Vatican and condoms:Closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

[Garbarsardar]

Vatican is now reconsidering the condom ban. It seems that they discovered that there are no:

...small holes in condoms so that the virus goes through...

The Roman Catholic Church might ease its longstanding opposition to the use of condoms to prevent AIDS, a senior church official says.
In comments published Sunday by la Repubblica, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan said Pope Benedict had asked him to study the issue. Barragan heads up the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care.
"This is a very difficult and delicate subject that requires prudence," said Barragan, according to a Reuters report.

http://www.cbc.ca/storyview/MSN/worl...n-condoms.html

Well, better late then never but for hundreds of thousand of people that fell prey to the missionaries spreading the "good word" about contraception it is indeed too late. The Catholic Church has played a woefully significant part in the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa and that is a fact beyond remedy.

The lies:

Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, said: "The Aids virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon. The spermatozoon can easily pass through the 'net' that is formed by the condom".
"These margins of uncertainty... should represent an obligation on the part of the health ministries and all these campaigns to act in the same way as they do with regard to cigarettes, which they state to be a danger."

The archbishop of Nairobi, Raphael Ndingi Nzeki, said: "Aids... has grown so fast because of the availability of condoms."

A Catholic nun even advising her HIV-infected choirmaster against using condoms with his wife because "the virus can pass through".

In Lwak, near Lake Victoria, the director of an Aids testing centre says he cannot distribute condoms because of church opposition. Gordon Wambi told the programme: "Some priests have even been saying that condoms are laced with HIV/Aids."

The facts:

The WHO has condemned the Vatican's views, saying: "These incorrect statements about condoms and HIV are dangerous when we are facing a global pandemic which has already killed more than 20 million people, and currently affects at least 42 million."

The organisation says "consistent and correct" condom use reduces the risk of HIV infection by 90%. There may be breakage or slippage of condoms - but not, the WHO says, holes through which the virus can pass .

Scientific research by a group including the US National Institutes of Health and the WHO found "intact condoms... are essentially impermeable to particles the size of STD pathogens including the smallest sexually transmitted virus... condoms provide a highly effective barrier to transmission of particles of similar size to those of the smallest STD viruses".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story...059068,00.html

[Cluny the Scourge]

Clerics trying to get their heads around science - it could hardly been a very happy situation for them, since their entire lives are based around its' denial. If men can reanimate three days after their brutal death and then find the strength to move a bloody great rock of out their way, then why should STDs be able to pass through impermeable barriers of latex?

'No wobble-sheet on wing-wang, please - that way you can get AIDS AND go to Hell at the same time! It's a win-win call!"
- Arch-Bishop Trubble D Nutt.

So what is it with these Vatican dudes? Did they get angry that too many of those damned Africans were converting to other denominations and forgetting their proper place, so they made up all of this pseudo-scientific ******** in defiance of the plain statements of WHO medical experts as a kind of cleansing operation to teach them a lesson? The Inquisition, Crusades, HIV...it's the style.

[Fenris]

I know, it's very pathetic. Thanks for the nice quotes who show how can dog enlighten their brillant minds... it's divine truths, I tell you, divine truths.

And believe it or not, it's the same men who decided what book would be in or out of the bible. And the bible is the holy truth. Whatever.

[IamthePope]

The Inquisition, Crusades, HIV...it's the style.

people always have to bring up the Inquisition and the Crusades as if they were bad things. entirely unrelated too.

Whats important is that the Vatican has made themselves more right on the issue.

[Garbarsardar]

Whats important is that the Vatican has made themselves more right on the issue.

After causing the infection/death of how many people? Yeah, better late than never

people always have to bring up the Inquisition and the Crusades as if they were bad things

Let's see what the Vatican will discover next, although measuring by number of deaths, you are right: This is much worst then the Crusades or the Inquisition, or according to your logic "much better"...

[apostate]

Let's see what the Vatican will discover next, although measuring by number of deaths, you are right: This is much worst then the Crusades or the Inquisition, or according to your logic "much better"...

lets not forget the worst of all, the mostly forgotten ethnic/religious genocide of the native americans performed by catholics back from the time that columbus stepped his feet...it counts million of victims

-about chastity/celibacy-->at first the people were close to nature and they had many gods and sex-fertility was something not only usual but also mystical and central in their lifes and the circle of nature...fertility etc, then people were taken away from nature by judaic-christianity principals and the result was an abnormal-unearthy-unnatural god who puts restrictions in free sex
...when people will come back to nature, the result will be no gods at all that time

[Zenith Darksea]

Er, no, it's not the same men who decided 'what went into the Bible'. That was the Orthodox Church, which incidentally has never banned condoms.

