Aggrad08 said:

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I'll get to the other comments in a bit but I just want to point this out. NFP is not abstinence. It just isn't.

NFP is having sex during times of natural infertility. NFP is ONLY for people who want to have sex, don't want kids, and want to avoid other methods.

If you were just abstinent, or simply required abstinence when couples don't want kids it wouldn't be a contradiction.

Choosing to have sex when fertility is low isn't functionally different than pulling out. Except that pulling out is less effective.

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quoted for truth.

Zobel said:

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This distinction between abstinence and celibacy exists only in your mind. Pope Pius in the quote simply calls it "abstain from every complete performance of the natural faculty" clearly in a permanent view.

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NFP requires NOT having sex.

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ok? Christianity teaches all kinds of periods of abstinence - during a period, during fasts, etc. None of these are purposeful to avoid pregnancy. Only one does that, which is avoiding the ~1 week period of fertility.

Abstaining from the marriage bed during a fast is not contraception. Doing it intentionally, routinely, only during the fertile window absolutely is, no matter how many times you say otherwise. Which is precisely why if, a person does it without a grave or serious reason, they are sinning.

It's not arbitrary abstinence, which you seem to be implying. It is purposeful, specific abstinence, followed by periods of non-abstinence, with intent to have sex but not have kids, which is the *exact problem* of contraception.

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I'll address your longer post later, but this right here is what I'm glad you can finally type: abstinence is refraining for a period of time. NFP requires abstinence. You have said multiple times that NFP is not abstinence. Here in the bolded you finally admit that it is in fact abstinence, which is a step in the right direction.

Abstinence cannot be contraception because the definition of contraception is as follows: the deliberate use of artificial methods or other techniques to prevent pregnancy as a consequence of sexual intercourse.

Sexual intercourse must happen for contraception to be in use. Since we are abstaining rather than having sex, we can not be using contraception. It's impossible. I really hope, now that you have said this is a period of abstinence, you can get to the next step: You aren't looking at contraception, but a separate sin.

1. contraception: intentionally sterilizing a normally fertile act. You are doing all of the sex and suppressing the fertility you were gifted with. They are not the same. To say they are is ignoring the means and focusing on the ends only, which is philosophically untenable. This is exactly what the vast majority of orthodox bishops (and every other denomination) is allowing and what has been routinely condemned by church fathers and every single Christian leader until the 1930s. Your teaching changed. What was once denounced as sin is now given different degrees of license.

2.The sin of being closed to life to the point that you adamantly refrain from sex during normal fertile periods. As you have shown, our church roundly condemns this in addition to contraception. We have to condemn both because they are separate sins.

Now if you want to equate them as equally sinful, I'm ok with that. But what you can't do is show where the catholic church condones either. I can point to where the many, many prominent EO leaders are teaching contraception as licit and doing it authoritatively.

But as long as you can finally see that contraception is not the same as abstinence in it's active potential, I'm fine with that.

yeah dude, I literally typed this out already. by the narrow definition of contraception the RCC uses, they're not the same.

by the working definition the rest of the world uses they are. hence the objection.

the baseline purposes of NFP is not the same as the baseline purpose of abstinence. the purpose of abstinence is to not have sex. the purpose of NFP is to have sex, but not have kids.

what's the purpose of contraception?

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This is exactly what the vast majority of orthodox bishops

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oh i see we're making things up now

Zobel said:

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yeah dude, I literally typed this out already. by the narrow definition of contraception the RCC uses, they're not the same.

by the working definition the rest of the world uses they are. hence the objection.

the baseline purposes of NFP is not the same as the baseline purpose of abstinence. the purpose of abstinence is to not have sex. the purpose of NFP is to have sex, but not have kids.

what's the purpose of contraception?

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This is exactly what the vast majority of orthodox bishops

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oh i see we're making things up now

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Wherever you wrote that, I missed it. But to be clear, it's not the working definition the rest of the world uses.

Oxford:
[ol]

the deliberate use of artificial methods or other techniques to prevent pregnancy as a consequence of sexual intercourse. The major forms of artificial contraception are barrier methods, of which the most common is the condom; the contraceptive pill, which contains synthetic sex hormones that prevent ovulation in the female; intrauterine devices, such as the coil, which prevent the fertilized ovum from implanting in the uterus; and male or female sterilization.
"one of the most important methods of contraception"

[/ol]
Merriam Webster: deliberate prevention of conception or impregnation (as by the use of birth control pills, IUDs, condoms, coitus interruptus, vasectomy, or tubal ligation)

The term contraception is first recorded use was from a population doomsdayer E.B. Foote. He is on record of saying that contraception is needed, because asking for people to practice abstinence to avoid pregnancy is untenable. He creates the term to differentiate from abstinence. Even in modern sex ed you will be told that kids need to learn about contraception because "abstinence only" doesn't work.

I am not concerned with modern jargon helping us to determine what is or isn't contraception. I'll resort back to the guy who coined the term, what the pope said in the 1960s and 1930s, what your Orthodox bishops wrote in the 1960s, 50s and 30s, what literally 100% of Christians taught before the Lambeth conference of 1930 (which Orthodoxy renounced) and what the church fathers wrote: NFP is not contraception.

The sin of contraception is separate and distinct. It is grave matter that thwarts the natural ends of the bodies God created, and encompasses the purposeful use of the sexual function and suppresses the natural fertility of the person. Abstinence, even for a day, cannot ever do this. It's impossible.

However, I will agree with you, your eastern fathers and your contemporary bishops until the last 70 or so years: using abstinence as a way to deny God more children in perpetuity is also a grave sin. It isn't contraception, but it still very wrong.

