Stephen Law

Thanks to Blakeley Nixon for this link. Surprising vote at the end. To be fair to the Catholic side: as speakers, Widdecome and the Bishop were pretty awful and entirely outclassed. Postscript. By the way, for anyone interested in this topic I would strongly recommend David Ranan's Double Cross: The Code of the Catholic Church , which is at least as exciting as The Da Vinci Code . The Catholic Herald wrote: Speaking of how other people may see us, I have been reading a fascinating, if somewhat uncomfortable book called Double Cross by David Ranan (Theo Press). When I tell you that it devotes 350 pages to attacking the Church ... you will understand why I would not recommend it to anyone who is not familiar with Church history and the general cut and thrust of apologetic debate. ... whenever I was able to check references they proved satisfactory. Withal, I found the book salutary. It reminds me how the credibility of the Church has so often been endangered not only by bad individ...

On a previous post on the RC position on using condoms, some have objected that it would be unreasonable for the RC Church to agree to say "You ought not have gay sex, but if you are going to, use a condom." The suggestion is there is something inconsistent about saying such a thing. After all, we would not say "You should not rob houses, but if you do, don't cause more damage than you need to" or "You should not rape, but if you do, use a condom". It's true that these are not things we would say. But why not? There is a subtle distinction we need to make here. Sometimes it is perfectly reasonable to say: You ought not to X, but if you are going to X, do Y. Other times less reasonable. Doctor: You ought not to drink, but if you are going to, avoid spirits. Nothing unreasonable about that. Jolly good advice for certain medical conditions! In fact, if the doctor thought you were likely to drink, it would be irresponsible of him not to add the cave...

For the story go here and here . Pope Benedict XVI has said that handing out condoms is not the answer in the fight against HIV/Aids, as he makes his first visit to Africa as pontiff. Speaking en route to Cameroon, he said distribution of condoms "increases the problem". I previously posted on this topic here . Perhaps this is one area where we can say, more or less without qualification, that religion is dangerous.

I have had a chat going on about Catholics, condoms and HIV with onthesideoftheangels, here (scroll down) He defends the Catholic Church's position not to recommend condom use (except in v special medical circumstances), not even in Africa, where, I suspect, they might save millions of lives by blocking the transmission of HIV. Thought it now worth dragging into the main postings. Here's my latest comment: So now let's suppose condoms are 90% effective in preventing infection. That seems an underestimate, in fact. Here's one quote I found: "In a study of discordant couples in Europe, among 123 couples who reported consistent condom use, none of the uninfected partners became infected." Seems condoms are pretty effective in preventing infection when used properly, doesn't it? In which case, were those having sex outside of marriage in Africa to use them, millions of cases of infection could be prevented. That is current medical opinion, isn't it (at ...