After Condom Remarks, Vatican Confirms Shift

[denem]

Source: NY Times

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged Tuesday that the need to prevent diseases like AIDS could outweigh the church’s long opposition to the use of birth-control devices, including condoms.

It was a significant, in ways shocking, personal pronouncement from the conservative pope, after more than two decades of heated debate inside the Roman Catholic Church and condemnation by health workers who said the church’s total ban on prophylactics in the midst of the AIDS crisis was morally indefensible.

Father Federico Lombardi, the pope’s spokesman, said on Tuesday here that for Benedict, the heart of the matter was “the first step of taking responsibility, of taking into consideration the risk to the life of the person with whom there are relations.”

“Whether it’s a man or woman or a transsexual,” he added.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/world/europe/24pope.html?src=me

---

First step? Transexuals? Who has Benedict been talking to? Astonished.

[liberalmuse]

1. As much as people detest this guy...

including myself, he just took the Catholic church a HUUUUUUUuuuuge step forward with this most recent declaration.

[TroglodyteScholar]

3. Yep...

...all the way into the 20th century.

[Duer 157099]

2. So the Vatican finally joined the last century?

Well, they just need to get some momentum going I guess.

[TroglodyteScholar]

4. Jinx! n/t

[GOPNotForMe]

5. They were dragged kicking and screaming... nt

[rug]

6. "you cannot anymore raise the objection that any use of the condom is an intrinsic evil.”

Remarkable.

[dipsydoodle]

7. Pope approves condoms only for use with promiscuous altar boys

The Pope has softened the Catholic Church’s stance on the use of condoms by suggesting there are certain circumstances in which they are acceptable, such as when you can’t be sure of the sexual history of an altar boy.

Until recently the Catholic position had been that all forms of contraception are sinful, as they prevent you from creating more and more people that believe in their particular flavour of sky fairy.

However in an excerpt from the catchily-titled book ‘Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times’, the Pope suggested that using condoms might be OK, given the right circumstances.

He told the Vatican newspaper in an interview promoting the book, “I am not saying that condoms are OK for everyone, but some of those altar boys really get around. If my decision stops just one priest getting a dose, then I think that’s probably OK.”

http://newsthump.com/2010/11/22/pope-approves-condoms-only-for-use-with-promiscuous-altar-boys/

[defendandprotect]

18. Big scandal a while back with Catholic priests in Africa RAPING very young girls ....

being assured of their virginity to escape any possibility of getting

infected with AIDS/HIV!!!

Condoms -- so much worse that RAPING YOUNG GIRLS!!!

Yikes!!!

[Peregrine Took]

8. Zowie! This life long "mackeral smacker" with 18 yrs of Catholic education

is officially shocked.

[defendandprotect]

20. You like it or you don't? And ....

What's a "mackerel smacker" ???

Wow -- 18 years is a very long brainwashing!!! :evilgrin:

Recovering Catholic here --

[Iowa]

21. It's actually "Mackerel Snapper"...

Another way of saying "fish-eater". My Catholic father used both terms to describe Catholics.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

9. Wow! Given the length of time it took the Vatican to acknowledge Galileo was right...

I wouldn't have expected this for another 200 years!

[Rozlee]

11. They now officially endorse the Big Bang Theory (no altar boy jokes please)..

evolution; are observers of the Kyoto Protocol and signed on with the Montreal Treaty. The Papal Academy of Science, which includes over 80 of the greatest scientific minds, including Stephen Hawking and almost all of the living Nobel Prize winning scientists has influenced the Vatican to embrace just about every scientific theory out there except for stem cell research and human cloning. They even have a Jesuit working with the scientists on the Hadron super collider. Yeah, they've really gone ga-ga trying to convince the world that they're not anti-science (they haven't convinced me) after the whole Galileo debacle. Over compensating, much? But, a large divide exists between the really conservative Catholic laiety and the Vatican. I had to google a bunch of Papal missives, encyclicals, etc, to convince my right-wing Catholic sister that the church had embraced the Big Bang theory and conditionally evolution as well. Bill Donohue and the Catholic League intersect with too many right wing Protestant groups. His followers honestly don't know much of this stuff. I think many conservative Catholics are going to have to choose whether they want to remain in the church or become fundamentalist christians. (The Catholic church also rejects biblical literalism, something that conservative Catholics would be shocked to know.) Not that I like the Church. As an atheist, they both reek to me. But, I do see some hopeful evolution in Catholicism. Who knows? In another three centuries, they may even become almost as nice as Unitarians.

[bonzono]

16. did not

The popes have never yet conceded that
Galileo was right. All they did was
concede that there was a mutual
misunderstanding between the Church
and Mr. G. I believe that means that
the Church was half right and Mr G
was only half wrong.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

22. This article from 1992 sounds like acknowledgement to me...

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE4DD1E3DF932A05753C1A964958260

"We today know that Galileo was right in adopting the Copernican astronomical theory," Paul Cardinal Poupard, the head of the current investigation, said in an interview published this week.

[MadMaddie]

10. Okay so I am going to say something that many will not like

but in light of all of the sexual abuse scandels in the church and successful prosecutions....is it possible that wearing a condom will prevent DNA identification?

Yes, he is right condoms do stem the transmission of STDs but they have for years. Why now?

Your thoughts?

[Rozlee]

12. Makes sense to me. And Benny is creepy looking enough to dream it up.

However, less than 15% of rapists ever wear condoms or at least that's what I heard once on the Forensic Files. He'd have to write a memo or have churches perform archdioceal inservices. The image boggles.

[alp227]

13. Science wooed them? n/t

[lovuian]

14. they are not infallible

Glad to see he has changed his mind

[Spider Jerusalem]

15. So not only has the Catholic church endorsed use of condoms in some situations...

they've also 'officially' recognised the existence of transgendered people? That's a pretty big step.

[defendandprotect]

17. THIS is the life-affirming message a humane and compassionate church would deliver.....

in this age of AIDS/HIV it is probably far healthier for everyone to be thinking ....

CONDOMS!!

Now -- how about free vasectomies for males?

[bonzono]

19. Buy buy buy Trojan stock!!

Oh cum, all ye faithful
and rejoice!
For verily
if thou shalt but go forth
and procure thyself a thousand
shares of Bennie Blessed Trojan
stock, ye shall surely be rewarded
with a quick ecstatic eruption
of pent up liquid profits from
the money changers of Wall Street.

[dipsydoodle]

23. Dead condom users begin appeal against eternal damnation

After the Catholic Church sought to clarify rules on the use of condoms, suggesting it was probably okay to use them after all, millions of condom-using Hell residents have asked for their cases to be considered for for appeal.

The Church has now suggested that using condoms to prevent infection, rather than pregnancy, could be considered acceptable -though it still advocates the ridiculous ‘not having sex at all’ policy as the best way to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS.

Hell resident Dave Masters told netherworld reporters, “The guy on the door told me it was pretty clear – contraception was a sin, the Pope had continually said it was a sin, and therefore I sinned. I was a sinner. I was going downstairs, end of story.”

http://newsthump.com/2010/11/24/dead-condom-users-begin-appeal-against-eternal-damnation/