| richardhutnik said: If one doesn't know what birth control methods were in use, it is hard to point to specific ones the Roman Catholic Church approved up. |
Very good. That was exactly my point, so your post could have ended right here without devolving into all the wackdoodle nonsense.
I'm not saying it's reasonable to conclude that the church must have ever approved of contraceptives, but that it is a possibility since we don't even know what medieval European contraceptive practices were because that knowledge was so systematically obliterated after the plague, let alone how the church felt about each one. Since the practice of contraception seems to have been tolerated in Europe prior to the plague, this change in church policy could have represented merely a more militant enforcement of an consistent church doctrine (from disapproving but tolerating it to completely eradicating it), or this doctrine could have - like so many others - changed from time to time depending upon political convenience. That, of course, is the problem with mixing politics and faith: the former always subjugates the latter.
