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Dude-- we were in LA for five days and when we returned everything was different! The temperature dropped like 50 degrees, and according to this poster we saw outside the Prince Street N/R station, the Catholic church is now cool with BOTH gay sex and condoms. Way to go guys-- keep reaching for that rainbow!
UPDATE: apparently the campaign isn't being sponsored by the Catholic Church! How could we be so stupid? It's being sponsored by Condoms4Life.org:
Condoms4Life is an unprecedented worldwide public education effort to raise public awareness about the devastating effect of the bishops’ ban on condoms. The campaign was launched on World AIDS Day 2001 with the display of billboards and ads in subways and newspapers saying, “Banning Condoms Kills.”The advertising campaign in the US, Mexico, the Philippines, South Africa, Kenya, Chile and Zimbabwe, was the first phase of an effort to change the Vatican’s policy and challenge its aggressive lobbying against availability and access to condoms in areas of the world most at risk. The ads point out that many of the 4,000 plus bishops lobby governments and the United Nations to restrict access to condoms claiming that condoms cause AIDS, not prevent it.
We don't know much about Catholicism-- but here's a simpleminded question: can you really support gays and condoms and still be a Catholic? Isn't the whole point that whatever the pope says goes? How far can you disagree with the Church and not end up a Protestant? Inquiring minds want to know!
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The thing about being Catholic is believing in the Trinity, that Jesus is present in communion in body and blood, that the right of confession forgives sins, etc. There is a lot more to it than just the Holy Father or condoms or gays.
Faith of any kind is a personal and somewhat complicated affair.
I happen to adore shoes obsessively - which the Pope doesn't agree with either, but I am still a Catholic. My shoe problem just doesn't make such a great media story.
He's the conservative patriarch of the clan who wags a diapproving finger at your lifestyle but, we still show deference. Whether gay or straight we sometimes totally disagree with the pope and still identify as Catholic. He would frown upon the excesses Mardi Gras/Carnivale (a Catholic bacchanal started right under the Vatican's nose) but nobody's ever really listened. Thus far I've never heard of anyone being excommunicated...yet.
I'm simplifying a huge amount here, but one of the huge differences between Catholicism and the other main Christian denominations is the Catholic belief that what you achieve on earth affects what happens to you in the afterlife. Many protestand sects belief that your fate is predestined.
Oh, and tons of Protestants hate gays and rubbers too. Feel better?
jake, you're dumb.
The main tenet of Catholocism and Christianity in general for that matter is that you have to believe that a living, breathing person was the son of GOD, that a woman was impregnated by a ghost, that a man can physically walk on water, turn blood into wine, can heal the sick, make the blind see, not have sex with hot chicks, likes to bathe other men, and oh yeah come back from the dead! Jake, you fool don't you know anything? all Jesus needs is heat vision.
The Catholic church teaches that homosexuality is contrary to the natural law since it is "closed" to the gift of life and under no circumstances can homosexual acts be approved. Homosexual desires or attraction are not seen as sinful, but the act itself is. Contraception, masturbation, adultry, etc.. are all seen as disordered as it relates to sex. Not in the sense that a person is disordered, but a sexual act is considered properly ordered when it is between a married couple and isn't closed to the possibility of reproduction. Catholics cannot pick and choose when it comes to sacred tradition.
I'm a practicing Catholic. I don't care if you engage in homosexual sex acts or wrap it before you tap it. I realize that my thoughts run contrary to the Church's doctrine and that the Church is supposed to be infallible, that the Pope is God's representative on earth. I don't think God would really care about some of these things. The Catholic Church has over time re-interpreted previous doctrine. Perhaps they'll do so in the future regarding homosexuality or contraceptives. I feel maybe the Catholic church somewhere along the line went astray. And I think I'll find out whether I'm right or not when I get my day or reckoning. I think I have the ability to reason contrary to the Catholic church because I was born with free will and an intellect and it would be weird to be provided with things that I can't use to figure things out on my own. So, as a Catholic, there's the way I'm supposed to be. And as a human, there's the way I am.
Oh. Mi. God. Dude......... With the way you, like, talk, like totally makes me think you've been in L.A. for, like, five *years.* Cowabunga!
One of those comments posters said they think that Catholicism went astray at some point. How about at its origin? Anyone with half a brain should be able to figure out that the Bible is a bunch of bullcrap. It's the writings of people 2,000 years ago who didn't know the earth was round, didn't know their bodies were made up of cells, didn't have even a tiny fraction of the knowledge we do of astronomy, biology, physics, brain chemistry or psychology, and certainly couldn't conceive of the invention of latex or the possibility that male-male couples might one day buy homes together and celebrate 50th anniversaries.
It's absurd to the point of surreal that people in these times can look at those writings and think they're somehow "the word of God." Utterly ridiculous. They're the words of people. People who were afraid of the unknown, afraid of death, and very much confused about how the world and their own bodies worked. People trying to sort out that confusion and fear by imposing certainty on it. Any thinking person should in 2006 be able to realize that, and, in turn, realize that it would be better to judge and evaluate the world we live in with the knowledge we do have instead of according mystical, sacred status to the writings of people who didn't have all the knowledge we do. Grow up, people!
I was raised Catholic, and know many Catholics, and your original question is a valid one: if you don't agree with a religion's tenets or the so-called infallible leader of that religion, why do you remain a part of the club? The answer is one none of these people who've posted so far have admitted to: because while they may disagree with Catholicism, they can't get beyond the idea that because they were born Catholic, they have to keep identifying themselves as "Catholic." They are afraid of the chaos that might ensue (but probably won't) if they were brave enough one day to say, 'You know what, I don't agree with a lot of what this church preaches, so maybe I shouldn't call myself a member of it anymore.' Status quo, family approval and peer pressure are powerful incentives against changing the way you identify yourself and the way you live your life. That's what has kept religion going for all these millennia. (Also, brute force, torture and economic oppression did the trick for at least a few of those centuries.)
Yes, yes - Catholicism really has the market cornered on weird mystical shit that defies explanation.
i'd like to think people's relationships with religion is akin to their relationships with the annoying relatives/in-laws: it's just the way s/he/it is, so i'm gonna be the way i am anyway.
UNAIDS states condom fails of 10%, even if correctly used; the cochrane database (evidence based medicine) exposes a 20% rate from the available studies.
So, the difference in using a condom, or not, is *how fast" you get infected if you engage in sex with an infected partner. With condoms is slower.
So the arguing as little to do with the Catholic Chuch.