Pope "considering" allowing condoms in EXCEPTIONAL circumstances

[Bluebear]

:eyes:

With almost 40 million people infected with HIV worldwide, the pope is now considering a document that recommends easing the Vatican's condom ban -- but only in exceptional circumstances...

For most people one or two sentences are all that are required to explain how to use a condom. But not the Catholic Church -- it needs almost 200 pages. A hefty "handbook" on the use of contraception in the age of the AIDS pandemic was presented to the pope last Tuesday. Now he is to consider whether to take on board its recommendations to allow the use of condoms in some exceptional cases...

Just as before, "every conjugal act" is dedicated to the principle of life, as Pope John Paul II wrote in his apostolic exhortation "Familiaris consortio" in 1981. That means that condoms cannot be used apart from a few exceptional cases.

And these exceptions are strictly defined. A condom would be tolerated in cases of mortal danger -- as the "lesser of two evils". The handbook develops a sort of condom catechism in the best casuist tradition. Can a woman be allowed to protect herself if her husband has tested HIV positive? What about when one's spouse is injecting drugs? Or when both are living in a region with high incidence of AIDS? If a rule that is so far removed from reality cannot be fundamentally changed, then the exceptions need to be regulated.

If the text is accepted by the pope and made binding, then it will be used to help in the church's work with AIDS victims. Cardinal Lozano Barragan emphasized that it should not be interpreted as an invitation for "sexual libertinism". So don't expect any liberalization in all but a few borderline cases. For the Catholic Church abstinence is still the one and only method of contraception. The church sees premarital sex, infidelity and promiscuity as the true causes of the AIDS catastrophe.


http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,450857,00.html

[kiahzero]

1. Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great.

:eyes:

[donheld]

7. I've always found that hard to swallow

:D

[Target_For_Exterm]

2. Why can't folks stay out of other folks bedrooms?

:shrug:

[Warren DeMontague]

5. Where's the fun in that? If the billions of red-faced puritans on this planet stopped in their

never-ending quest to get the rest of us to quit our non-procreative fornicating, they'd have to take up bowling or watching reality tv or something.

[Mr_Spock]

3. The Pope - keeping the Catholics in the stone age for all eternity

I have never understood the insincerity of the church when it comes to this issue.

Promote the deaths of millions just to make a point about reproduction/abstinence?

Utter fools - they should be tried for 1 million criminal cases of involuntary manslaughter.

[Warren DeMontague]

4. You mean, when a priest is going to molest a kid and it would make it easier for the Vatican

to cover up the crime and move the guy to another diocese?

Ah, the Catholic Church. What an unassailable tower of virtue from which to issue edicts about the sex lives of consenting adults. Not.

[cboy4]

6. My poor parents.....the money they wasted sending me and

my sisters to parochial school is tragic.

[SoCalDem]

8. I wish the "churchies" would quit the pantysniffing, and leave

people to their own sex lives and practices..

procreate if they want to
not procreate if that's their choice
cohabit with whomever they choose

and

the church could be what it should have been

a place where people go to hear how they can be more decent human beings..