do.

speaker-1 (37:30.348)
Because it's not deliberate. Like when deliberate means I have deliberated and I am choosing this intentionally, right? And that lessens subjective guilt. The other side of it is if the church defines something as an intrinsically evil act, that belongs to the fullness of the magisterial authority given to the apostles by Jesus Christ. This is faith and morals, right? Belief and life. And so if the church defines something as intrinsically evil.

That means that it is always and every everywhere wrong. We in philosophy you call it an exceptionless moral norm. So if something like sexual assault or rape, that is an exceptionless moral norm that its prohibition is always and everywhere wrong. It doesn't matter if your buddies are doing it, it doesn't matter if the girl's drunk and would probably give her consent if she was sober or what, you know, all the horrible things people say on the stand to get out of it, right?

So so though those like the church accounts for psychological factors and talks about it and mitigating subjective guilt because of how it constrains and manipulates the will. The other thing is cultural conditioning, like you talked about. We have a severe cultural warping where evil is universally so so to speak normalized, right? Like, you know, all of this stuff. And so, like just talking about procreation.

Having a lot of kids is universally evil, right? People will literally say you are evil in our wider culture, but in our subculture, having like you pointed out earlier, having a bunch of babies in a certain sense is a measure of how serious you take your Catholic faith. So you have people who seriously take their fat Catholic faith who are in a culture of you know, do what you want, live free, don't let children warp your autonomy.

Dual income, no kids, like that whole thing kind of surrounding us today. And then you sit there and you're like, well, you know, even your stance of like, well, I'm gonna be open to life in every procreative act almost becomes an act of rebellion against the wider culture. It becomes an act of, you know, maybe kind of like pressure and guilt if you don't have a lot of kids and all of that stuff. so the the church will talk about like cultural conditioning where where evil is made good or normalized.

speaker-1 (39:56.12)
That also can diminish your knowledge and distort your conscience, right? And so the church talks about voluntary and into voluntary ignorance and deep-seated cultural blindness. So for for instance, like if if you're in Rome in the ancient days, like there probably were a lot of people who went to the gladiatorial games that otherwise were like normal good people. It was just so culturally accepted and culture was violent. It was so culturally accepted to just like

Yeah, let's go watch a couple people kill each other for our entertainment. Right. Like that's how severe cultural warping can be. Yeah, let's expose our children that we don't want to the elements so that they'll just die. Let's just take our babies and throw them in the river. Right. Like these are like cultural blindness. When you apply it to an individual person, how does that lessen or affect the the culpability? Right. The actual so you can uphold the church always makes a distinction between the objective evil.

And the subjective guilt. Does that make sense? Right? You're you're yeah. So you can commit an intrinsically evil act, but if you didn't act with your full knowledge or unimpaired free will, then that the weight of that gravity does not apply to you. So it's an if something is gravely wrong, but I don't know it's gravely wrong, I'm not choosing from my heart to commit a grave sin.

I might think it's a sin, but not a grave sin. So I might incur guilt, but not grave matter, not you know, all of that. and that that's important, right? So when an angel made it, when Lucifer made the decision to rebel against God, that was a perfect act, a complete imperfect act of the will. When Eve did, it was a mortal sin, but it was not a perfect act of the will because you know he deceived me and I ate.

Right. That deception enables the subjective realm of the this difference between objective evil and subjective guilt. So and and when you think about that, the implications are the body matters, right? We are human beings, we are rational animals, we are animals, and the body must be accounted for in moral decision making. And the body is emotions, desires, inclinations, it's trauma, it's you know, all of these things that we kind of carry about in our bodies. So for instance,

speaker-1 (42:22.44)
my one of my mom's friends was sexually assaulted brutally when she was a teenager. Okay. Brutally by, you know, like a total stranger attack in like the park at night. No one was around, horror show, right? She never I yeah, I think I I think they caught the guy, I think he went to jail or whatever. Okay. So you have this 15-year-old in the 1960s, maybe 70s.

Have this experience. Fast forward to the year 2000, she has been married for 30 years to a wonderful, loving person. And then all of a sudden, these memories come flooding back when intimacy is happening between the husband and the wife. And she revolts and screams and claws at him and all of this stuff. And she refuses anything.

