VATICAN: What the hell happened here...

I have howled for a very long time about the position of the Vatican on the use of condoms especially the use of condoms as an HIV preventative tool.

The Vatican has steadfastly refused to change their condom use policy in the face of an HIV epidemic (in Africa and elsewhere) maintaining that condom use was against Church teaching.

The Vatican’s rationale (as I see it) was that all birth control measures (except the natural rhythm method that does not work) are forbidden because conception should not be prevented by artificial means; which I totally disagree with and so do a majority of Catholics.

The rationale made so sense in the real world and my arguments tended to point that out making the Vatican and its members totally ignorant of the real world because, according to me, they are not part of the real world and don’t know shit about the real world and make up nonsense as they go along their merry way.

All of a sudden, I hear the media talk about a possible papal turn-around on the use of condoms. This came about because of a book published by an author who interviewed the pope at length about issues of the day. On condoms, the book stated that the pope mentioned that condom use for male prostitutes makes sense because they can spread the HIV virus among sexual partners. OK that is true and the fact that gays cannot procreate allows the Vatican to agree to condom use in situations that do not prevent conception.

That statement did not blow me away but I was surprised that the pope even said that much about condom use.

But the story persisted in the media and I finally figured out that there must be more to this and in fact, there was.

It seems that the book was written in German and when translated, the pope’s views on condom use changed with each translation. In the Italian version the prostitute was a female. When the pope was asked about the discrepancy, he said that gender did not matter…and that made all the difference in the world.

Acknowledging that condoms can and should prevent disease especially AIDS/HIV is a huge turnaround for the Vatican. In my mind the fact that statistics show that condom use are a huge factor in lowering disease rates in the world should also have penetrated those closed minds in the Vatican.

I will have more on this but all I have to say is that if you keep on speaking out about issues that are important to the world at large and you know you are right, even the Vatican may finally listen but, of course, they will never admit that they were dead wrong in the first place; so much for their “higher” wisdom…

Related articles

• Pope Benedict Uses the C-Word: Prostitutes May Wear Condoms to Prevent Spread of HIV (blisstree.com)
• Vatican Confirms, Clarifies Pope Remarks on Condom Use for HIV: 'Whether it's a man or woman or a transsexual' (towleroad.com)
• Pope Says Condoms Okay For Women Too [Holy Shit] (jezebel.com)
• Condom use to stop AIDS morally justifiable: Vatican (calgaryherald.com)
• 'Condom lesser of 2 evils' - Inquirer.net (news.google.com)
• Condom use by sex workers and transsexuals to stop AIDS morally justifiable: Vatican (calgaryherald.com)
• Condoms a lesser evil than transmitting HIV: Vatican (ctv.ca)
• Conservatives at odds with Vatican over condoms - Washington Post (news.google.com)