Thursday, February 26, 2009

Brazilian priest suspended for support of condoms

(From the Associated Press)

A Catholic priest (Rev. Luiz Couto) serving in the Brazilian congress has been temporarily suspended from his priestly duties for supporting the free distribution of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.
I guess to a Catholic, this is kind of the same sort of deal as a safe-injection site. We know they're going to do it anyway, but should we make sure they do it safely? Or is that encouraging them?

Well, yeah, Catholics. It is encouraging them. Encouraging them to use condoms, which is a pretty good idea, particularly if you don't want them to get AIDS. You will never, ever convince everyone to be abstinent. Ever. It will not happen. Ever. What you can do, if you want to prevent this horrible, horrible disease that only rich people can afford to treat, is make sure that if they're going to have sex (which they are), they wrap it up. Seriously, Catholics. It's a good idea.

So, good for this Priest, being all pragmatic and everything, but bad for the Archdiocese responsible for suspending him. This is just further evidence that the Catholic church is priming itself for another split. Either they get their shit together, or the Catholic church we know today with be the Society of St. Pius X compared to the Catholic church that will split off from them. Actually, I'd probably go to mass more often if that happened. You know, with the liberal ones... obviously.

Anywayz, I leave you with this:

Matthew 13:52 (NIV) says:
He said to them, "Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old."
Faith and dogma are not stagnant. They do not stop at 2000-year-old wisdom. This is not the same world it used to be, and many of the old rules no longer apply. It is men like Cuoto - who are able to take the message of Christ and adapt it to a new age - who are the future of the Church, not the men who would stop him from preventing disease. I'm pretty sure that what Cuoto has done is WTF Jesus would do.

4 comments:

Phoebe said...

Are married HIV positive hemophiliacs allowed to use condoms to prevent infecting their wives?

Jocelyn said...

Sort of. The official Catholic position on birth control WITHIN marriage (as of relatively recently) is that people should "use their own morality."

Seattle Mama said...

Jocelyn, I don't think that's true. It certainly wasn't the case in 2005 when I was married in the church, we required to take a Natural Family Class before we were allowed to get married adn they talked about it ad nauseam in our Pre Cana classes. Everything I've ever read (and I've dome some research into this) still says absolutely no contraception ever and don't even think about pulling out.

Jocelyn said...

I wonder about that, actually. I think the Church left it up to individual parishes as to what to say about birth control. That said, this is all information I've gotten from my father, who, while usually being a pretty accurate source of information on Catholicism, is still just some dude who told me the Pope said it was kind of OK.

I'll look into it and get back to you.

Design by Dzelque Blogger Templates 2008

WTF WOULD JESUS DO? - Design by Dzelque Blogger Templates 2008