And like these are severe psychological traumas. And because our bodies are weird, we carry it about in such bizarre ways or and our our we try to, you know, our psychology. We try to protect ourselves when we're younger. So we suppress things and all this stuff. Yeah. So like that that type of trauma is very real and it really does need to take consideration between spouses with pastors being involved and all of this stuff and professional help and all this. Okay. So that's like the the bigger realm.

I say this because we have to uphold the whatever this individual circumstances which can less or lessen or increase guilt. The church has definitively declared this is intrinsic evil. So that means always and everywhere objectively grave and wrong. Okay. So does that bring a little bit more clarity to the conversation?

speaker-0 (44:12.854)
It does. Yeah, yeah. Cause I I think like I think for me it's it's 'cause it's it's not the like evilness of it that is or or its wrongness that is in question. But I think you bring a good point, which is that well, okay. Tell me if I'm off here.

speaker-0 (44:36.726)
Like wrongness and the e evilness of it and our own subjective experiences are not these like mutually exclusive tensions that have to find some way to co e coexist. They are these things that have to that do impact each other in the sense that going on some form of contraceptive is wrong, but it is not wrong.

It does not distort this person individual's relationship with God or the church or others if there are these other things at play. It it can. Sorry. That does it like it can. Like I guess is what I I need to be very careful with my words here, which is a little bit easier to do after I've taken my meds.

speaker-1 (45:26.562)
Yeah. And when it's not two o'clock in the morning after

speaker-0 (45:29.53)
So much easier. It's just so much easier to make coherent thoughts later on in the show.

speaker-1 (45:35.678)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (45:38.876)
It it

I think that like w what I'm getting out of this is that those two things do not have to be necessarily at odds with each each other. You can acknowledge each each of the each of them and find a way forward.

speaker-1 (45:43.085)
What I'm

speaker-0 (46:00.29)
Right, because those are re like they're two reality. Like that is if the church, if Christ draws us closer and into reality, and he like he reveals reality to ours to us, ourselves, to ourselves, those are true things. Like it can be true that this is that this is wrong, and Jane or John Doe are in a place where they cannot adhere to that. You know? So then what? And I think that's kind of what I'm that's

But I wanna I I guess let me get if we c okay, what is okay. Is that is that fair?

speaker-0 (46:39.086)
Because I'm the I like the I wanna be very, very clear here. Like we're not you're the one who is well formed in this area compared to me when it comes to Catholic morality. Right. I'm probably have better formation than your average Catholic, but you have excellent formation in this area compared to almost anyone else I know. So but I want like we're just like this is not like please, please, please everyone who is hearing this. We're not trying I'm not trying to

go against church teaching, nor am I trying to say like this is just trying to hash this out. So this is not a like yeah, I don't know. I just I I wanna be very clear about that.

speaker-1 (47:22.742)
Yeah. So you you're saying is the let's let's restate the the proposition, right? You're saying that there is you we all can acknowledge the law objectively, like this is a law principle. We can acknowledge that not just the law but the the prohibition but also the the prescription, the positive side of it is this is for the goods this is the meaning of or the purpose of marriage is procreative and

It is good for spouses to not just engage in sexual copulation, but to have children. That is a good marriage. Absolutely. And you can acknowledge so it's not just like, hey, it's not just prohibition, but it's also these are benefits. It's not just don't do the the naughty Absolutely. Yeah. And and like And the consequence. Yeah. Sorry. Please. No, no.

speaker-0 (47:55.864)
Absolutely.

speaker-0 (48:07.31)
Go go, go, go, go, go, go.

speaker-1 (48:11.382)
And the consequences of a contraceptive world or a contraceptive mentality have bear evil fruit as well, such as the mutual use of each other's bodies solely for sexual pleasure, the the increasing selfishness, self-centeredness, the hypersexualization of our culture, the diminishment of women into just sexual roles, such as prostitution and you know, all of that stuff, pornography consumption. These are all of a piece where

We separate the unitive and the procreative and the unitive becomes deformed to just the pleasure that I can get from this thing, this act that I want to do. And so obviously, if it's just reduced to the pleasure of the moment, I have to remove consequences down the line. Whether those are consequences of caring about a woman and her feelings, or those consequences are pregnancy, right? So turning sex in putting sex under the domain of lust only.

even if you're, you know, whatever. If you put it in the domain of lust only, it ceases to even be unitive, right? People want to say, well, unitive means what? The sexual pleasure I derive from having sex. No, it means the love you express in a spousal way, right? That's the unitive meaning. I love my spouse. Here's the way I express the full gift of myself to my spouse. But contraception leads us as a, as a cultural,

As a cultural, what do I want to say? a cultural artifact, it changes things. Right. It changes the way we view the body, it changes the way we view sexuality of sex without consequence. So even, you know, maybe not for individual couples, but culturally that's what's happened. and that's what will always happen. and so there are reasons why everyone can agree it violates goods of marriage as well as it is an evil in itself. But then we turn to the subjective dimension.