So we can sin in form 1 (contraception) and/or form 2 (rejecting God's plan for procreation). Form 1 always includes form 2. Form 2 can stand on it's own. But form 1 is incapable of standing on it's own. And teaching that form 1 is licit is wrong by every metric we can compare it against outside of modern, secular sexual ethics.

Lastly, I do not believe that I am making up the fact that the vast majority of orthodox bishops teach that contraception is licit, but I have struggled to find any publications from any orthodox outlets that suggest contraceptives can't be used. I figured you would interpret the "against fertility" to mean contraceptives, despite it's traditional meaning of vasectomy or tubal ligation (permanent infertility). So let me grant you that reading and say that as far as I have been able to find, the Antiochian church alone has published a statement along those lines. All (or at least most) of the churches you commune with have published the opposite. Why are they publishing these statements if the majority of bishops are opposed?

deliberate use of...techniques...to prevent pregnancy. NFP is a technique used to have sex and not have kids. it is the raison d'etre of the concept.

https://www.nhs.uk/contraception/methods-of-contraception/natural-family-planning/#:~:text=Natural%20family%20planning%20is%20a,delay%20ovulation%20(lactational%20amenorrhoea%20method)

"Natural family planning is a way of preventing pregnancy."


https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/rhythm-method/about/pac-20390918#:~:text=Overview,re%20most%20likely%20to%20conceive.

"The rhythm method can be used as a way to promote fertility or as a method of contraception"

this is the kind silly pharisaical gotcha. the problem becomes a pastoral one. i guarantee you NFP is widely understood as being the "approved way" to not have kids in the RCC. the problem is, there is no approved way to not have kids. you should not be "family planning" without a grave or serious reason. just like you should not be getting a divorce or an annulment. but because of these legal winks license is given for things which are silly on the face of it. and you, here, end up arguing passionately over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin why this method of not having kids while having sex on the regular really isn't contraception.

it would be far more productive to have a clearer definition of "grave" and "serious" reason that would almost certainly exclude "we don't want more than 3 kids" or "we can't afford it right now even though we are americans and are in the top 10% of the world income". instead you argue until you're blue in the face why this method of not having kids while regularly having sex is fine and definitely not contraceptive.

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Lastly, I do not believe that I am making up the fact that the vast majority of orthodox bishops teach that contraception is licit, but I have struggled to find any publications from any orthodox outlets that suggest contraceptives can't be used. I figured you would interpret the "against fertility" to mean contraceptives, despite it's traditional meaning of vasectomy or tubal ligation (permanent infertility). So let me grant you that reading and say that as far as I have been able to find, the Antiochian church alone has published a statement along those lines. All (or at least most) of the churches you commune with have published the opposite. Why are they publishing these statements if the majority of bishops are opposed?

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the simple and direct answer is the Orthodox church doesn't use publishing the way Rome does. this is both good and bad. the bad is clear - if people begin to stray, it's more difficult to make a definitive and hard line about what the teaching of the church has been, is, and will continue to be. on the other hand, changes are also de facto impossible, which for a religion expressed through continuity and adherence to tradition, is great. but you continue to ignore this point, over and over - while the pope of Rome does control the RCC teaching, no bishop controls the teaching of the Orthodox church. no website publication on some dioceses is orthodox teaching. i've said this to you over and over, and you know it is true, but you ignore it. it's intentional at this point on your part. you should stop.

the bottom line is that the teaching is the same. the RCC has become soft on the use of NFP as acceptable form of continuous birth control. many Orthodox (almost exclusively in America, i note) have become soft on the use of hormonal contraceptives. i think much of it in the US is due to ignorance and a large number of converts (an argument for our general unreadiness for autocephaly, perhaps). the number of parishioners in the parishes doing one or the other are probably the same in RCC and Orthodoxy.

you are making it up, because you have no facts to support your random opinion. how many Orthodox bishops are there? how many support the use of contraception? if your answer to either of these is "i have no idea" you're making it up. you should not do that.

you can say "it seems based on this publication that the voices against contraception aren't very loud" and i would agree with you. not loud enough! there is a general timidity for public teaching on this, i think. but i also note there seems to be a low appetitive for direct cultural conflict across many bishops in the US both orthodox and catholic.

Read first page: "OHCA church- what does it actually mean, who goes to heaven?"

Skip to last page: "No pulling out, and date nights cannot intentionally avoid the one weekend a month your wife actually finds your jokes funny."

I'm confused to how it isn't a separate tier when one bishop is capable of telling another bishop that he can remove/change that other bishop's jurisdiction without their permission. That's very authoritative and authority necessitates hierarchy. Someone is over the other.

You flipped my hypothetical. The question was not what to do if your bishop commands you to contracept. The hypothetical is what happens if you want to contracept, your bishop says you cannot, but you know for a fact that you could realign to another bishop who would allow it and still call yourself "orthodox". It's not a problem of a bishop commanding you to sin (use contraception, murder, etc) but the problem of a bishop telling you that a sin isn't actually a sin and it's ok to do it. And there's really no way to settle which bishop is right and which one isn't. Clearly this argument isn't landing, so I'll abandon it going forward.

Yes, I am aware and have acknowledged that websites are not official church teaching. I'm attempting to show you the body of evidence that shows there is no clear teaching here and that was accepted by the entire body of your church as recent as 90 years ago is the exact opposite of what is accepted by your church today. The best example of what constitutes official EO teaching is the faith held at all times, everywhere and by all (or some similar formula). That is an impossible thing to prove definitively, so all I can do is point to texts showing that was once held is no longer held.

