Vatican: Everyone can use condoms to prevent HIV

[Low C Sharp]

How many people had to die of AIDS before the Vatican came to its senses about condoms? About 25 million, over the course of the last 30 years. It's pretty extraordinary that until now, preventing pregnancy was considered a worse sin than spreading death. This is a source of moral leadership?

I'm sorry, this is what happens when you seek sexual guidance from a geriatric virgin wearing a dress.
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Lyiza

[AlphaFrog]

Popes don't like to go against precedents...

I think the logic in that being that the Pope is supposed to be infallable on matters of scripture. To change a Pontifical precedent is acknowledging that somewhere along the line, someone screwed up, which according to Catholic tradition isn't possible. It would be to them the equivilant of finding out that Mary didn't go to heaven.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by AlphaFrog

Popes don't like to go against precedents...

I think the logic in that being that the Pope is supposed to be infallable on matters of scripture. To change a Pontifical precedent is acknowledging that somewhere along the line, someone screwed up, which according to Catholic tradition isn't possible. It would be to them the equivilant of finding out that Mary didn't go to heaven.

Right - that's completely understood, but it's also entirely the problem: it's a black-and-white attitude that applies to topics that can't be defined by black-and-white answers (or to things that change drastically as scientific and technical knowledge advances - see: Galileo).

The Vatican has, in a nearly literal sense, created an alternate Ouroboros: head into ass instead of tail into mouth, Catch-22 all the same.

[AlphaFrog]

My pastor was talking recently about people who make the arguement thay the Bible couldn't possibly account for all of the scientific and social develoments of the modern world. The problem with that line of thinking is that most Christian religions take the Bible as the divine Word of God, or at the very least the Inspired Word of God. That being the case, can you really argue that God didn't know what kind of shape the world would be in 2010?

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by AlphaFrog

I think the logic in that being that the Pope is supposed to be infallable on matters of scripture.

I think that's a rather popular misconception, frankly. The actual teaching of the Catholic Church is that the Pope is preserved from error when he solemnly proclaims to the Church a dogmatic teaching on faith or morals as being divinely revealed. Though it dates back to an earlier time, the doctrine of papal infallibility was not actually defined until the First Vatican Council in 1870.

Statements of the Pope to which papal infallibilty applies are in fact quite rare. I think there have only been three instances since 1870 to which it applies -- the definitions of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception of Mary and of the Bodily Assumption into Heaven of Mary and JPII's apostolic letter stating that only men can be priests. Some scholars would say that over the past two thousand years, the doctrine of papal infallibility might properly apply to fewer than a dozen papal pronouncements.

Originally Posted by AlphaFrog

That being the case, can you really argue that God didn't know what kind of shape the world would be in 2010?

There is a strand of theology -- the name of it escapes me right now -- that would argue something like that, if I understand (and remember) it right. I think it would say that while God is able to know the future, God has chosen not to know the future.

[Animate]

Coincidence? I think not.

[AlphaFrog]

CAN God choose not to know the future?

That's one of those questions that will make you go cross-eyed if you think too much about it.