[Ahiga]

Er, no, it's not the same men who decided 'what went into the Bible'. That was the Orthodox Church, which incidentally has never banned condoms.

Wasn't the bible organized during a period which had no split of Orthodox or Catholic?

So it's not really ones fault or the other, if that's really the case.

[randombutter]

Thebooks of the bible were decided upon before the Great Schism, so neither the Roman Catholic/Protestant/Anglican or the Greek/Russian/Eastern Orthodox( I know they are seperate churches, but just to decrease confusion I shall lump together in Weatern and Eastern Churches, and that some appeared after the Great Schism) Chrches are wholely responsible for what is in or not in the Bible.

[Justinian]

Don't you understand? Rubber is evil, which is why we don't use tires, or erasers. We don't need cars, we can levitate because of our divine powers, and, um, we don't make spelling mistakes.

[Tom Paine]

Or one could say it was the fault of both...

[Zenith Darksea]

Er, no, one couldn't.

Technically, though there had been no split at the time, it was still 'Orthodox' (you can see the continuation of beliefs, structure etc...). But that's a bit off-topic.

Anyway, no Squeakus, it wasn't the fault of both. Condoms weren't invented until recent times (well ok, I mean modern rubber condoms weren't, I know that there were primitive condoms in Japan in the Middle Ages), and so you can hardly pin the modern Catholic doctrine on the Orthodox Church.

[Tom Paine]

Anyway, no Squeakus, it wasn't the fault of both. Condoms weren't invented until recent times (well ok, I mean modern rubber condoms weren't, I know that there were primitive condoms in Japan in the Middle Ages), and so you can hardly pin the modern Catholic doctrine on the Orthodox Church.

I was meaning the original doctrine-altering, the interpretation of it is, yes, rather more modern than that. However it has its roots in a Bible selected before the schism.

[apostate]

"the virus can pass through".

couph couph

i hadnt heard that awesome argument before
i must admit that those catholics are more creative hoaxers than our priests

That was the Orthodox Church, which incidentally has never banned condoms.

oh here comes the superb,ecologist and progressive east orthodox church again!
..u are about to present as the patriarch as a hippy! :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:
...i m tempted to start a thread about the well-timed issue of the mummification and the orthodox "saints" just for u zenith!

[Kino]

Deleted by user.

[Fenris]

I want to say though, even though I agree with them changing their view on condoms. That there was nothing wrong with their initial approach. The people spreading the virus should according to Church teachings be married and have sex with only one partner.

If there was nothing wrong with it, how come it is such a mess? Why didn't they say: don't have sex outside mariage, but if you have to, put a condom? Things would have been much simpler, no?

If the people would have followed this teaching they would of greatly reduced the spread of the Aids virus. So I always said why get mad at them for not supporting B if they support A already.

Yes and people cannot even :wub:, what do you expect, that everyone will marry at 14 and have only one sex partner during their whole life?

I agree this might help but the only reason the men in Africa and other places weren't using a condom was as an excuse. They didn't believe it was actually wrong or they wouldn't be having sex unmarried in the first place. They did it without a condom because the feeling is better. The reason why most men in the United States do the same.

In Africa, the church has instaured this belief as putting a condom is like killing a baby.

[Kino]

Deleted by user.

[Zenith Darksea]

You can hardly complain Apostate. After all, what I said is true.

[Shadow_Imperator]

I really find it hard to digest this arugument, really.

I can't see why the church cops flak for a major virus outbreak which they didn't create and which the Church itself HAS INDEED! preached the best philosophy, as they say "A prevention is better than a cure", celebacy and marrage/sex with one partner would do wounders. Hence why HIV - AIDS is a problem in Australia's indigenous community and large populations of Russians ect.. Not even soon, it is having a heyday in the Western World as we speak, one thing must be set straight, I blame the sexual revelution far more than I do the church for the outbreak of STD's. Secondly, people can help stop the spread of such horrible ailments by keeping their organs in their pants and atleast wait for a stable relationship to have sex as opposed to this 'one night stand' culture... No wonder it is such a problem... :\

[Garbarsardar]

I really find it hard to digest this arugument, really.

I can't see why the church cops flak for a major virus outbreak which they didn't create and which the Church itself HAS INDEED! preached the best philosophy, as they say "A prevention is better than a cure", celebacy and marrage/sex with one partner would do wounders.

Not all "church". The Catholic church as Tiwaz points out.

And the answer is: Because they lied. They lied to support a doctrinal thesis. Their lies cost lives.