You have said there's no such thing as finding a marriage invalid after the fact. Now you are finding room for a marriage to be declared invalid after the fact. Canon 72, which you cite, is saying exactly that. If it looks like an invalid marriage has happened, declare it null. That can only happen after what seemed like a valid marriage is reviewed. Why even bother annulling something if it didn't appear valid to begin with? It seems to me you are backtracking without acknowledgement, just as you did with saying NFP isn't abstinence but now you recognize it is abstinence, albeit a potentially abused version. You said there was no room for annulment in EO. Now you are saying there is room but it's only in certain circumstances. I agree.

You are emphasizing "fault of contract". I am not saying that. I am saying that the necessary requirements for a sacramental marriage did not exist on the wedding day. There is lack of consent to enter into marriage. 200 years ago you could say people were fully aware of what they were signing up for, but now it's much more difficult. The polling suggests over 80% of Americans see divorce as morally acceptable. If you believe you are marrying someone who plans on sticking it out forever only to find out later that divorce was apparently an option, did you really have informed consent entering into the marriage? How can you be sacramentally married to someone who apparently does not believe in the sacramentality of marriage? Or how about a close personal friend who entered into marriage only to find out 2 years into it that the other spouse lied about their intent to have children? Were they married? I would say obviously not because a marriage must be open to children, but no one could have known that because of the deception of one party. No one "broke a contract". They never intended to be married as the Church defines it. It wasn't valid.

You can say that annulments are handed out too liberally, and maybe that is true. But when I look at polling, talk to acquaintances, the rise of DINKs, terrible catechesis, etc., I find it easy to believe that people are separating from invalid marriages. The only reason there is an Anglican Church today is because an annulment was denied. Why? Because he wrote to the pope asking for an exception to get married to her in the first place. He knew what he was signing up for. But people in modern America? Nowhere near the same. And make no mistake, annulment is almost entirely American problem. 6% of the world's catholics and we make up 60% of annulments.

And Canon72 is perfect to show this, if you include the first part: An orthodox man is not permitted to marry an heretical woman, nor an orthodox woman to be joined to an heretical man. But if anything of this kind appear to have been done by any [we require them] to consider the marriage null, and that the marriage be dissolved. For it is not fitting to mingle together what should not be mingled, nor is it right that the sheep be joined with the wolf, nor the lot of sinners with the portion of Christ.

If you are a Christian and wanted to marry someone who is not, you could not be joined to them. It's not possible. It's literally "null". The marriage never existed. However, if you joined when you were both unbelievers and legally married, stay that way because the nonbeliever may come to believe. This is a canon telling new converts not to leave their previously unconverted spouses IF the nonbelieving spouse wants to stay. The bible is clear that if the unconverted spouse wants to leave, the Christian spouse is to let them leave. Like canon 72 says, it was a null "marriage".

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I'm confused to how it isn't a separate tier when one bishop is capable of telling another bishop that he can remove/change that other bishop's jurisdiction without their permission. That's very authoritative and authority necessitates hierarchy. Someone is over the other.

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i don't understand what you're saying. there is no bishop who can remove/change another bishop's jurisdiction without their permission. autocephalous churches are completely administratively independent from each other. each bishop has their own jurisdiction, and even a partriach cannot unilaterally interfere within those boundaries. any kind of jurisdictional change would be synodical, not unilateral by a patriarch - much less by, say, the EP across in another patriarchate altogether. for example if the EP wants to come serve a liturgy in a parish in houston, he has to get the permission of the local bishop. and if he thinks that bishop is bad and wrong, he can't depose him, he can't say anything to him at all. i keep telling you each of our bishops is like your pope but you seem to think that i'm exaggerating or joking. i am not.

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all I can do is point to texts showing that was once held is no longer held.

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yeah, but these are irrelevant because they aren't "evidence" of church teaching.

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You have said there's no such thing as finding a marriage invalid after the fact...You said there was no room for annulment in EO.

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I mean...I literally never said either of these things. The objection is not to whether a marriage can be null but to the current RCC schrodinger's marriage approach where a marriage can be thought to be valid but later found null through a kind of legal review. the difference being that the marriage actually was not valid i.e., incest or similar reasons.

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If you believe you are marrying someone who plans on sticking it out forever only to find out later that divorce was apparently an option, did you really have informed consent entering into the marriage?

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yes, you did. as much as anyone can. this is why the thing is a legal fiction.

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Or how about a close personal friend who entered into marriage only to find out 2 years into it that the other spouse lied about their intent to have children? Were they married?

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YES! yes they were! you are constructing a post-facto legal fiction. to you this may seem totally normal. to outsiders these are absurd legal loopholes.

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deliberate use of...techniques...to prevent pregnancy…

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as a consequence of sexual intercourse. Like pulling out. Leaving that part out isn't helpful for you.

Neither are the two sites you use to rebut the above dictionary references. Both suggest condom use on fertile days as a way to do NFP. Which would make sense, since it's seen as contraception in the eyes of those authors. You are finding more in common with atheists and protestants on this issue than you are with the teaching of your church up until the past 7 decades.

Call it legal fiction all you want, but that doesn't make it true. Mutually choosing abstinence is never a sin. Choosing to not have sex can't be a sin. The bible even recommends it in certain cases. The bible would be condoning sin. Our churches' days of abstinence would be condoning sin. It's nonsensical, as you pointed out earlier.

So what do we say about those who are against more children without grave reason? We call it a grave sin. But it isn't the SAME sin. And the catholic church teaches against both varieties of sin. The sin isn't in the abstaining on fertile days, as I show above. The sin also isn't in having sex on infertile days. If that is a sin, even couples willing to conceive are sinning on those days. The sin is in the interior disposition of the person. A contraceptive mindset. But it isn't "contraception".

Look at how Jesus categorizes adultery. Adultery is an action. But you can also commit adultery in your heart by lusting after another. Do we see anywhere in canon law where the desire for another woman is actually placed on equal footing of doing the deed? No. We see them both as sinful, but they are not equal. Are our churches debating angels and pinheads when it distinguishes between the two?

