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:Fr. Lev, Why do you say "consistent, of course..."? It is my understanding that many people in Russia thought that the statement here was not representative of Russian Orthodox tradition. It is vaguely worded enough to include a broad range of perspectives -- perhaps that is deliberate. — [[User:FrJohn|<b>FrJohn</b>]] ([http://orthodoxwiki.org/index.php?title=User_talk:FrJohn&action=edit§ion=new talk])
::I don't believe there has been any controversy in Russia about the statement. I think if they had wanted to say that contraception was wrong under any circumstance, they could have easily said so. As it is, it seems to be fairly clear that there are circumstances in which it is allowable. Selfishness is the primary reason it would not be. But they could not give a simple definition of those circumstances in which it would be allowable, because it would be difficult to define such a thing without unintentionally excluding some scenarios that they had not thought about, but which would undoubtedly come up -- and I think that is the reason for the imprecision. [[User:Frjohnwhiteford|Frjohnwhiteford]] 10:32, May 28, 2008 (UTC)
::Once upon a time it was not unusual to see mothers who had given birth to 15 to 20 children... usually quite a few did not live to maturity. With modern medicine, infant mortality is far less than it was, and so without some form of contraception you could actually see larger families today than you had 200 years ago. I would argue that having 15 children would be a heavy burden for most couples to bear, and that it would not be simply on egoistic grounds that they might want to have a smaller family. [[User:Frjohnwhiteford|Frjohnwhiteford]] 12:45, May 27, 2008 (UTC)
