It's a start, anyway.  Let's discuss the reality of human beings.  But I find this paragraph to be - um - mealy mouthed.

                     It will also cut down on available DNA evidence often used against the RC church for million doller settlements in molesting cases.  I just wish I was joking.  I did go to [2] catholic schools  I was never molested,  apparently Tommy was cuter then me [no he wasn't].  When ever there is a major policy change from a pope you can bet $$$ is the motivation.

Makes sense, after all the pope's been wearing one on his head for years.

That is not a condom, it is a phallic symbol, symbolizing the fact he couldn't get laid. You know,  guys drive fast cars to compensate.

Condoms in my country are sprayed with special strong odour, so everyone knows that you have one with you.

Many people were arrested for it, because they left it on their pocket. In Hungary at some clubs or near universities, owning a condom seems to be prohibited. Or you can be suspected for planning a rape, and the policemen will hit and kick you.

 It's not the first Papal U-turn - from what I remember he 'got rid' of Limbo a few years ago.. Those lucky dead unbaptised babies now get to go to heaven after all.

A few? Go to the official Catholic forums (forums.catholic.com). I'd say at least 50% think Vatican II was a travesty that needs to be rolled back. Granted, these are also the same folks that think America is a lost cause for Catholicism, and they need to focus on poor, third world nations where the Holy Ghost has a "clearer voice" (That's code for no education and miserable living conditions).

I'm on the weekly newsletter that keeps me updated on what their trending topics are, that way I'm regularly reminded about why religion is a dangerous thing.

That said, good for the pope. I'm glad either his conscious nagged him into reversing this, or pragmatism caused him to back down on a fight he couldn't win (that made the whole church look like a giant asshole).

Who knows, if the Catholics reverse course on claiming women don't have the same magic ju-ju as men they might stop the membership hemorrhage they've got in developed nations.

Evolution was accepted a few years ago too. The church is capable of recognising when it has to give up on something before its position costs it more than it helps.

 Just a business decision. The threshhold was passed, more people would stay and give money than would leave and stop giving money. Cause we all know God needs his cash.

 As a former Catholic, raised in that environment and having that moralist horseshit shoved upon me for years, it gives me a great sense of satisfaction to say the pope can go fuck himself, along with all the other child molestor priests that the Vatican has protected.

Luckily, that didn't happen to me, even though I was an altar boy at one time. Perhaps I just didn't have the right amount of sex appeal for those old doddery drunken priests. Could be that they imbibed in booze too much though.

I trust this audience will have no objection to my simply restating that no evidence has been leveled contrary my last post. 

The burden of proof, at least now, lies squarely with those who would allege that the Pope has reversed the ban on condoms. 

If he has not, then the Church's position, at least on this issue, remains consistent and the alleged irrationality does not obtain.

Relax, not reverse. He's just admitting that telling people getting AIDS is better than using condoms means they'll lose money, and they need lots of money so they can hush up more molestation cases.

So it is natural to want sex, but only allowable within the confines of marriage ? So in other words, you can have sex when the church says it is ok ? Otherwise, it is a mortal sin, right ?

So why does god give us wants and then impose limitations on them ?

I'm faithful to my girlfriend, but since we have not experienced the sanctity of marriage, by the church's definition, we are committing mortal sin right ?

Ordinem secundum quondam:

harleysportster,

But of course.  All desires have a proper and multiple improper expressions.  You won't find a human passion that the Church condemns roundly.  They are all good in themselves, and are only evil insofar as they are disordered, that is, not subordinated to the desire for the highest good.

It is the mind of the Church that this disorder, the irrationality of these desires that we find in ourselves, is the consequence of the introduction of moral evil into the world.  God permitted this, but did not will it antecedent to free human choice.  

Mortal sin is subjective.  Grave sin is objective.  I cannot say whether your sin (if subjective sin there be) is mortal, although I can say that your actions are gravely sinful (even absent a subjective sin).