I don't desire to write volumes on this, but you, and others, are intent on equating the two. I'm happy to move on to the sinful intent part of the problem, as I agree that the vast majority Americans sinfully limit family size out of materialism. We're expecting #6 soon despite many conversations about how difficult it has been to raise a large family in modern society, so I think you and I will find agreement here. But I see no reason to move on to that if there is a continued claim that the interior sin is the same as active sin. Both are sins, but we need to stop equating them.

Lastly, I apologize if I am coming across and ignoring you on church websites, official teaching, etc. That is not my intent, but I have obviously bee unclear, so let me state plainly: I do not believe that any resource I have shared is a definitive statement on your faith. Instead, I use these statements to reflect what the widely held belief appears to be. I only resort to them because, as you said, it's very difficult to make a definitive and hard line. I only use them to help show my point that there was a break in continuity, at least as it is seen in practice. If bishops and heads of churches are going out of their way to publish these things, it seems difficult to believe it isn't their belief. And since there is an element of "you are what you commune with" in EO, I would expect bishops to break communion with other bishops that are teaching a sinful act can be licit. That may be an unreasonable expectation of mine based on how I have interpreted other EO's talk about communing.

The EP gave the Ukrainian church autocephaly against the wishes of Moscow. It was Moscow's turf and the EP said "not any more". Now there are two orthodox churches in Ukraine. There is a whole schism over this. Roughly 50% of orthodox church goers are not in communion with the other 50%. So can I take this to mean you believe Moscow is correct and the EP (and all bishops in communion with new Ukrainian church) are wrong? Or was Moscow wrong about their authority in Ukraine, despite very clearly running the show there for over three centuries.

How do you determine if a marriage was not valid? Does it not require some sort of review after the fact? Both of our churches are reviewing what appears to be a valid marriage after the fact. For example, if an EO person marries a non-christian in a civil ceremony and lives that way for decades, your church canons say that a review 20 years later would find that it was a null marriage. They weren't married, despite appearances. Again, Canon 72: An orthodox man is not permitted to marry an heretical woman, nor an orthodox woman to be joined to an heretical man. But if anything of this kind appear to have been done by any [we require them] to consider the marriage null, and that the marriage be dissolved.

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You said this earlier: The difference is that the Orthodox have no conceptual space for a marriage not being "legally binding" even though the marriage actually happened.

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But we can see where a marriage between a believer and non-believer really happens because, as you also said earlier, two people

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"thought *they* were married, had sex (which is really what actualizes a marriage, no?) and lived as a married couple"

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and yet they weren't actually married in the eyes of your church. This is doing what the catholic church does. We may disagree on the reasons a marriage may have never been valid, but the process is the same. If you can agree on that, then we discuss what does and doesn't constitute a valid, sacramental marriage.

I didn't follow up on the point that baptism of heretics has no validity earlier, but it fits here. We can agree that the proper form of baptism can be without it's sacramental effects. Mormons can go decades believing that they received the sacrament of baptism, but they didn't. What the catholic church is saying is that the form of marriage can exist, but because of (insert reason here) the sacramental effects were not present. People can live decades believing they were validly married, but they weren't. The reasons why they weren't are what you and I would find disagreement on.

one MEEN Ag said:

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Read first page: "OHCA church- what does it actually mean, who goes to heaven?"

Skip to last page: "No pulling out, and date nights cannot intentionally avoid the one weekend a month your wife actually finds your jokes funny."

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It has gone down a rabbit hole, and I forget to bring this back to OHCA church. We can't agree to disagree on divorce and remarriage because an "us vs them" will ultimately result. "We say it's a perfectly fine, y'all say it's a grave sin that can result in hell, but we're still one church". (rhetorical we vs y'all here). This doesn't work for any topic. There may be some agreement between protestants and EO on contraception or divorce and remarriage or papal primacy, but then they would turn around and disagree with you on the eucharist, divine liturgy, confession, etc.

Without a way to definitively answer the tough questions that will divide people, unity can not exist. Live and let live only works if people bite their tongues when they see others falling into what they believe is grievous error, which is exactly what we're commanded not to do.

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You are finding more in common with atheists and protestants on this issue than you are with the teaching of your church up until the past 7 decades.

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lol

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Are our churches debating angels and pinheads when it distinguishes between the two?

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honestly? yes. but this is a east-west difference.

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interior sin is the same as active sin

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there's no difference in the end between practicing NFP to avoid having kids while having sex and using hormonal birth control to avoid kids while having sex other than efficacy of either method, neither of which is perfect. i see literally zero value in debating which is worse or better. but, as i said, this kind of legalism (again, not intended as a pejorative) is a real difference between east and west.

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That may be an unreasonable expectation of mine based on how I have interpreted other EO's talk about communing.

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quite so, just as much as it would be unreasonable for an RCC bishop to break communion with another bishop over communing a pro-abortion politician.

I don't think those are representative of what widely held beliefs are. and even if they are completely representative of the US, that still doesn't make them representative of orthodox beliefs, much like germany doesnt speak for the RCC on LGBT matters.

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The EP gave the Ukrainian church autocephaly against the wishes of Moscow. It was Moscow's turf and the EP said "not any more".

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this mess actually goes back much, much farther. Moscow itself was once under the EP, and the struggles (geopolitical and worldly) between the two are as messy as any father-son family dynamic. This isn't the first time the two have argued over Kiev.

It also gets messy when you consider the "walling off" that happened after the revolution in Russia, the formation of ROCOR, and the (relatively recent - 2007) reunion between ROCOR and the MP.

