and that has nothing to do with science. they are not denying contraceptives work, they are saying that is against the word of God to 'waste your seed'.
it's a moral and religious matter, not a scientific one.
still wrong on many levels, but nothing to do with the position of the Catholic Church on science.
Yep, this, and I'd like to expand... The Church is less interested, morally, in the 'wasting your seed' concept than it is sexual abuse. Of course, what the Church sees as sexual abuse is very different than what a modern, Western liberal society would see as sexual abuse (and obviously the Church has lost a lot of moral standing when it comes to sexual abuse because of the decades (or centuries...) long sex abuse scandal within the Church). The church doesn't really put that much special emphasis on 'your seed,' as it did, say, 500 years ago back before people understood human biology as well as they do today. Sex cells, semen, or what have you, is about as important to the Church
today as hair cells, skin cells, or the cells that make up your fingernails are. I say "about as," relatively here... They're more important on a relative scale, but there isn't some 'seed worship.'
The Church maintains that sex should always be ultimately open to procreation, and so contraceptives are, at base, a rejection of the moral imperative of sex to procreate. Likewise, sex acts that don't ultimately have some end in procreation are considered in the same light (which is why oral sex and other sexual acts
can be okay as long as they're sort of there to ... warm up the engine, so to speak). There are other aspects of this as well, like how sex can often lead to abuse, hurt feelings, feelings of self-worthlessness, anxiety, and other personal issues. I'm not religious (I'm an atheist), but I think that the Church is touching on a perspective that a lot of sexual awareness advocates also touch on, that sex bares a lot of responsibility. Over the last 5-10 years, you've seen a lot more social awareness about what's appropriate when it comes to sex, that not all sex is good sex, and that
consent is not always simple, clear concept that we pretended it was for 3 decades. Going back to the point of sex cells being about as morally important as your skin cells, this might not seem like the case because, well, isn't the Church technically against masturbation? It sure is (though, often this is something that modern Catholic sexual moralists would kinda shrug at), but not from the perspective of 'wasting seed,' but from the perspective that masturbation is usually also accompanied by some misuse of the act of sex... maybe thinking of someone in a way that doesn't respect who they are as a person, thinking of someone as a sexual object, pornography, or maybe if you are married, it's a slight to your partner if you're thinking outside of your relationship.
Bringing this back to the original point that other poster made, I don't think that science -- at least, biological, chemical, atomic, physical, (etc) science -- is really very concerned with any of that. So, I don't think the Church has an 'anti-scientific' perspective on contraceptive, it's got an
extra-scientific perspective on contraception. Scientifically, the Church agrees,
contraception works at preventing conception, and anything beyond that science isn't really concerned, but the Church is.
At least.. theologically.