Are there reasons why a couple now is this what you're saying? A couple could engage in an illicit use of contraception for what would otherwise what for valid reasons or something like that? Am I am I saying that right?

speaker-0 (50:25.49)
Yes, that like those two things do not have that it doesn't override the like like wrongness of this, but it's that their experience of this because of like limiting of their own will, their own freedom through things outside of their own d decision, you know, when their ability to f to freely choose has been impacted, right? So like let me take an like an addict for example.

you've heard you've heard alcoholics. There's a story, I've no idea how true it is, but it makes a ton of sense. Where there's a guy who was like, I could not walk down the street where my old bar was, because I knew if I heard the breaking the like the when I if I heard I can't remember how he put it, but basically if he heard people in the bar, he heard the drinks being like during like being clanged or something, that he was done. So

I would say his like if he were to it's what he can control is the decision to walk down the street. He cannot control anything that comes after that. So the wrongness for him would be to walk down that street. That would be, if you will, like more I don't know if it would be like mortal sin, but let's just pretend that it that if he were to drink it was it was a it was a it's almost like kind of like inverse of all this.

That if he were to walk down that street for him, it was a mortal sin because he was putting his soul in danger. He would that drink and God knows what he would go and do after that. And so for him, it would it what it would be that serious. So it's not the walking past the bar, it's not the going into the bar part that is wrong. He can't control that. It's the walking down the street for him. Yeah. Every addict does have a choice. When you take a look at like from like when they act out to when the thought comes across their like mind.

speaker-1 (52:23.106)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (52:23.47)
Somewhere along that line, they have a is the point from when they have a choice and then they don't for everyone in every case, regardless of what the addiction is. And it's up to you to understand with the help of others to know where is that line. What can I not do? I cannot, you know, for someone with porn, I can't go on to Reddit or I can't walk past this bar or I can't go on to

I can go into icognito mode on my computer even if I just don't you know, like I can't do any of that stuff because it just opens up, you know, Pandora's box. Like

speaker-1 (52:56.726)
Even if you're banking at a hotel Wi Fi I'm just kidding. That's that's why that's why every every web browser is like, Well you know, use the incognito mode for this and you're like, Sure. Sure

speaker-0 (53:09.934)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, so and I guess my what what I'm getting at though is that like I think

speaker-1 (53:19.747)
Think

speaker-0 (53:22.314)
Ultimately, okay, like with you and Shannon and you guys having to make that choice, right? I do have some c questions around the ethics part, but like we can get back to that because we are a little bit out we're almost at an hour here and th this is a heavy topic and I'm getting hungry. and I know, right? It was only mostly human. so my what am I ch what am I trying to trying to s to say here?

speaker-1 (53:41.224)
All too human.

speaker-0 (53:53.268)
I think there's a lot of people who are scared to go down this road. 'Cause they feel the tension all against their will and they feel the stuff and they're and so then if you're if you are one of those people, what do you do?

speaker-1 (54:08.898)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

speaker-0 (54:10.272)
Like is it enough to make is it best to make the di the decision with the pastor if you can? But well then w you know, like or is it is it if you feel like you have a well formed conscience and you're able to talk about and you come to a decision on this, either way, right? Either way that

When do how how do you come to a decision like like

speaker-1 (54:36.716)
Okay, so let me I I want to make a couple points. One that I think you was excellent, that I'm really happy that you made about the alcoholic. two is about the formation of conscience. So and and then three is about moral, like moral life in general to be a good person in an age of insanity, right? So in the church we talk about remote and proximate occasions of sin, right? You remember that, right? Occasions of sin. A lot of people hear that. Remote or far, proximate or near occasions.

You like I can't think of a better way than how you described it. And you described it from a real world circumstance, which is the alcoholic could not walk by his old bar or down the the street. So I have a person in my life whom I love. That's always how I describe this person, who was addicted to crack. he also lived north of a big city, but worked south of the big city. And whenever he got sober.