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So can I take this to mean you believe Moscow is correct and the EP (and all bishops in communion with new Ukrainian church) are wrong

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I don't know about "all bishops in communion with the new Ukranian church". But the AP has not recognized the new church granted autocephaly by the EP. Nevertheless this has not caused a break in communion between the EP and AP.

It's a mess, but not really a significant one by historical standards (looking at both east and west history).

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How do you determine if a marriage was not valid? Does it not require some sort of review after the fact?

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I honestly don't know how to say this more explicitly. I don't have a problem with the idea of a post-facto review of a marriage, or discovery that a marriage was null. I have a problem with the subjective reasons the RCC uses to claim a marriage was null, and the examples you gave are the type of reasons I find absurd. And the differences between east and west here come down to how marriage is understood (contract vs not).

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You said this earlier: The difference is that the Orthodox have no conceptual space for a marriage not being "legally binding" even though the marriage actually happened.

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yes, because marriages are not legal or contractual in the Orthodox church. The "null" aspect is not in the contractual or legal sense.

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yet they weren't actually married in the eyes of your church

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again, east and west difference. canons do not function like this in the Orthodox church. I have never personally known anyone where this canon was applied, and I know many people married to heterodox people. being frank, I dont think functions at all at the this time which is a bishop's pastoral prerogative. i don't think in fact that your statement is true.

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the form of marriage can exist, but because of (insert reason here) the sacramental effects were not present.

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right. not a thing for us - otherwise "married" people coming into the church who were not married in the church, were not baptized, etc would have to be married in the church. they are not. their marriage is blessed.

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People can live decades believing they were validly married, but they weren't

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yeah, i just don't agree here at all. this is sophistry.

Zobel said:

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You are finding more in common with atheists and protestants on this issue than you are with the teaching of your church up until the past 7 decades.

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lol

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Are our churches debating angels and pinheads when it distinguishes between the two?

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honestly? yes. but this is a east-west difference.

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interior sin is the same as active sin

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there's no difference in the end between practicing NFP to avoid having kids while having sex and using hormonal birth control to avoid kids while having sex other than efficacy of either method, neither of which is perfect. i see literally zero value in debating which is worse or better. but, as i said, this kind of legalism (again, not intended as a pejorative) is a real difference between east and west.

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That may be an unreasonable expectation of mine based on how I have interpreted other EO's talk about communing.

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quite so, just as much as it would be unreasonable for an RCC bishop to break communion with another bishop over communing a pro-abortion politician.

I don't think those are representative of what widely held beliefs are. and even if they are completely representative of the US, that still doesn't make them representative of orthodox beliefs, much like germany doesnt speak for the RCC on LGBT matters.

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So if differentiating lustful thoughts about another woman from actually having sex with another woman is an east-west difference, are you saying that in the east having lustful thoughts about another woman is truly on par with having sex with another woman? A wife would be similarly justified in leaving her husband because he thought about his secretary as she would be if he actually slept with her?

to NFP: Do ends always justify the means in the east? Or are you only applying that to NFP vs contraception?

I know you say this is representative of the US and not orthodoxy world wide, but I've pull from foreign sources and the document put out by the Holy Synod is a document worked on and approved by metropolitans from all over the world. I'm fine with saying that this doesn't count as official, but I do not think it's fair to say that it is only representative of the US.

It appears Canon 72 has been abrogated formally?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/588186/summary

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Canon 72 of the Council of Trullo (691) threatened with invalidity marriages entered between the orthodox and heretics. This canon was never formally abrogated by authorities of the Eastern churches, but it had fallen into desuetude by the time of the disruption of communion between the churches of the East and West in 1054. In the 1950s, canonists, especially in the United States, anxious to find ways to regularize marriages of Catholics with divorced Orthodox communicants latched on to the Trullan canon to declare invalid marriages of Orthodox and Protestants. The argument for the continued validity of the Trullan impediment rested on the claim that since the schism the hierarchs of the Eastern Orthodox churches have had no jurisdiction to change the law and, since the Roman Pontiff had not abrogated the canon of Trullo, it remained in force. However useful in pastoral practice this approach may have been, it was at odds with the recognition of the authority of Eastern hierarchs to govern their churches which was recognized by the Second Vatican Council. By a rather circuitous path, Catholic jurisprudence finally recognized that canon 72 of Trullo had been abrogated.

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And it also appears that canon 14 of the fourth ecumenical council recognizes the marriages, and the children of these marriages. It actually only applies the norm of not marrying the heterodox to readers and chanters (i.e. minor clergy orders). It doesn't say they weren't actually married.

At any rate here's a more-than-you-or-i-wanted-to-know document
https://sciendo.com/downloadpdf/journals/ress/10/3/article-p346.pdf

summary:

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If we compare the two parts of the canon, at first sight, an evident contradiction between them can be spotted. According to its first part, the canon rejects any cohabitation between an Orthodox and a non-Orthodox, imposing three punishments: invalidity of the marriage, dissolution of the cohabitation and excommunication for the Orthodox spouse. Despite this, the second part of the canon allows such a marriage if it was contracted before one of the spouses converted to Orthodoxy. In this case, the marriage is considered accepted by the Fathers, and the Orthodox spouse is received into the communion of the Church, despite the fact that the other spouse is "detained by the bonds of error and chose not to gaze upon the divine splendour". The second part of the canon shows that the canonical prohibition of mixed marriages is not a doctrinal one, otherwise the canon would reject any cohabitation between Orthodox and non-Orthodox, but rather it is a pastoral, canonical and disciplinary measure in order to suppress the spread of heretical doctrines and teachings.

