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From: john@cisden.UUCP (John Woolley)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: Children
Message-ID: <531@cisden.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Feb-86 17:46:05 EST
Article-I.D.: cisden.531
Posted: Thu Feb 27 17:46:05 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Mar-86 07:38:54 EST
References: <1190@decwrl.DEC.COM> <166@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: john@cisden.UUCP (John Woolley)
Organization: ConTel Information Systems, Denver
Lines: 33
Summary: a slight correction

First, pardon me for posting where (possibly) most of you aren't much
interested in what I have to say.

Second, please believe me when I say that it's entirely possible to think
people are wrong about important things (as any orthodox Christian thinks
most of you are wrong about sexuality) without hating or despising or
looking down on those people.  I'm pretty disgusted by a lot of my own
actions -- there's no way I could hate somebody else for his actions without
being wildly inconsistent (and unChristian).  But of course that doesn't
mean I have to approve of your lifestyle, just that I have to be loving and
considerate.

Third, the occasion for this posting.  In article <166@ubc-cs.UUCP>
manis@ubc-cs.UUCP (Vince Manis) writes:
>By the way, it's worth noting that the Roman Catholic Church frowns on all
>non-procreative relationships. I recall a case a year or so ago in which a
>sterile couple (heterosexual) was denied the rite of religious marriage, on
>the grounds that a marriage in which children are impossible cannot be a
>marriage at all.

This is not correct.  The Church says that impotency invalidates a marriage,
not sterility.  (I'm not interested in defending this position -- I'm just
stating it correctly.)  A marriage between two people who were (absolutely
or relatively) sterile or infertile *would not* be annulled or prohibited
(unless maybe for some other reason).  A marriage, on the other hand, in
which sexual congress was impossible would be held to be no marriage at all,
as Vince writes.

Thanks.  God bless you all.
-- 
				Peace and Good!,
				      Fr. John Woolley
"Compared to what I have seen, all that I have written is straw." -- St. Thomas