 
Christ has lifted marriage between baptised persons to the level of a sacrament, absolutely insoluble.  In light of the Petrine and Pauline privileges, it is difficult to ascertain the extent to which marriage between unbaptised persons is insoluble, and indeed trying to determine the moral character of Old Testament divorce (of which modern serial monogamy, in dating, sexual activity, as well as common law and legal marriage is the analogue) has always been somewhat of a sticky wicket.  

I can only say, with the words of Christ, "From the beginning it was not so."  Subjective sin aside, something is not right with the most broadly prevalent state of affairs (pun alert).

blacklight915,

Yes, I do believe that those things are immoral.  

In this case, natural means that it is something to which man inclines by nature, not necessarily what prevails in nature as we observe it (indeed, nature as we observe it is, in the mind of the Church, fallen, and not a reliable indicator of right order).  When I say that it is good, I do not mean that it is always and absolutely a moral good.  Rather this: when I say that a thing is good, I mean that it is desirable, and goodness considered in this way is a transcendental quality of being, that is to say, all things that exist are in some way desirable---as we read in Genesis, God made all things good.

By evil is to be understood a certain privation, not any real existing thing which "piggybacks" on other existing things and makes them bad.  Hunger is a "physical" evil, precisely termed, but if you can catch hunger, see it, photograph it, play with it, or talk to it, I'll eat my hat.  

Moral goodness or evil is a characteristic of the will, and so moral evil is a certain privation in the act of the will.  Most broadly, it is a privation, within the will, of the order or priority which ought to obtain amongst its desires.  Since man can only desire good, and not evil in and of itself (for evil in and of itself is literally nothing at all), we mean by moral evil the privileging of lower goods over higher goods.  

This is easily illustrated.  I cannot say that in your worldview you necessarily have good reasons for doing so, but wouldn't your human nature instinctively militate against a man who spends all of his money on alcohol whilst his family starve?  Likely so, for the good of the family is commonly held to be higher than the good which is the pleasure that we find in drink.

So for a Catholic, the highest good towards which we should strive to attain is God Himself, and to privilege any created thing over our duty towards God and, for His sake, towards our neighbour, is to be in just the same position as that alcoholic.

And this entire objective/subjective/ standpoint comes from where ?

 blacklight915,

Absurd?  We'll find out.

Man's natural inclination is not towards ravioli or chutney or baked beans, but the desire for food in general.  Hence, the desire for certain kinds of sexual expression is not per se the passion, but rather a consequence of it.  The desire for sex broadly considered is the passion.  

The purpose of that appetite can be discovered by reason.  The male and female parts fit together and such a consummation can lead to procreation.  This is just like the desire for food.  We know that it is for nutrition, not for the titillation of the palette, that we hunger.  At least with the desire for food, we both understand that there are abuses of this desire when it is divorced from its proper end, and which can lead to harm.  Who doesn't perceive that eating to obesity is a harmful excess?

When I say "good reasons," I mean this:  

We both know that the sex drive is for procreation.  In the blind evolutionary paradigm, that is why it was adaptive.  But a secular evolutionist must admit that the sex drive's procreative intent is an accident of his condition.  There is no reason to care about its purpose.  Thus, "caring for other people," high-minded and noble as it sounds to your emotions, really can have no intrinsic value in your thought, since blind evolution will explain away empathy as simply adaptive and conducive to survival, which is neither good nor bad, nor an end, but simply what happens to survive.   

Thus, just as you have no problem using the sex drive for purposes other than procreation and the creation of a family, since you understand (in your worldview) that these drives exist in you only because those creatures which had them happened to survive, but that you are free to exploit them for other purposes, so too you should really have no problem ignoring your instinct to empathy, at least not in theory.  Practically you probably won't, since subjectively you would likely find it highly unpleasant, since it goes against your inclination.  But I find your assertion that your own inclination to care for others is a good reason to do so, at least given the broader worldview which you seem to espouse, well, quite absurd.  Certainly it is not a good reason for anyone else to do so.

And in this reply are contained the replies to the other two objections.