The canons of the Church express both the canonical akribeia of the Church, according to which mixed marriages are totally prohibited, as well the oikonomia, allowing in special conditions Orthodox believers to live in a lawful marriage with non-Orthodox spouses. In the same canons (Canon 31 of Laodicea, Canon 14 of Fourth Ecumenical Council, Canon 72 of Trullo) we can find the expression of akribeia and oikonomia, without having a so-called legal contradiction, which is possible only if we consider the canons of the Church as a positivistic legal system of Law.
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The canonical prohibition of mixed marriages, according to canonical akribeia, does not exclude the possibility of Church oikonomia, and is not a doctrinal expression of the faith, otherwise the canons would reject any cohabitation between Orthodox and non-Orthodox, even if one spouse converts to Orthodoxy, but rather it is a pastoral, canonical and disciplinary measure in order to suppress the spread of heretical doctrines and teachings.

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So if differentiating lustful thoughts about another woman from actually having sex with another woman is an east-west difference, are you saying that in the east having lustful thoughts about another woman is truly on par with having sex with another woman?

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are they not both adultery? someone said something about that once.

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to NFP: Do ends always justify the means in the east? Or are you only applying that to NFP vs contraception?

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who ever invoked the ends justifying the means? quite the contrary here, i'm saying bad ends cannot justify means. if your end is to have sex but not have kids, the route you take to get there is irrelevant (excluding abortifacient, which i think we can both agree is a whole other thing)

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I know you say this is representative of the US and not orthodoxy world wide, but I've pull from foreign sources and the document put out by the Holy Synod is a document worked on and approved by metropolitans from all over the world. I'm fine with saying that this doesn't count as official, but I do not think it's fair to say that it is only representative of the US.

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you know how your pope writes things and it seems everyone interprets it in different ways and it causes a lot of consternation and confusion and people post about it on texags and then a bunch of people are like "thats not what it means"? that document "For the life of the world" is like that. And literally everyone facepalmed at it, because it was vague, clarified nothing, hedged, left room for mutually contradictory points of views, and generally just caused confusion.

for example, a review posted on Ancient Faith (which is a ministry of the Antiochian church) says:

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Far from speaking for the whole Orthodox Church, this limited, provincial document instead positions the Ecumenical Patriarchate as potentially drifting apart from the Church's teaching on a number of subjects. It is also notable that of all those responsible for creating this document, only one of them has ever been responsible for pastoring a parish, which may be part of what imparts such tone-deafness to it and its many blind spots. There are also no bishops and no monastics involved. In short, the people who are actually responsible for the care of souls in the Church were, it seems, not invited.

We therefore cannot recommend that this document be used for catechism nor as the basis for any authoritative theological statements, and indeed, we recommend that this document not be given to catechumens, parishioners or seminarians for their instruction. It should be read by those who can read theological documents with a critical eye, and further critique needs to be offered.

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I'd like to add that 'authority' plays a different role in EO compared to the catholic church. The EO's theology is frozen. We are past the age of the church fathers and the ecumenical counsels. There is no one able to waffle something into or outside of canon. Same with the liturgy (as it reflects theological practices). There is no ability, nor desire, to change liturgical things. No one gets to throw out St. John Chrysosdom's liturgy, start from scratch and just do something 'equally pious' in their mind on a sunday morning and call that the Divine Liturgy. Not even the top guy, because the top guy ends just one step above your parish priest. Above the bishop is all administration designations.

Now, we got a new bishop recently and he likes the blessed bread to be in a different location than previously. That's the tier of 'sweeping changes' we see with changes in authority. Contrast this with the pope, who can very widely change a whole heck of a lot without any pushback, and even moreso with applying more force.

So even the arguments about patriarchates can become way too tedious.

Everything laid out by God through the Church for my salvation is available every day of the week regardless of what is going on between Moscow and Constantinople. Prayer, fasting, almsgiving are expected out of me and confession, communion. and other holy sacraments are available to me at their appropriate times.

Are the problems at the top important? Yes.
Does bad leadership cause problems in the life's of the laity? Yes.
Is this also not important in the grand scheme of things? Yes.

Well you mentioned saying something valid after the fact is legal fiction, so I felt the need to make sure to emphasize y'all can do it too. And to be equally clear on the catholic position, we do NOT view marriage as a simple contract. It is a sacred union, formed by God, that cannot be undone. You keep coming back to contract, and I have said and am saying again that is not what we do.

So our nullification of a marriage is not the cancelling of a contract. It is saying that a sacramental union was never made. You have already agreed to this in principle. What we have here is differing of degrees. You may find it nonsensical, but that doesn't make it nonsensical. You are taking your definition of what makes a sacramental marriage from your church leaders, and I am doing the same. One of our sets of church leaders is wrong, and as such, one of our sets of church leaders is leading their followers into sin and potentially abusing a sacrament.

right. not a thing for us - otherwise "married" people coming into the church who were not married in the church, were not baptized, etc would have to be married in the church. they are not. their marriage is blessed.
If this isn't a thing for y'all, what does the blessing do? Is it just a formality with no graces imparted, or is the priest doing something to and in the marriage?

Also, you mention people married to heterodox individuals. That's not what the canon is saying. Unless you're saying that you know people who are married to non-baptized individuals. Do you believe your priest or bishop would hold a marriage or even blessing of a prior civil marriage if one of the partners was an atheist/buddhist/morman/etc?

Again, call it sophistry or whatever you like, but you have already agreed that it's possible. You don't agree with our reasons a marriage may be invalid, but what you said explicitly in this very post is that a post-facto review of a marriage can find it to be null. So by definition, you agree that people can live for a long period of time assuming they were married and they weren't.

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If this isn't a thing for y'all, what does the blessing do? Is it just a formality with no graces imparted, or is the priest doing something to and in the marriage?