Had to drive an extra 20 minutes on his commute so as to avoid seeing the road sign that he would exit in order to go and get his drugs. Okay. So this is this is very real. and then we talk about these so an occasion of sin is external circumstances, right? You know, today we could involve we would call them like triggering things and stuff like that.

That by their nature or because of human frailty incite or entice us to sin. Okay. Or provide an opportunity for it. Okay. And that's different. So the occasions of sin are different from the internal causes of sin. I always love this distinction between the external, the internal, subjective and objective, right? It I think it brings so much clarity. So you have your own internal habits.

Passions, desires that you've educated by years of addiction. But then you have these external circumstances, the road sign, right? The, the clinking of glasses, the type of food you would eat maybe when you were drinking, that seeing that food in the real world. Okay, you talked to you you brought up like pornography, like just going on a thing. All of this stuff can affect us. We all know about triggers and stuff like that. But if you deliberately

speaker-1 (57:02.35)
Put yourself in what we call a proximate or near occasion of sin, you are responsible, exactly what you said, with what follows. Because you know your interior disposition is too weak to handle it. Right? Mama told you not to come. This ain't the way to have fun, right? And so you are a hundred percent responsible. So, like when you go to confession.

speaker-0 (57:25.271)
Mm-hmm.

speaker-1 (57:31.586)
You have to confess or have to, right? You are you you ought to confess how you ended up in that sin in certain cases, like especially for addictive and compulsive behavior. Like, dude, I sinned, I I went to the bar. I thought I could do it. I wanted to watch the sports ball game, I wanted to do the fantasy football with my friends. Luke, is it wrong to play fantasy football? Okay, so maybe that's a different argument, but like you want to socialize with your friends and have fun and blah blah blah.

But they keep meeting at bars or they keep meeting at Buffalo Wild Wings where you used to sit there and get drunk. You can no longer do that. And that's a massive sacrifice. You have to say to your friends, why doesn't everyone come over to my house? And then someone brings beer, and you're like, crap, right? There are you have to go, you are expected as a human person to go to great lengths to avoid the near occasion of sin.

If you know your weaknesses will cause you to fall. Right? I know an alcoholic who doesn't eat rum cake, not because it has the it makes you drunk, but even the f the the hint of the flavoring.

speaker-0 (58:44.654)
Could trail you can yeah.

speaker-1 (58:46.156)
Yeah. And people might say, that's so little, that's so stupid. That's so but he knows himself. He has a properly formed conscience and he's willing to engage in in radical behavior because it matters more to him to not fall than it does to fall. Okay. Again, when we talk about these things, you can talk about it in an abstract way that helps you to understand like.

Start with the principles and then apply the specific behaviors. It that doesn't always perfectly align. So when you talk about sex and sexuality and you're talking about intimacy, you're talking about a million things that then you're bringing to the table. If you could have engaged in a sexual act and it results in pregnancy and that pregnancy kill you, that's a thing that is different than I have a I'm afraid to have a lot of kids because the psychological stressors are huge or

We need to space children more aggressively because we we have no money. I don't know how to pay for these kids. I mean, I have a friend who goes to Mexico and goes to the slums of Mexico and routinely finds, you know, we found a little girl holding a sign that says, we'll trade for goat. And the little girl couldn't read the sign, but she was holding it up saying about herself. Her mother wrote that sign. So there are people in impossible circumstances.

Right. And then the question becomes can you do an intrinsically evil act in order to avoid something that is devastating or bad or potentially devastating or bad? Right. and the you know, there also is things like remote occasions of sin where the danger to fall in to re trigger yourself is very is very minor. It's not habitual. He knows through trial and error.

That walking down that street and hearing the clinking of glasses, that's gonna pull him into the life. But maybe he's walking down another street and it's you know St. Patty's Day and he didn't realize that everyone was drinking green beer on the street. Yeah. Okay, so like that's different. Yeah, yeah. And so that that matters. That matters to our moral discussion because, like, again, you can't do an intrinsically evil act. You can't plan to do it and then claim ignorance. So for instance, there was a woman who was infertile and she wanted

speaker-1 (01:01:09.972)
IVF, and she said, I feel like my relationship with God is fine if I do it. And I said, Yeah, everyone hanging from the cross thinks the temptation to come down from that cross is always the voice of God because we want it to be. But sometimes to be a decent moral person means we have to make a heroically moral choice. Right? I was not, if if if my wife's uterus was removed, the temptation and wait for me to.

