“can” and “will” are different modalities. To revisit Der’s analogy, people can stay in solitary rooms and make contact only electronically; all the same, as a cure for the common cold, this won’t work, because people won’t do it. They enjoy too much the pleasures which they would have to forgo to make this work; they are highly unwilling to give them up. The same thing applies with abstinence.
Yes, but you’re never going to get everyone to do it. I doubt you could even realistically get 1% of the population to do it. The drive is too strong in the vast majority of people. Just because some people can do it, doesn’t mean there’s any realistic chance of getting a useful number of people to abstain. I will go so far as to say it’s a practical impossibility, barring extreme measures such as forced castration.
Fuck you in the goat-ass.
In order to stop, or even slow down a disease, a solution needs to be something that most people will do. Something only a very, very few people will do will make no difference except to them personally. You might as well call a bucket a solution to flooding, because you can scoop up a little water with it. That bucket isn’t going to stop the Mississippi, and abstinence isn’t going to stop disease.
The problem is not that the RCC would prefer people have sex only within the confines of marriage. The problem is that the RCC gives the appearance preferring, if they can’t have their first preference, that people fuck around without condoms rather than with condoms. Since they can’t have their first preference, the secondary one is the only one that matters.
The RCC says don’t have sex outside of marriage. Their “believers” flip the church off and have sex anyway. The RCC says don’t use condoms. Allofasudden, they’re all “ooh, church said so. Gotta obey!”
Bullshit. We’re dealing with stupid idiot hypocrites who will do whatever they want, whenever they want, regardless of what the church says. People don’t like to use condoms so this time, it works out conveniently. If the church came out tomorrow and started telling people to use condoms, they’d get completely ignored, just like the no sex before marriage thing.
It’s really easy to blame the church but at the end of the day, people do whatever the hell they want to.
I could blame the church for lots of things I suppose, but at some point you have to start blaming the stupid idiots, regardless of their religion.
The danger is that the church’s influence leads to a lack of access to condoms, even for those who would like to use them.
Was the goat baptised?
Noooo, that isn’t the issue in any way.
They say people shouldn’t have sex outside marriage. That’s a moral judgement and not a statement of fact. They then say that condoms cause AIDS. That’s a scientific statement and one based on fact. It is dangerous because many people will be thinking that since the Bipshop said it it must 1be factually correct. Authority figures can’t go aorund making dangerous and ignorant claims like this on issues of fact withot accepting the full moral responsibility for the effects.
Those are two completely different games they are playing.
If the Ford Motor Company says that people shouldn’t speed in their add for the latest model people will speed anyway. No big deal.
If the Ford Motor Company says that people can’t speed in the latest model because it’s speed limited people will cease to pay attention to their top speed. If Ford is lying then we are going to end with a lot of people dead.
See how we are playing different games here? What people should do is a perfectly reasonable pronouncement for a church, indeed it is the sole reason they exist. Saying that wearing condoms causes AIDS is not a reasonable position and is totally oustide the jusridiction of the church.
People can choose to believe or not the church’s position on sexuality with no risk to health. Moroever because it is an explicitely moral subject the church’s position is just as valid as any other positions.
People can not believe or not the church’s advice on condoms without placing themselves at serious risk. Moroever it isn’t amoral position at all, it is a matter of fact, and as amtte rof fact it is wrong.
You are comparing apples and wheelbarrows by suggesting peopel are free to believe or not either statement with the same penalty.
Abstinence works, why else would the USA be sponsoring all the abstinence only programs? (cheap shot at our present administration)
It would seem to me that after a couple of thousand years of irrefutable evidence that people ain’t gonna abstain from sex and that people are gonna practice birth control, the RC folks would stop yapping about stuff that’s just gonna be ignored. I guess they can’t bring themselves to admit they’ve been wrong for all those years but it would be nice if they would just shut the hell up and live in the real world for a change.
