That “one act of contraception belies a contempt for the order of the universe and the Creator’s order, a placing of one’s own particular ends over the order of things, a stand that my pursuit of delight is better than God’s order” is by no means self-evident, but should be proved as a conclusion from premises.

What “DID satisfy before the 1930′s” or what “in the U.S…. was illegal in some states” is irrelevant.

In the end I do not know what is meant by the “thomistic” argument in the two posts. Would it be possible to put it in the form of syllogism, of the kind Janet Smith has the arguments in her first book on contraception?

As for the holes in the argument, I don’t think they are there. St. Thomas has an explanation for the “in omni actu” wrongness of contraception. The whole point is that one act of contraception belies a contempt for the order of the universe and the Creator’s order, a placing of one’s own particular ends over the order of things, a stand that my pursuit of delight is better than God’s order. St. Thomas says in ScG III, 123 that this is fine in the management of powers that pertain only to the individual, but for those powers that are directly ordered to the common good (i.e., sexuality), such actions belie an exaltation of the private good over the common good, which is always serious in the Thomistic viewpoint. Now, I personally am convinced by this argumentation, because I share St. Thomas’ worldview. Most people of the classical cosmological view of the universe also historically have shared that argumentation. But I do not expect people of today to accept it. It is hard for most people in the contemporary age to see that there are higher guidelines than self-determination and personal enhancement, that the order of the universe is a higher guide than the freedom of the person. Even for theists, the idea that man’s greatest vocation is to fit into the order to the common good of the universe is very difficult to come by, whereas it was the default view of the ancient, patristic, and medieval world. In the end, is the fault with the Thomistic argument, or is the fault with those who do not grant the major premise of the Thomistic argument? It is not easy for most people today, in or outside the Church, to grant Aristotle’s general principle that the common good is always the more divine, and that breaking from what is ordered to it, while it may not seem serious in one individual act, nevertheless belies an interior disposition of putting love of self above love of the common good, which is the root of all sin in St. Thomas synthesis.

By the theological argument I mean the fact that the doctrine has been universally taught from the beginning, and that it is, therefore, proposed infallibly; and even if not infallibly it has been proposed with sufficient constancy and authority to command at least a religious assent. Compared with this the intellectual arguments are insignificant, and in any case not convincing to me. Of the two mentioned, the TOB should be given chance to develop, while the traditional one, the “thomistic”, had its chance, has turned out to be unsatisfactory, and I have briefly pointed to its loopholes.

Of course, the doctrine of “the immorality of contraception forms part of the deposit of the Faith” and “follows from God’s Revelation”, which does not mean “not from the natural law”, “explicitly contrary to Humanae Vitae”, or “inaccessible to those who do not believe”. However, if I were among the latter the intellectual arguments thus far produced wouldn’t mean much to me.

You are entitled to think so, and it remains to be seen if TOB will stand the test of time. But I certainly think it is a mistake to place the essential arguments against contraception in theology. Such a claim means that the immorality of contraception forms part of the deposit of the Faith, that it is something that follows from God’s Revelation, and not from the natural law, which, besides being explicitly contrary to Humanae Vitae, would make it inaccessible to those who do not believe.
The old arguments HAVE been given their time, and they HAVE settled. The fact that is not compelling to people today does not mean that it never was. It was widely accepted, not only by Catholics, but by all Christians until the 1930′s (the most vitriolic sermons against I’ve ever seen come from Luther and Calvin). Sins against nature are even prohibited by the Stoics, by Plato and Aristotle, and by the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Perhaps it’s not the argument that was the problem, but the modern world view. Ancient and Classical world views all recognized that the world was bigger than man, and that it had an order, and that it was an irreverence to act against that order, which was put there, not by random concatenations and the conflict for survival, but by an Intellect that gives to each thing its proper act. Modern man, on the other hand, is quite skeptical of world order, taught, as he is, that it is the result, not of wisdom, but of struggle and chance. And modern man sees himself, not as part of nature, but as completely separate from it. I have no doubt that the natural law arguments are not compelling to MODERN man. Pope John Paul II saw the same thing, and made the attempt to take modern man on his own terms, maintaining, in his moral philosophy, the primacy of the point of view of the subject. But in the end, this may be barking up the wrong tree. At some point, we just have to ask ourselves which is true: are we part of the universe, with our own role to play with it according to the Eternal Law established by the First Cause, or are we set up as gods next to God, mostly set to determine ourselves, with no concern for nature’s motions, since we are above nature anyway?

The TOB argument should be given chance to settle, and in the meantime studied constructively rather than destructively. All the more because in the traditional one there is still much to be wanted, in spite of the long time it had to settle.

It is by no means clear, for example, that the procreation is the primary end of marriage, and the most it would prove, if it were the primary end, is that the conjugal acts taken together, not necessarily each of them individually, should be open to procreation for the primary end to be achieved. Even so, it doesn’t seem certain that this potential state “should be” implies a moral obligation of the married couple to be actually open to procreation.