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a blessing calls or announces the grace of God and His favor on something.

but it is not a requirement. i was married outside of the church before i was orthodox and my marriage was never formally blessed.

but now that i think about it we do have group blessings every month for birthdays, namesday, and wedding anniversaries. so i suppose in that context my marriages has been blessed many times!

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Also, you mention people married to heterodox individuals. That's not what the canon is saying. Unless you're saying that you know people who are married to non-baptized individuals. Do you believe your priest or bishop would hold a marriage or even blessing of a prior civil marriage if one of the partners was an atheist/buddhist/morman/etc?

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that doc i link delves deeply in the distinction - or lack thereof - between heterodox, heretic, pagan.

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you agree that people can live for a long period of time assuming they were married and they weren't.

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i don't. i think that's because the part of it is - again - this idea of a legal vs mystical approach.

the marriage isn't a one-time thing, it is an ongoing union that is an icon of Christ and the Church. it isn't based solely in initial conditions (like consent) but about the lived-out reality of that union in time.

a person who was coerced into marriage, without free will, did not enter into that mystery. a person who is already married to someone else cannot enter into that mystery. people who are actually relatives cannot enter into that mystery. but that's dramatically different than looking back after years or decades of a functioning marriage and saying - oh there was this hidden flaw on day 1, so it never actually happened. the Orthodox church doesn't recognize that, you can't retroactively dissolve the marriage and pretend it didn't exist. it did exist, even if it was in an imperfect or flawed way.

The first reasoning reads as though y'all needed the authority of the Roman pontiff to abrogate the canon. I'm not sure that would sit well with many EO faithful. It's also funny because the Catholic Church never formally recognized a number of canons from that council. I'll have to look into whether or not a canon by canon pronouncement was made.

To the second part is still retaining the right of the church to reject a marriage as true. What counts as a true and valid marriage is not formally defined anywhere in your faith, I would assume. Is there a formal definition somewhere?

it reads that way because it was written by a RCC.

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To the second part is still retaining the right of the church to reject a marriage as true. What counts as a true and valid marriage is not formally defined anywhere in your faith, I would assume. Is there a formal definition somewhere?

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dude we don't even have a formal definition of the Eucharist.

i think you need to take seriously the conclusion here that the Orthodox view the canons as a positivistic system vs a natural law approach. as it says, akribeia (precision or exactness) doesn't prevent oikonomia (economy, pastoral discretion).

You didn't answer the main part of the question though. Would your priest or bishop agree that a husband having a lustful thought about his secretary as equal grounds for divorce as sleeping with his secretary? Yes, I know you aren't a priest or bishop, but maybe you could reach out to them and ask.

Again, you are not "having sex to not have kids". You are abstaining in order to not have kids. You have already agreed that for NFP to work, intentional abstinence, even if it's only for a week at a time, is required. So you would have to say that abstaining from sex is a sin. We both know this can't be true. And since it can't be true, but avoiding children is still a sin, we can come to the conclusion that there are two sins at play here. You don't want to split the sins out, but they are separate and distinct. No different than the sin of lusting after a secretary is separate and distinct from sleeping with the secretary, even if they both fall under the umbrella of adultery. Unless your bishop comes back and says that a lustful thought is grounds for divorce, you have to acknowledge this distinction is at least possible.

This is why I say you are employing "ends justify the means". Or in this case, "ends don't justify the means". The means are periodic abstinence. You cannot denounce periodic abstinence. You CAN denounce contraception. These are the two means that you are equating. They are not the same. So we can say one mean is sinful, the other mean is not. But the end you are intending is a sin, regardless of what means you are using. This is why the catholic church has formulated the teachings she has.

I'm glad to see that the Antiochian church has taken this stand. It is very commendable. Many other church sites reference that document as a part of their reasoning for allowing contraception. It may be that these views on contraception are not held by your church, but they do appear elsewhere outside of the USA. And I type all of that knowing that this does not oblige you to consider it official teaching and that you may simply be in communion with people that hold heterodox beliefs, which itself does not invalidate your beliefs. I would say it's a strike against unity, as many Catholics do with rogue priests and bishops and even the pope's off the cuff remarks, but it doesn't seem to be an issue for you.

Unity is in the Eucharist and nowhere else.

I can appreciate all of this, but it misses my main point. If you have a number of bishops changing from the tradition on morality and now saying what was always held as sinful to no longer be sinful, that is a massive change. It's not some little ripple to give counsel to a couple to actively engage in sin

" i guarantee you NFP is widely understood as being the "approved way" to not have kids in the RCC. the problem is, there is no approved way to not have kids. you should not be "family planning" without a grave or serious reason."

From the website, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on Natural Family Planning:

Mission Statement
Helping married couples to deepen conjugal love and achieve responsible parenthood is part of the Church's total pastoral ministry to Catholic spouses. Fulfillment of this ministry includes both education and pastoral care. This means "instilling conviction and offering practical help to those who wish to live out their parenthood in a truly responsible way" (Familiaris consortio, 35).

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We disagree with the EO position that only a grave or serious reason is needed to plan for a family in a responsible way that involves the will of God for new life and that does not violate the two-fold dynamic of conjugal love, namely that it is both procreative and unitive.

Quite the opposite, we teach that it is in fact- responsible parenthood.

ETA: NFP is used in both cases: to achieve conception and plan a family.

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We disagree with the EO position that only a grave or serious reason is needed

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this is not the EO position, it is the terminology used by your papal documents.

Zobel said:

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it reads that way because it was written by a RCC.

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To the second part is still retaining the right of the church to reject a marriage as true. What counts as a true and valid marriage is not formally defined anywhere in your faith, I would assume. Is there a formal definition somewhere?