Well first of all, “they” as in the RCC aren’t saying condoms cause AIDS. We’ve got one influential bishop who apparently likes conspiracy theories refusing to name two European countries he believes are deliberately contaminating condoms with HIV to hasten the demise of all those pesky Africans taking up all that valuable real estate. I don’t think anyone is currently claiming condoms=AIDS, even this Chimoio fruitcake.
“The Church” isn’t saying condoms=AIDS, but I do fault the Vatican for not issuing a correction. It’s irresponsible for anyone in the church to claim condoms do anything other than what condoms do. Although I guess they’re free to tell you you’re going to hell for using them.
That’s the thing though. The “church” as you say, says condoms cause AIDS. Everyone’s all “really? Oh my gosh, never using one of those again!” If the church said, “shoving a red-hot poker up your cock prevents AIDS” people would be all, “uh, I don’t think I’m Catholic anymore.”
People pick and choose what they believe, and which edicts from the church are actually convenient to follow.
I’m having trouble parsing this, but I think I got it. The church doesn’t want you to sin, i.e. have sex outside of marriage. It’s not really the church’s job to tell people what precautions they should take when they decide to blow off the church and sin. There are plenty of people in Africa telling everyone to use condoms. I find it hard to believe the people who somehow got word of Chimoio telling them condoms=AIDS didn’t also get word of all the organizations which immediately refuted him. I also find it hard to believe anyone couldn’t go to their local nun or priest and ask for a little clarification.
If they’re selectively listening to Chimoio on this one isssue and ignoring everyone else, they’re stupid idiots. My point stands. Let’s blame the stupid idiots.
Another thing is Chimoio’s statements are in English. Poor English. If it were translated, I’d expect the English to not be so poor. That makes me wonder if he weren’t speaking English - which he’s evidently not so good at - and something was possibly misunderstood?
Once. For twenty minutes.
Doesn’t the Catholic Church have some mechanism for removing church leaders whose viewpoints the High Pointy Hats find disagreeable? I know for a fact they do, because when Ratzinger was a Cardinal he was part of an effort to clear out the liberal wing of the Catholic Church in South America. Did a good job, too.
I’m sorry, that Archbishop truly REPRESENTS the position of the Catholic leadership – if he didn’t, they could dump him in a minute.
What situations like these truly represent is that the Vatican staff are a bunch of latter-day pharisees focused on keeping up the “correct thinking” per whoever the Pope-du-Jour is, in order to keep their jobs, rather than with actually propagating the gospel and emulating Christ – even if it means allowing the distortion and perversion of the actual doctrine.
I’m sure they’ll issue an apology and correction in two or three hundred years.
They don’t really. If they actively teach heresy, like LeFebvre or those liberation theologians in Latin America you’re talking about, they can be laicized or excommunicated, but if they excommunicated Catholics for saying dumb stuff, there wouldn’t be any Catholics left.
That’s especially true when the guy’s an archbishop. It took them 18 years to excommunicate Lefebvre, and that took an actual consecration of a bishop on his part for them to do that.
It’s the Catholic leadership’s position that people shouldn’t use condoms…but it’s not their position that condoms are infected with AIDS.
How about, “the Catholic Church condones the spreading of rumours that condoms have been infected with HIV by one of its Bishops”?
I’m no fan of hyperbole, especially when (as I think in this case) the truth seems to be enough to condemn on its own. Exaggerating just means people get to point out you’re exaggerating as a defence.
I have no objection if you want to put my OP in the Pit (although it cxertainly looks like there is a debate going on there following my OP).
But I am seriously confused at to what I am alleged to have reversed.
By the way, Tomndebb, don’t take it out on me if the precious RCC is making such asshole statements. I am just quoting a news report.
Two hundred years??? You really are a speed demon. It took them until the early 1800s to remove the works of Galileo from the index of banned books, and I believe John Paul II made an asshole left-handed apology by saying that Galileo should have worked with the authorities of the day, sometime in the late 20th century.
I suppose an organization is perfectly justified in threatening torture and death to people who will not “co-operate” with them. I mean, that is what the Mafia does, isn’t it?
I’m taking new technology into account. With emails and jet planes, they should be able to accomplish in mere decades what used to take centuries.