Vatican: Everyone can use condoms to prevent HIV

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

Uh oh. As long as this doesn't turn into the theology thread mixed with frodobaggins' thread. LOL.

Beetlejuice!

[itb2a]

Using Yahoo as a serious news source is foolish. What Yahoo attributes to the Pope is sensationalized, misrepresented, and misquoted. In the cause of balance and correctness, you can read the following: http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/11/what-...-really-say-2/.

[knight_shadow]

A random blog is more credible than the Associated Press?

No.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by itb2a

Using Yahoo as a serious news source is foolish. What Yahoo attributes to the Pope is sensationalized, misrepresented, and misquoted. In the cause of balance and correctness, you can read the following: http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/11/what-...-really-say-2/.

The "serious news source" is the Associated Press, not Yahoo . . . I'm totally sure some guy's blog is a much better source though.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by itb2a

Using Yahoo as a serious news source is foolish. What Yahoo attributes to the Pope is sensationalized, misrepresented, and misquoted. In the cause of balance and correctness, you can read the following: http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/11/what-...-really-say-2/.

No, this is basically what was said. The pope isn't saying that condoms are awesome, but that it is more acceptable to use condoms than to spread STIs. It would be even MORE acceptable not to be having sex outside of marriage for example, but it's considered a small step.

So what K_s said above was accurate and this is a shift in position from the Pope.

You on the other hand, were annoying and not particularly informative.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by itb2a

Using Yahoo as a serious news source is foolish. What Yahoo attributes to the Pope is sensationalized, misrepresented, and misquoted. In the cause of balance and correctness, you can read the following: http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/11/what-...-really-say-2/.

LOL at that suggestion that the linked blog is "balanced."

I'll take the AP over the blog. Or how about the Catholic News Service, which reported:

Even before the book's release, media attention centered on the pope's remarks on condoms in AIDS prevention. While repeating his view that condoms cannot be the only answer to the AIDS epidemic, the pope allowed that in some specific cases -- for example, that of male prostitutes -- use of a condom could be a step toward taking moral responsibility for one's actions.

And which also reported:

Technically, Catholics are not required to agree with Pope Benedict XVI's comments on political and even theological issues in a new book-length interview, but they do owe the pope respect, a Vatican official said.

"It is an interview, not a magisterial act, but it is still the pope speaking and he deserves respect," said Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization.

[starang21]

pppppssshhhhh

[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.
________
Lyiza

[Kevin]

The Catholic Church in recent years has made it awfully difficult to support the Pope. I'm a life-long Catholic, but have recently been considering the Episcopal Church in the wake of the Pope's involvement with covering up sex abuse and some of the church's views.

[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.

[IrishLake]

Sigh.... Dogma, it fouls it all up for them.

Kevin, I've thought of doing the same. My husband is devout, me - not so much.

[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.