As a Catholic this is a subject I struggle with personally as does my father (one of the strongest Catholics I know) so it is certainly a subject worth talking about. I wish I knew more and could help, I recently read something by Scott Hahn (Catholic writer) on the subject maybe I'll dig it up and share.

The gist was that sexuality is a sacred and great thing within the confines of marriage and that the creation of sexual ability was made with the intent of openness of reproduction, to block off that possibility is equitable to blatantly disrespecting any other sacrament that was created to be good by God.

The reason the Catholic church does not feel this is harmful to society is that because just as much as they are against contraception they are also against premarital sexuality, without the second there is no need for the first. In theory this is fine except, as mentioned earlier, not every Catholic 17 year old boy and girl have the will power or conviction to stick to the important second part and they do engage in premarital sex only to find out they hadn't been taught much about contraception because it was a non-necessity.

When you say "it" are you referring to anti-contraception teaching or abstinence from sexual activity before marriage teaching?

The problem is that the Catholic Church lobbies against its being applied to health education in public schools and that many of its members are responsible for public school curricula.

There is more to sex education than learning what a condom is. Things like knowing condoms have a 5% failure rate and the fact that birth control pills are significantly better at stopping pregnancy than condoms but do nothing in terms of stopping the transmission of STDs are important.

Are you really advocating that it is okay to give somebody bad information simply because they do not listen to your good information or am I missing something?

In brief, the Catholic view is that contraception is wrong because it obstructs the purpose of human sexuality, which is fundamentally procreation. There's nothing complicated about this view: you can disagree and think that the purpose of human sexuality is something other than procreation, but I can't see thinking that this view is "insane."

As for the alleged harms caused by this teaching, as others have pointed out, it's a little odd to blame the Church for the effects of people not following Catholic teaching.

Its harmful if they do follow it.

Isn't it strange when atheists and liberals see animals copulating on Discovery, or bugs or birds or squirrels in the yard doing so, that they have no problem or issue with stating that it is for procreative purposes. 99.99% of millions of species of life are sexually "reproducing", and it is what it is.

But let two humans do it, and oh no, the goalposts are moved just for us. Suddenly we ARE special.

You know what I'm saying.

Care to spell this out? What are the harms of following Catholic teaching on human sexuality? (That is, no premarital sex, no contraception, no homosexual acts, no masturbation, no pornography?)

Nah bonobos, old people, Catholics using natural family planning, and id assume many other animals have sex for pleasure non procreative purposes too.

Ive argued it enough that i dont want to anymore. Just take is take it as assertions and dismiss it.

We could go with having way too many (unwanted) children, for starters.

Too many by what standard, and unwanted by whom? In any event, your claim is incorrect, as Catholic teaching allows married couples to space births for legitimate reasons by employing natural family planning.

Animals lack the intellectual clarity that we do and commonly mistake one thing for another. To say that they are seeking sex for pleasure is often a simple case of mistaken identity or reacting to a similar circumstancial set. Animals also devour their young at times. Should we take a moral imperative from it?

I read recently about how cats will sometimes play with their kittens and things will get out of hand. The cat switches from a maternal to a hunting instinct because of the ferocity of the kittens movements which will mimic the movements of prey trying to escape. The end result is a dead kitten. Do cats enjoy mutilating and killing their young?

Though i think you are wrong and some animals do have sex for pleasure. What other animals do got noting to do with anything.

Humans have sex for pleasure with no intent at procreation is the main point.

If animals have sex for procreation purposeses and you think humans should too arent you saying i should follow their example?

Too many and unwanted by the parents standards obviously.

And bravo on referring to "natural family planning" which is basically a loophole in the non-contraceptive plan. If you can't see that there's no moral difference between using a condom and using something like the lactational amenorrhea method, then I really don't know what to tell you.