NATURE IS A LANGUAGE: So apparently next Sunday’s New York Times Magazine will have an article on opposition to contraception. I’m sure it will be a theologically sophisticated, nuanced, understanding, reasonable–no, yeah, lying’s a sin. I expect it will be uber-lame. So here are a couple links instead.

Maggie Gallagher on problems with the consequentialist arguments against contraception. (Not sure what I think of this yet. The Lambeth Conference abandonment of traditional Christian prohibitions on contraception seems like a huge cultural event, maybe bigger than the technological/cultural event of the Pill.)

More importantly, this issue of Eutopia is entirely devoted to contraception, and has a wealth of great articles from a variety of (Catholic) perspectives. I was especially struck by the “language of the body” theology–when I first entered the Church, contraception (like homosexuality) was one of those issues where I took the Church’s position on faith, as a matter of obedience, while acknowledging that I really didn’t “get it” at all. I still often feel that way about homosexuality–I go back and forth between feeling like I “get it” and like it’s totally opaque. The Church’s opposition to birth control, OTOH, in my view flows pretty clearly from two of the biggest questions that drew me to Christ in the first place: Why does sex matter? Why does poetry matter?