Prudie: My late wife was childfree but never told me

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kidlesskim
Although I can understand why this woman lied, it doesn't make it okay for her to have deceived her husband when she knew he wanted kids. Obviously she felt tremendous guilt over her actions and likely her deceit dampened her own happiness as well for the duration of their marriage. I honestly don't know how she went through with that charade for so long, especially the abortions, all the while knowing her husband was pining away for a mini-me. However, to say she will burn in Hell for all of eternity was not only cruel, but it goes against their beliefs that if you repent, confess, and ask for forgiveness you still get to go to Heaven, regardless of the sin. May she be reunited with her loafs in Heaven and perhaps when her husband dies they can live out eternity in their McMansion with the white picket fence and experience joy while their self replicants swing from the kinder crap in the back yard.

Catholics don't believe that. If you are a perfect catholic your whole life and sin at the zero hour, you're going to roast. The confess, repent, and all is forgiven is the biblical Protestant belief. Catholics are not Christians by definition. Just wanted to point that out there.

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catharsist

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kidlesskim
Although I can understand why this woman lied, it doesn't make it okay for her to have deceived her husband when she knew he wanted kids. Obviously she felt tremendous guilt over her actions and likely her deceit dampened her own happiness as well for the duration of their marriage. I honestly don't know how she went through with that charade for so long, especially the abortions, all the while knowing her husband was pining away for a mini-me. However, to say she will burn in Hell for all of eternity was not only cruel, but it goes against their beliefs that if you repent, confess, and ask for forgiveness you still get to go to Heaven, regardless of the sin. May she be reunited with her loafs in Heaven and perhaps when her husband dies they can live out eternity in their McMansion with the white picket fence and experience joy while their self replicants swing from the kinder crap in the back yard.

Catholics don't believe that. If you are a perfect catholic your whole life and sin at the zero hour, you're going to roast. The confess, repent, and all is forgiven is the biblical Protestant belief. Catholics are not Christians by definition. Just wanted to point that out there.

Catholics worship Jesus Christ. By definition, that makes them Christians.

Do Catholics really believe birth control = automatic eternal damnation? Like...it's an unforgivable sin? Fucking yikes. :hs

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trance formation usa
Do Catholics really believe birth control = automatic eternal damnation? Like...it's an unforgivable sin? Fucking yikes. :hs

Maybe someone else here can answer better but as Catholic myself, I find it is really hard to get answers about my own religion. If you did ask a priest or someone like that, you might get answered with another question, a silent treatment, or if you really upset them a personal attack.

From what I do know though, a lot of Catholic women use at least birth control pills and if that is unforgiveable then Hell is going to get really hot and crowded.

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trance formation usa
Do Catholics really believe birth control = automatic eternal damnation? Like...it's an unforgivable sin? Fucking yikes. :hs

(This is a deliberate URL that should be copied and pasted into a browser to prevent a direct link to this discussion)

http://www.catholic.com/tracts/birth-control

"Ignoring the mountain of evidence, some maintain that the Church considers the use of contraception a matter for each married couple to decide according to their "individual conscience." Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. The Church has always maintained the historic Christian teaching that deliberate acts of contraception are always gravely sinful, which means that it is mortally sinful if done with full knowledge and deliberate consent (CCC 1857). This teaching cannot be changed and has been taught by the Church infallibly.

There is no way to deny the fact that the Church has always and everywhere condemned artificial contraception. The matter has already been infallibly decided. The so-called "individual conscience" argument amounts to "individual disobedience." "

Hardcore traditional religion is just, to me, historical. I was raised "Catholic", went through all the traditional rites and rituals but we were not religious, it seemed like old-timey history lessons to me with some moral lessons mixed in. My parents taught us ethics based on real life and the basic ten commandments but both my parents quietly believed in pro-choice and used common sense. Their participation in church was pretty much social and they had friends from church who were the same way.

I guess I just don't understand in the modern age anyone taking religion so seriously that they let it control their life.

The woman in the OP story, I can't gather too much sympathy for her. She should not have lied to her husband about something so huge, and if he wanted kids she should have let him go find some woman who wanted them too.