Use a condom or you know, w whatever, to use whatever artificial methods of birth control were available to me as a way of saying, yes, now I know, quote unquote, that I will not, I have certainty to some greater measure that my wife will not get pregnant and blah, blah, blah. I know that that like I am being asked to do a heroically moral thing. And and by heroic I mean beyond the standards of normal morality, of normal spousal morality.

But my conscience doesn't get to just say, well, you know what? You're it it's 100% real. This is very the the situation is grave. So in this case, buddy, you can do what you want. Like, this is where the difficulty in following Christ and why we need the wit the lived witness of the saints of being like, what do I do in this situation? Do I do well, you have to space your births. Okay, we agree. I have to space births. We cannot have.

We have eight kids. We cannot have nine right now. My brain is done. I can't handle this. I'm cracking, you know. Obviously, with the great tragedy of that woman who had postpartum psychosis. Like, that's real. That is super real. I have had friends who have plummeted into the darkest depression postpartum, right? I like to the fact that they can't physically get out of bed to nurse their own child. Okay. That's real. That is real. And the church.

Absolutely takes account for that. Now you might talk to a priest who's like, what the hell? Or you might read a Matt Walsh, you know, tweet that's like, this is fake, or what you know, yeah, raising families hard, or whatever it is. Like, that's something separate. The church does make account and has made account for subjective psychological issues. That doesn't mean it can ever mitigate the intrinsically evil nature of an act, but things can be considered that are not just.

speaker-1 (01:03:35.97)
Well, you can't use contraception, so good luck. Like there are other things that involve that that people other decisions that people can make that might be an undue burden. Hey, I need we need to abstain from marriage for two years. Or same from sex for two abstain from marriage. we need to abstain for sex for two years. Right? Now the question then becomes how do we continually show intimacy in a non

sexually gratifying manner in a non orgasming ending manner.

speaker-0 (01:04:10.154)
Wouldn't that if you abstain for two years, wouldn't doesn't that impair like unitive aspect of the act and of your marriage?

speaker-1 (01:04:18.274)
No. How come? It can. It can. But also it can okay, so I had a husband and wife. Again, I'm I'm trying to draw real stories not fake actors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A husband and wife, they wanted to become Catholic. They had both been previously married. They had no annulments. They needed to work on their annulments. And the husband who was Catholic was kind of Catholic in name only, entered into marriage, and it was deeply problematic.

speaker-0 (01:04:21.368)
Okay, yeah yeah.

speaker-1 (01:04:44.672)
Right, like h or it was deeply deeply complicated. It's problematic. It was deeply complicated and it was taking forever. So they had gone five years without sexual copulation due to the fact that they did not have a valid marriage in the eyes of the church. Now she was a convert, she was the one converting, and she said, My love for our marriage bed or my love for the Eucharist is greater than my love for the marriage bed. Right now.

Is that right or wrong? Well, the husband, thanks be to God, was in agreement with her. Yes, it is a higher good to long for the sacraments and a lesser good to engage in physical copulation. Once that annulments were the annulment was granted, the issues were resolved, and then they had sacramental marriage. Guess what? They did the hibity dibity, I'm sure, from here to kingdom come. and no. sorry.

The filter kicked on in the last second. man, that was a close one. That would have offended, that would have offended some people in the audience. I would have had a conversation on Sunday. You know, you probably shouldn't have said that. Okay. So that that is a very real thing that real people have to do because they know the objective moral evil of fornication, because that's or adultery, because that's what that would be outside of the annulments. That would and vowed sacramental marriage, they knew that. And so they said, My I do not want.

To mortally sin here, which would deprive me of the Eucharist there. Therefore, now there can be other like other occasions, and this is where morality goes from principles to casuistry, case by case basis. And there are things because I'm not a trained pastoral whatever or a trained moral theologian, you know, this is where we all offer cautions because I would say if NFP isn't working.