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dude we don't even have a formal definition of the Eucharist.

i think you need to take seriously the conclusion here that the Orthodox view the canons as a positivistic system vs a natural law approach. as it says, akribeia (precision or exactness) doesn't prevent oikonomia (economy, pastoral discretion).

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You would like me to consider your conclusion while roundly rejecting ours, deriding it and laughing it off as sophistry, saying we assume God is stupid, we're wrapped up in legal fiction, etc.

I would suggest that it would be nice if there was a way for us to iron out our differences, but I don't see any way to do that in your system outside of live and let live. Your system essentially requires you to stand by as priest and bishops give license to their flocks to sin.

I'm fine with saying the unity is in the Eucharist, but aren't we supposed to avoid receiving the Eucharist if we are in a state of unrepentant grave sin? If we want to preserve that unity in the Eucharist, are there not matters that can interfere with it that must be dealt with? The whole reason we don't receive the Eucharist together right now is because of matters that interfered with our unity.

ETA: I would also say that if you don't have a formal definition of marriage, it's hard to say that you can be the arbiter of what isn't a marriage.

PabloSerna said:

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" i guarantee you NFP is widely understood as being the "approved way" to not have kids in the RCC. the problem is, there is no approved way to not have kids. you should not be "family planning" without a grave or serious reason."

From the website, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on Natural Family Planning:

Mission Statement
Helping married couples to deepen conjugal love and achieve responsible parenthood is part of the Church's total pastoral ministry to Catholic spouses. Fulfillment of this ministry includes both education and pastoral care. This means "instilling conviction and offering practical help to those who wish to live out their parenthood in a truly responsible way" (Familiaris consortio, 35).

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We disagree with the EO position that only a grave or serious reason is needed to plan for a family in a responsible way that involves the will of God for new life and that does not violate the two-fold dynamic of conjugal love, namely that it is both procreative and unitive.

Quite the opposite, we teach that it is in fact- responsible parenthood.

ETA: NFP is used in both cases: to achieve conception and plan a family.

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Sorry bud, but we definitely say that a grave or serious reason is needed. What constitutes a grave or serious reason is what is up for debate. Saying I'd like to wait to advance my career before kids is not grave, whereas saying we're barely making ends meet and two months late on the rent could easily be considered grave reason.

Zobel said:

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Unity is in the Eucharist and nowhere else.

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And I would like to point out that you are still avoiding the application of lustful thought versus adulterous sex. You have said that I refuse to engage with your arguments multiple times, which I don't think I have. I am not saying you are refusing to engage with my arguments intentionally but any attempt to separate out means from ends is passed over.

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Your system essentially requires you to stand by as priest and bishops give license to their flocks to sin.

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Again, lol

Ahh, ok.

I see the "serious reasons with due respect to moral precepts" (Humane Vitae 10). Where are the grave reasons?

Never mind, you answered it.

I don't understand how the question of degree of sin is relevant, to be honest with you. They're both adultery. One is worse because you sin against an additional person.

It's becoming tedious and unproductive so I'll bow out. Have a blessed lent.

Zobel said:

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Your system essentially requires you to stand by as priest and bishops give license to their flocks to sin.

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Again, lol

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NVM

Zobel said:

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I don't understand how the question of degree of sin is relevant, to be honest with you. They're both adultery. One is worse because you sin against an additional person.

It's becoming tedious and unproductive so I'll bow out. Have a blessed lent.

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You too!

Zobel said:

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I don't understand how the question of degree of sin is relevant, to be honest with you. They're both adultery. One is worse because you sin against an additional person.

It's becoming tedious and unproductive so I'll bow out. Have a blessed lent.

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I'm sorry you have received this as tedious and unproductive. I found it highly informative and helpful, so I hope you don't see your efforts as a waste.

You have provided multiple points of feedback during this interaction. I'm going to do the same, and I hope it is beneficial: Your posting style reads as exceptionally hostile. You have told me on multiple occasions what I believe, while asking somewhere between 0-2 open ended questions to see what I believe. You have also taken the metaphorical **** on my faith by saying the following:

- Our theology assumes that God is stupid
- We are using sophistry to assume a moral high ground
- Our moral theology is a legal fiction
- You have repeatedly said we view marriage as a legal contract despite this not being our teaching, as I have stated
- You have stated the western church differentiating something as important as a lustful thought being grounds for divorce versus actual intercourse with another person as superfluous as considering how many angels can dance on the pinhead of a needle, despite it's real-world consequences.
- You have allowed for your interpretation of nullity and roundly rejected any other interpretation with insult. This would be fine if you merely disagreed, or preferably even questioned why we believe what we do. You not only avoid those two options, but result to insult each time.
- You clipped my posts in a pseudo-quote more than once
- You claimed the catholic view of artificial contraception vs NFP is pharisaical, despite the obvious presence of the distinction in EO
- You have defined my argument as "having sex regularly" despite all of my posts evidencing the opposite, and even your own recognition that abstaining from sex is a key element of NFP.
- You have stated that the catholic church sanctions contraception through pastoral tolerance, despite the clear and public teaching that this is impossible.
- You have vaguely referenced that our liturgy is invalid (or whatever term you would use) without offering specifics, despite the request for them

I used my near two months off to listen to orthodox podcasts, and have found them informative. But I will say the podcast I stumbled up hosted by orthodox congregants (obviously not official) that described the average online "Ortho-bro" disdain reserved especially for Catholics to loom large in your posting style. It was also identified that this disdain seems to be most prevalent among orthodox converts from Protestantism, which seems to fit the bill here.

I am not assigning intent. Just as I have said multiple times that you have misread me or I must not have been sufficiently clear in my posting style, I am open to the idea that I have misread you. If you would like to offer any further critique of my posting style, I will receive them without a response of rebuttal or self-defense.

I also wish you a blessed lent.