[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: ADMIN: The Death of the Pope

[Kathryn]

Pip
 
Did you notice that you blamed the Pope rather than the husband?{g}
 
<snip>

But there's a deeper root to the problem. The Pope preached that the
true solution was not condoms, it was for the husband (or wife) to
not sleep around. I might disagree with his approach, argue that
there should be a belt and braces approach of preaching fidelity
*and* wide availability of condoms. But I wouldn't call him a
hypocrite, or say that his preaching was evil. Because he was right -
  fidelity *is* a true solution.  We want to make concessions to
human frailty; he argues that 'human frailty' is just a convenient
excuse for evil conduct. But both of us agree that we don't want the
wife to get AIDS; what we're arguing about is the best method of
preventing that.
 .
 

 K

Actually the husband in my scenario is equally guilty, but we weren't
discussing the husbands alleged greatness. And before I get into the rest of
my argument I wasn't calling the Pope a hypocrite because of his views on
contraception, but because of his views on priests and politics. I agree he
wasn't at all hypocritical on this issue - just wrong <g>

Historically the Church has consistently preached that x is a sin, but if
you have to commit it at least do y, and then come confess and we'll absolve
you (of course most of its adherants have ignored the bit about needing to
be truly penitent in order to be absolved, but humans will be humans
unfortunately). For example in the Middle Ages (I'm an historian not a
theologian so I actually know more about Agustine, for example, than modern
church thinking) the church preached that there were two kinds of woman -
the good pure sort (ie Mary) and the fallen kind (ie Mary Magdalene) - and
that while men should try and restrain their 'unnatural' sexual desires they
should make sure that if they did fall and give in to go out and find the
second kind of woman to do it with rather than sullying their wives (I kid
you not, you've got to love that kind of attitude haven't you!). So along
these lines it would be perfectly possible for the church to preach that
infidelity is a big sin and using condoms only a moderate one so that if
unfortunately your rat of a husband is committing the first then you should
at least make sure he committs the second too, at least when with you, so
that your kids have a good chance of growing up with at least one surviving
parent. 

In addition, and please feel free to correct me on this, someone did try and
explain the church's thinking on contraception to me in detail a few days
ago and I didn't grasp most of it, I think the Catholic Church is against
contraception because life is sacred (I did think it was mainly the sex is
for procreation thing but I was told that that actually isn't true so much,
which means either my RE teacher was confused or I was paying even less
attention than I thought) which makes no sense to me because the potential
life to be created is already in danger from AIDS in my scenario, as is its
mother and then the lives of the rest of the dependents in that family too
indirectly.

We both seem to agree that poverty is a major contributing factor to the
AIDS epidemic, but a major contributing factor to poverty for many people is
the death of one or both parents leaving the children with no one to earn
money to feed the family - making the chance of the education that someone
was saying the women needed unlikely for the next generation.

And as for my use of the word evil - in my opinion the Pope is partly
responsible for many, many, many deaths due to AIDS. When you add in things
like the Catholic Church's long-term turning of a blind eye to paedophilia,
the Pope's hypocritical political atitudes etc then yeah I feel justified in
my criticisms.

K
 
 
 

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