Catholicism, condoms, and AIDS...
In a comment on an earlier post, JahTeh said:"This is such hypocrisy when the Church discourages condom use which is contributing to the AIDS epidemic which is killing thousands in Africa."
This point of view is a popular one.
But I'm nothing if not a Devil's Advocate, so here goes...
She's wrong.
The Catholic church teaches that sex should only be done for the purpose of procreation and only by married heterosexual couples. The church teaches that sex outside such marriages is wrong. The church is perfectly entitled to teach such precepts. Therefore, if you and your wife are practicing Catholics, why would you need to wear a condom?
This whole uproar is overlooking the fact that a condom becomes an issue only if you are having sex outside of the Catholic precepts. In other words, if you should be wearing a condom, it's because you are ignoring Catholic teaching. Now, if you're going to ignore Catholic teaching, you'd be mad not to ignore the Catholic rule on condoms as well.
The Catholic church is not responsible for the outcome when people ignore its teachings, and to suggest otherwise is try to shift responsibility away from those who are really responsible i.e. non-Catholics or Catholics who break the rules of their church.
I'm open to any reasonable argument which seeks to show me where I'm wrong...
Waiting...
This point of view is a popular one.
But I'm nothing if not a Devil's Advocate, so here goes...
She's wrong.
The Catholic church teaches that sex should only be done for the purpose of procreation and only by married heterosexual couples. The church teaches that sex outside such marriages is wrong. The church is perfectly entitled to teach such precepts. Therefore, if you and your wife are practicing Catholics, why would you need to wear a condom?
This whole uproar is overlooking the fact that a condom becomes an issue only if you are having sex outside of the Catholic precepts. In other words, if you should be wearing a condom, it's because you are ignoring Catholic teaching. Now, if you're going to ignore Catholic teaching, you'd be mad not to ignore the Catholic rule on condoms as well.
The Catholic church is not responsible for the outcome when people ignore its teachings, and to suggest otherwise is try to shift responsibility away from those who are really responsible i.e. non-Catholics or Catholics who break the rules of their church.
I'm open to any reasonable argument which seeks to show me where I'm wrong...
Waiting...
posted by The Editor at
11:40 PM
6 Comments:
A person who shall be known as Iced Vovo, emailed me this comment:
Yes, very interesting.
I tried to post on your blog and it tells me I have an invalid email address. I have tried both my emails.
I wanted to say (and it has taken me 10 minutes to cut it down to 300 words)
The pope says condoms are full of holes. Also abortions are not done by sucking babies out of womens insides by vaccum cleaner.That's what they told me at my catholic school. The clergy don't follow the rules. re scandals of rape, molestation and paedophilia. The pope should shutup about condoms.
To which I replied: The pope has a right to pontificate. It's the pope's job to have an opinion about Catholics using condoms. His ruling is 100% in line with Catholic values.
About misinformation, I can't comment I wasn't there. But I can tell you this: I have yet to see any religious or political organisation which does not intentionally or unintentionally peddle serious inaccuracies and emotive claptrap. It is the nature of such organisations' rhetoric that they will often be speaking pure crap. If I went through the Green Left Weekly or even Green Voice, I'd find heaps of stuff which I could hold up as being "crap".
If you read my comment carefully you'll see that I'm correct in what I'm saying. The pope (or the Catholic church) are not contributing to the AID epidemic. Their rules, if adhered to, would actually seriously reduce the spread of AIDS. And all else is anti-Catholic propaganda.
This topic has been done before (at length) on my blog, three years ago. Here's the link to the previous >>>
Given the church's teachings, their position on condoms is absolutely in line with their teachings.
I don't know what else to say. I'm not a supporter of Catholicism, I just hate the way they are being accused of stuff unfairly by people who have different value sets.
No one has to be a Catholic.
If one is a Catholic and one lives by the teachings, one won't need to use a condom.
If one is a Catholic already breaking Catholic rules (by having the kind of sex which would be best done with a condom on), then one should break the condom rule as well. Why break one rule and not the other?
Education? The Catholic church has no moral obligation to educate people about how to more safely break Catholic rules/commandments/precepts.
All of this Catholic bashing is a case of judging one culture (the Catholic culture) from within the moral framework of another culture, and that's bullshit. If we're talking multiculturalism, we're talking about about not subjecting one culture to the value-sets of another culture. To do so is actually an act of monoculturalism.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lemmiwinks, we secularists are doing ourselves no favours by hurling spurious and disingenuous accusations at Catholicism or the pope. That's my point.
Very nicely done FurFace.
Sorry had to leave it there and deal with a troppo mother.
I wasn't talking about members of the Church in regards to AIDS but where Catholic missionaries are dealing with the crisis in Africa, S.E. Asia and China. So if the people they're trying to help aren't Catholics, the teaching only applies to the teachers. I could easily have given GWBush and his Christian followers a spray as well but you made the rules about keeping on topic.
I still say its hypocrisy when a percentage of the Church hierachy aren't obeying the celibacy rules either.
And while I'm talking about the above countries, women don't have a lot of say about their men having sex outside marriage, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish or any other religion that comes up.
I'm now going to watch Harry Potter since that's about my intellectual level, well below this kind of discussion.
JahTeh, I'm not defending what the Catholics teach, but I will defend their right to teach it.
And I still argue that anyone who adheres to their teachings would have no need for condoms. Nor would they be at risk of catching sexually transmitted AIDS.
And I still assert that if you catch AIDS via sexual intercourse then you or your sexual partner have not been a good Catholic and I'm sure the Catholic Church warns people of the grave dangers of fucking with people who are not good Catholics, especially if it is not to make babies with your life-long spouse.
If everyone only fucked in order to make more sprogs, and only with the person with whom they will spend the rest of their lives to bring up the said sprogs, AIDS would virtually not be happening.
Now, you might not want to live your life that way, but don't go blaming the people who do, for something which is not of their making.
As I said, sexually transmitted AIDS is only transmitted either by non-Catholics or by deviant Catholics. The Catholic church cannot be held accountable for what either of these two groups get up to.
An analogy:
Here in NSW, the RTA teaches and adminsters the road traffic laws. What you're suggesting is akin to blaming the RTA for road deaths caused by speeding because the RTA did not make statements like:
"Speed kills. You must not break the speed limit, but if you do, please be aware that wearing a crash helmet and full body armour when driving your car makes breaking our road rules a much safer proposition."
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