And I've had plenty of people where that's that's the case. And you and you're trying your very best to fix the underlying health problems so that NFP can work, so that you know the symptoms are are clearer and all that stuff. and you are at you're you're poor, you're struggling, you already have a bunch of kids, you've been generous and open to life, you don't know what this looks like, you want to keep expressing spousal love.

speaker-1 (01:07:06.358)
In a physically intimate way because that is a mutual good for both of you. It's the unit of meaning, right? All that stuff. sometimes the church asks you to sacrifice a lesser good for a greater good. And that is that can that it's a crucifixion. I think

speaker-0 (01:07:26.23)
Yeah. I agree with you, and I I wish we had more time on this. I think where I struggle with is that like aren't isn't the unitive aspect and the procreative aspect supposed to be on like the same like

speaker-1 (01:07:40.462)
Same level. No, it's the biggest mistake that we make is so the the difference though is, and you sent me that Substack article that the woman wrote. So the the problem is with Catholic moral theology, and I I do mean the problem, and I think she was right to make this distinction in her article. It almost sexual theology almost always focuses on the male orgasm. Why? Because of ejaculation. Why? Because that's what completes the marital act.

speaker-0 (01:07:49.602)
But that's kinda where like that yeah. Yeah.

speaker-1 (01:08:10.318)
Because there is no procreative meaning if the man does not physically actually result in ejaculation into the cervix of the woman, right? Without those things taking place, what is the sexual act without it being completed? And how do you define completion? Right? Well, for the woman, the woman can engage in a sexual act without it leading to an orgasm, but it does lead to a baby. So then the element of

speaker-0 (01:08:35.48)
Mm-hmm.

speaker-1 (01:08:39.244)
The more like just focusing on the the within the sphere of justice regarding the sexual act itself in the in this domain of justice, the question then becomes how you know, what is licit or illicit? Again, these are questions about justice, not necessarily about prudence or anything else, but what is licit or illicit in the sexual act and how do we define the sexual act? So the problem is.

Most men, most moral theologians are men down through the history of the church because they're priests and bishops and stuff, and they only regard the male side of the thing for right reasons because it is the completion of the sexual act, it is the the purpose of the sexual act. But the female side honestly has not been given a large amount. Obviously, secular culture it does, but the sexual sec the sexual the sexual secular culture focuses on

Orgasm independent of any unit of meaning, independent of any procreative meaning. Yeah. Okay. So there already is this massive cultural thing that we have to fight against, which I think in that article, the some of the modes that she used to express, you know, like my desires and my own, you know, whatever. I think there were elements of cultural creep that are foreign to the gospel that may warp our judgment just as much as pornography does in the culture. Okay. And it's it is very real that.

and she had mentioned Carol Voitia did this consideration in love and responsibility, the duty that a man has to his wife to help her achieve orgasm, independent of his ability to ejaculate within the within the cervix. So that's and and then Dietrich von Hildebrand, if you don't know Dietrich von Hildebrand, you really ought to. He was a philosopher, phenomenologist, brilliant thinker, and he gave an address to the bishops that eventually became a book.

I have it here somewhere. I think it's called Love and Sex or something like that. we can't He's the one that came up with the language of unitive and procreative. And he's the one that talks about how love is expressed through sex. And it's not just the libido dominati. It's not just like sex is always a sinful act, kind of like from St. Augustine, because it over the passions overwhelm reason. That it really is a an intentional, it's not you're it's not reducible. This is one of his things.

speaker-1 (01:11:00.972)
Spousal love is not reducible to friendship plus sex, right? It is an in it is a different type of love that can be both independent of sex but also involves the conjugal aspect of sex, which is why Pope Paul the Six Humane Vite takes a much more phenomenological and personal turn because he was influenced by Dietrich von Hildebrand and Carol Voidia, and that's why that whole personal thing. So we we really do have to uphold the procreative meaning.

But you can say in a certain sense, the unit or excuse me, the unitive is the meaning of the act. This is von Hildebrand. And the procreative is the purpose of the act. Right? It's the per why are you doing this thing? The purpose is answered. But within a human context, it's not just to have babies, it's not just to have pleasure, it's to unite the two. And that can become wounded by circumstances, both of them procreative and the unitive. Okay. I said a lot of words.

speaker-0 (01:11:56.714)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No, no, no. So no no. So if so because I I think and this is kind of where like I think I differ from like you and other people, and this is where I think I want to get into the cultural piece. Different in the sense that I think our response is to always say to do the heroic act. Like in terms of like the hierarchies of, you know, like

speaker-1 (01:12:23.148)
Not always. Not always.

