Eeeevilll

I noticed this headline in Yahoo - Cardinal: Condoms 'Lesser Evil' Than AIDS - and I just had to read it. This part jumped out at me. "While there is no specific, authoritative Vatican policy on using condoms to protect against AIDS, the Vatican opposes condoms because they are a form of artificial contraception."

I didn't realize it was artificial contraception the church has a problem with. What might artificial mean if it is meant to put condoms in a class which includes the forms of birth control that are not condoned by the church (surgical abortion, hormone birth control, and IUDs)? In this use, stuff like the rhythm method, prayer, and the old standard "pulling out" would be not artificial methods presumably because they are condoned and advanced by the church. It's a strange delineation though - and it does leave open the question of whether or not hurting yourself or having others hurt you during an unwanted pregnancy in hopes that you will miscarry* is considered "artificial" by the church.

When did artificial become the key component in any sin or vice? If artificial is that bad, is the pope going to ban Easy Cheese and Poptarts? I think he ought to start with twinkies if he's going to begin an evil artificial snack food campaign. A friend and I once super glued a twinkie to her dorm room ceiling in the Fall. In May it was stil there looking as fresh as the day it came out of the wrapper. Now that is definitely eeeevillll.

There are some outspoken members of the high up clergy who apparently do think that sometimes it would be ok for condoms to be used, artificial or not. Later in this same news story, we are told that at least one other cardinal has said that "condoms could sometimes be condoned, such as when a woman cannot refuse the sexual advances of her HIV-positive husband." Let me break that down. When someone's HIV positive husband exercises his church condoned right to make his wife have sex when she doesn't want to, it would be ok for him to use a condom.

* = This is, where I grew up, termed an "irish abortion". A nasty term for a nasty practice. The reasoning behind it is that it is seen as an alternative to ending a pregnancy without committing the "sin" of having an abortion (or the sin of using birth control to prevent the pregnancy in the first place).