Expert: Griff Ruby - 3/19/2007

Question
i am doing a research paper for my English class, and upon looking up my subject online i came across a lady's question and your answer.... her question was something along the lines of "if a couple is married and the man no longer wants children, but the woman wants to stay loyal to her faith (in which case not using birth control)what do you do?"

Now, somewhere in your answer you said "Artificial birth control is never an option, not for Catholics, and also not for anyone else either, for after all it is the Catholic God who will judge us."  my emphasis being on the "for after all..."
  I myself am catholic, and very proud, and consider myself knowledgeable on the subject therein... but why would you phrase it "after all it is the catholic god who will judge us"?????  are we separating God's here?  and on top of that it just put a rather arrogant feeling into the whole subject matter, "after all..." does my babbling here make sense?   I don't know i just wanted to know why you chose that particular wording, it seemed a little odd to me.
thanks


Answer
There are many gods, but only One which counts with us Catholics.  It is not fair or right to say of others with different beliefs that "we all worship the same God."  No, we don't.  The Apostle Paul wrote of this in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 when he wrote "For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, you submit to it readily enough."  So there can be such a thing as "another Jesus," "another spirit," and "another gospel."  So the bare fact that someone may consider themselves a Christian would be factually incorrect in that they have a different Jesus than we.
It is misleading to someone to assure them that they are doing all right when they are not.  Such misleading can make us sharers in their error, since we encouraged them in it.  And it prevents them from seeking God since they might imagine that they already have Him when they don't.
It is one thing to hope, wish, and even to pray, that God will be merciful with those who made what they may well feel to be sincere mistakes.  I have no quarrel with that.  But it is quite a different thing to dare to presume upon God's mercy, whether for oneself, or on behalf of others whom we know to be in error.  And that is the grievous sin of presumption, on par with those who think they will go to Heaven no matter what atrocity they commit.
If we believe the Catholic Church, then we believe that the real God, the Creator God, is as the Catholic Church teaches and not the different god believed in by others.  It is quite therefore proper to expect that it is the Catholic God who will judge us all.
So, going back to my response to the lady, the fact is that if we contracept, that will be held against us in the judgment (unless we since repented and obtained absolution), regardless of whether we were Catholics and warned about it or Protestants and not warned.  "One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism..." really means just that.  There are not multiple "christianities" out there, only one.  The others are defective and present different gospels and different spirits and different "Jesus'."