speaker-0 (01:12:24.918)
Yeah, but I feel like from a cultural standpoint, from our camp of Catholicism, and I I hate to use those terms, but just 'cause I I but I want to acknowledge that like it's there is different people take a different approach to this. So a lot of the people like it is the heroic thing that is viewed as the only option. And that's where that's where Yeah, yeah. And that's where like I I I kinda want to just for the 'cause there's a lot here that I I would like to get to and I I

speaker-1 (01:12:43.372)
Yeah, and that's wrong. And that's wrong. Yeah.

speaker-0 (01:12:54.294)
wonder if we need to maybe split this up.

speaker-1 (01:12:56.3)
I think we should. I think we should split this up. Yeah. Absolutely. I want to keep talking about And it there. Huh? Okay. Yeah. And well, I I let me just I think you made a good point. And even when I was saying it, I was like, I gotta make a distinction, but I've been talking about Yeah. So like the with heroic acts, like let me give you a good example. there's you know, we have saints in the church, female saints in the church who died rather than do a tr like a cancer treatment that would kill their unborn child.

speaker-0 (01:13:08.206)
Yeah, the computer.

speaker-1 (01:13:24.802)
And their unborn child survives and they died. Yep. Right. Okay. Yep. Yep. Modern moral saints. So that's a heroic act. And there was a guy who was a Catholic speaker who was giving a talk from the stage, and he says, you know, the church demands that you do the heroic thing here. And then a buddy of mine was sitting in the stage and he's like, Man, that is so wrong. And I said, That correct. That is a hundred percent correct. That was wrong for him to say that from the stage. Why? Here's the difference though.

You are not required to die if you're the mother and you're pregnant with a child and you have cancer and you have to, or or that it's an ectopic pregnancy or something like that. You're right. There's a bunch of different circumstances that could that where there is only bad decisions. You have the difference between that and engaging in an intrinsically evil act is there is the principle of the double effect, or you know, that's what it's called, but more principle of the side effect.

Where you're willing a good thing and it has an equal or lesser bad side effect or double effect that occurs from doing the good thing, getting cancer treatment that may kill the child. You can heroically decide to forego the cancer treatment to lay down your life for your child, but you are not obligated to forego the cancer treatment because of this principle of double effect. Whereas in intrinsically evil acts, the heroic thing.

To avoid the intrinsic evil, even if it became the thing is to avoid the intrinsic evil, even if it demands a heroic thing. Right. So that's the distinction is here are here are reasons why you have legitimate options and both of them are morally licit, versus this is a morally illicit thing. Are there exceptions to this? And an exceptionless moral norm, ipso facto, tile you know means no, there's not an exception to it. There might be a lessening or an increasing of the guilt.

But that's this distinction. The church like it was morally heroic to say, I will not renounce Christ in front of a Roman consul who then is gonna kill you and your family in the gladiatorial games. You are not allowed to denounce Christ in order to save your own life, because that's a higher good and a lesser good. Whereas the person who was talking about you know, the example that I gave.

speaker-1 (01:15:50.346)
Of someone dying in order to keep their unborn child alive, but they die, there is a greater and a or there are two goods that you're trying to preserve and evils you're trying to avoid, sure. But circumstances have hemmed you in. Right? That's a an important distinction to make.

speaker-0 (01:16:06.606)
There's a lot here. There's a lot here. So I think on our next episode, I would like to like continue the conversation, particularly around a what then, if you're in this spot, how do you come to a decision and be at peace with it? Right. And then two, from a broader cultural standpoint, what is

what is actually going on with regards to how we approach this stuff and are there things that are actually is are there things that like do need to to change like I wanna talk about like both like the good and the bad parts of it. Yeah. Right. Like and and I could be wrong. Like the stuff that I think is bad might not be bad. I could be wrong. So again, I I I would really if you go to our website we've we've got a contact us thing, c catching foxes dot fm. I mean you can send me a a a message on Instagram. I'm probably going to ignore it.

Emily does a decent job of bringing stuff to my attention on there when people give us a whole bunch of messages. But yeah, I'm really glad that we've been able to talk about this in like a r in like a respectful and healthy way. I I gotta go here in like two minutes. Do you have anything that you want to?

speaker-1 (01:17:18.552)
Yeah, absolutely.

Gormley's ADHD powers have been activated and it's time to go down rabbit hole.

speaker-0 (01:17:27.854)
Okay, I challenge you to do it without I'm using Claude. You can do it. He can do it. You can do it.

speaker-1 (01:17:34.126)
That's why Jesus gave us grogh. All right, y'all. Peace. Right.

speaker-0 (01:17:39.244)
Bye. let it upload.