Maybe it was somewhere else but I read "Why did she make this confession to her husband, isn't that was priests are for?" I may have an explanation that is disturbing: Often, if you are on your deathbed, your parish priest will be "too busy" to visit you. Often, it is not because he is visiting someone else's deathbed, it is because they have a meeting with the bishop or the finance committee or something like that. I have heard this from someone who has worked in hospitals and have known about it myself. If you are Protestant you are much more likely to have a minister visit you and they will make the trip. Maybe this is because of the priest shortage, but it is something to consider. Maybe she had to confess and couldn't wait and hubby was there. Its another disturbing thing I have heard about the faith I was "born into".

See I think what she did was dishonest. I don't know the circumstances, but CF should never marry breeders. It is not fair to either party.

Since she did, and chose abortion on the sly, she should have taken that to her grave. You only need to confess to God, not a human, if you are so inclined. Telling your husband on your deathbed that you aborted his kids is just cruel.

Makes me wonder how much more to this story we are not hearing since the one behind it is dead. Was the perfect hubby abusive? Boning her best friend or his secretary?

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From a bottle cap message on a Magic Hat #9 beer: Condoms Prevent Minivans
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I want to pick up a bus full of unruly kids and feed them gummi bears and crack, then turn them loose in Hobby Lobby to ransack the place. They will all be wearing T shirts that say "You Could Have Prevented This."

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mr. neptune

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trance formation usa
Do Catholics really believe birth control = automatic eternal damnation? Like...it's an unforgivable sin? Fucking yikes. :hs

Maybe someone else here can answer better but as Catholic myself, I find it is really hard to get answers about my own religion. If you did ask a priest or someone like that, you might get answered with another question, a silent treatment, or if you really upset them a personal attack.

From what I do know though, a lot of Catholic women use at least birth control pills and if that is unforgiveable then Hell is going to get really hot and crowded.

I put a metric fuckton of work into trying to get around the birth control = Hell thing, so I think I can help out a little here. Do forgive me for not putting in the Catechism references, but I can't be arsed to go look them up again and I'm pretty sure no one here cares anyway. Also I'm not sure I can find said Catechism.

So look out for ... TANGENT

Basically, birth control proper isn't a sin. It causes two sins: separating the unitive and procreative parts of sex and murder. The unitive/procreative part holds that sex isn't really sex unless there is a possibility that the woman can become pregnant. God made sex to make babies, so interfering with the baby-making constitutes thwarting God, which is a sin. The really hard core say that you can use NFP [basically advanced rythm] with a "contraceptive mindset," thus rendering even the Catholic-approved method sinful. For example, a couple who married in the Church (and thus promised to accept children "freely and from God") who uses NFP to ensure they never become pregnant is sinning because they've eliminated the procreative part of sex from their relationship. Said hard core types also go through really extensive mental gymnastics to explain how it is that even NFP is licit, seeing as the logical conclusion seems to be that the only "moral" thing to do is to fuck with abandon and see how many kids you end up with.

The "murder" part is regular old bullshit. The argument is that hormonal birth control causes extremely early term abortions (read late periods) by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg and so you commit the sin of murder if you use hormonal birth control at all. The whole agument relies on data from the 70s and ignores more recent studies that prove them totally wrong. I think it's advanced slut shaming - usually, you can't get slut-shamed once you're married. Keep the women breeding and they won't ask any questions

Once I figured out that the whole thing is bullshit, I got me an IUD and never looked back. Like I said earlier, I haven't quite managed to make a clean break with the Church, but I'm getting there. I hope.

The lunatics on Catholic Answers (www.catholic.com) are a particularly excellent, if unintentional, example of the bullshit and mental gymnastics involved in the birth control argument. I like to hate read them. I didn't link the URL because the trolls would totally follow you home, and there was a lady calling for our literal extermination on there awhile back.

End tangent. As you were :beer

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navi8orgirl
Telling your husband on your deathbed that you aborted his kids is just cruel.

I just thought of something: maybe she wasn't quite "all there" mentally in the end?