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  • Title: One view of certain questions in the Roman Catholic community.
    Author: Roach R.
    Journal: SIECUS Rep; ; 5(3):1. PubMed ID: 12308476.
    Abstract:
    Many people, both within and without the Roman Catholic Church, do not understand how the Church operates. The Church is not an efficiently run, centrally organized and centrally planned organization with a single party line from which no one deviates. The Church is an organism that expresses its single faith in a plurality of applications, which result in differing opinions, differing moral evaluations, and an abundance of organizations which defy complete centralization. There is within the Catholic Church a uniformity party which is made up of a handfull of Church administrators who subscribe to the false vision of Roman Catholic organization which is fully controlled from the center, with a single party line to which all subscribe. This uniformity party chose to test the renewal of the Church's plurality by restating the teaching against contraception in the form into which that teaching had hardened from the time of Pope Pius 11. The prohibition was restated in an encyclical letter issued by Pope Paul 6 entitled Humanae Vitae. Written with full knowledge that Church discipline in this area had begun to waver, the encyclical attempted to restore, both in teaching and in practice, the rejection of all means of birth control other than planned abstinence from intercourse. This effort was remarkable for its failure both among the clerical and the lay. In fact, the dissent is probably a majority position at least among educated Catholics. The uniformity party has continued their effort, and the ''Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexuality'' that deals with masturbation, homosexuality, and premarital sexual behavior is 1 of these efforts. Both in theology and practice, Roman Catholics have rejected the absolute prohibition of birth control by contraceptive means. It should follow that the same Roman Catholics will reject the absolute prohibitions against all instances of premarital sex, masturbation, and homosexuality found in the later document, the Declaration. Further discussion focuses on the theory of nature which makes of these documents a single theological whole and the ways in which authority will be exercised in both Church administration and Church teaching.
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