Religious Faux Pas? Most American Catholics Use Contraception

[garbon]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/religiousfauxpasmostcatholicsusecontraception

Catholic women overwhelmingly use birth control, despite an official ban by the church, a new study finds.

The study, conducted by reproductive health institute Guttmacher, finds that 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women use or have used birth control other than church-approved natural family planning. Only 2 percent of Catholic women have used natural family planning, which involves tracking the menstrual cycle to avoid sex during fertile periods.

"In real-life America, contraceptive use and strong religious beliefs are highly compatible," Rachel Jones, the report's lead author, said in a statement. "Most sexually active women who do not want to become pregnant practice contraception and most use highly effective methods like sterilization, the pill, or the IUD. This is true for Evangelicals and mainline Protestants, and it is true for Catholics, despite the Catholic hierarchy's strenuous opposition to contraception." [Read: New Surprising Results on Abortion and Religiosity]

The analysis is based on a nationally representative U.S. government survey, the National Survey of Family Growth. Overall, the survey found that 99 percent of women have used birth control, and almost all of of those who don't want to get pregnant use some method of contraception. Eighty-nine percent of Catholic women, 90 percent of mainline Protestants and 91 percent of Evangelicals who are not currently trying to conceive use birth control, Jones and her colleagues reported.

About 68 percent of Catholic women use a highly effective method of birth control, meaning hormonal methods, the IUD or sterilization, compared with 73 percent of mainline Protestants and 74 percent of Evangelicals. More than 40 percent of Evangelicals use male or female sterilization as birth control, outpacing other religious groups by about 6 percent to 9 percent.

Even Catholic women who attend services more than once a month use natural family planning at a rate of only 2 percent, the researchers found.

The study also found that regardless of religion, at least 75 percent of women are sexually active by their early 20s, whether they're married or not. That number was 75 percent for Evangelicals, 86 percent for mainline Protestants, 89 percent for Catholic women, and 79 percent for women as a whole.

[Josephus]

Bear shits woods.

[Ideologue]

at least 75 percent of women are sexually active by their early 20s... That number was 75 percent for Evangelicals, 86 percent for mainline Protestants, 89 percent for Catholic women

We've gotta get these numbers up people.

[Viking]

Religion makes people hypocrites, film at 23.

[jamesww]

I must be a Catholic, as I'm capable of perfect contraception. 

[Sheilbh]

Most Catholics use contraception.  This is the one Catholic teaching that it's entirely and totally mainstream for the laity to ignore.

[Josephus]

The "church" ignores it too...or at least turns a blind eye. They are well aware that their parishoners are using birth control

[dps]

Hardly news.  This has been true for at least 30-some years, at least in the States.  And I would assume that it's been true of Catholics in most places in the West, and in the former Communist bloc, for a while as well.  In the 3rd World, probably a lot less so.

[Razgovory]

Religion Standards of any type makes people hypocrites, film at 23.

[Viking]

Religion Standards of any type makes people hypocrites, film at 23.

Standards consistent with reason and reality don't. Morals based on untrue desert fairy tales cannot possibly be realistic. Morals based on reality can. 

[Ideologue]

Can any moral system other than a brutal pragmatism be based on reality?

[Martinus]

Bear shits woods.

No kidding. Catholics are notorious for flaunting the church's teachings on sex, at least in Europe. It's because Catholicism for Europeans (and I presume European immigrants in the US) is a cultural thing more than a religious one.

[dps]

Moral standards based solely on pragmatism would just be redundant.

[The Brain]

The "church" ignores it too...

Pregnancies are rarely a risk when priests have sex.

[Viking]

Can any moral system other than a brutal pragmatism be based on reality?

Almost all moral systems are based on reality. Only Divine Command Theory really relies on a non-real source. Religion has had almost nothing to say about morality since the enlightenment while moral philosophers have developed the field in detail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality

This only scratches the surface. The supposition that there are such things as Moral Facts is still debatable. I am an moral anti-realist in the sense that I don't believe in Moral Facts while I also observe that certain moral systems reduce suffering and increase flourishing, so I conclude that a moral system can be beneficial. I supposed it makes me a moral utilitarian of some sort, I haven't found a moral philosopher that agrees with me yet.

Moral standards based solely on pragmatism would just be redundant.

Pragmatism for who? What is beneficial for me might not be beneficial for somebody else? You (seem to) assume that all persons are rational beings capable of understanding their own interest and in predicting the behaviour of other persons? You also (seem to) assume that short term and long term benefits are not mutually exclusive. Or, at least, those are the assumptions that I would have to make to agree with you.



In my view there are no moral facts (meaning you cannot run an experiment to determine the best moral system) and there are no moral commands (there is no god). There are however certain moral codes which result in more happiness than others. My problem is that I have no clear argument for an individual to follow any "good" moral code I might suggest since in my view a "good" moral code is a set of rules and methods which apply to individuals but benefit society as a whole if everybody follows them.

Thinking that the alternatives to Divine Command Theory are either Nihilism or Egotism are just wrong.