The kerfuffle surrounding the Pope´s comments on condoms continues. As the gender of hookers allowed to use condoms switched in translation, the Pope´s spokesman was asked to clarify. Apparently, HIV-infected people can use condoms to protect their partners: “Whether it’s a man or woman or a transsexual.” Of all the men I know who regularly [...]
So our old friend Pope Benedict has come round to the idea that there are times when wrapping one´s penis in latex will not consign one to eternal damnation. According to the New York Times, he cited just one instance when it might be ok to use a condom. Benedict said condoms were not “a [...]
When the New Statesman New Scientist asked me for my idea of God, I described God as a ventriloquist’s dummy, worked by puppeteers in the religious bureaucracies. But in this video Canadian director Patrick Boivin delightfully makes puppets of the puppeteers also: Thanks to Paul Canning for pointing me to Patrick’s work. Readers might want [...]
I, like many who’ve written to me, am speechless with rage at the Pope’s first direct pronoucement on condoms. (Well, not quite speechless. I had a little vent about it in today’s Times.) To oppose condoms on dogmatic grounds is one thing. That’s the Pope’s job, if he considers it his job to defend Catholic [...]
You’d think the Catholic Church would be ecouraging people to sign up to its shrinking flock, not turning them away. But no, they’re now excommunicating people for saving children’s lives. Here’s the story, as reported by The Irish Times: a nine-year old girl in Brazil is repeatedly raped by her step-father. Remarkably, she becomes pregnant [...]
The death rattle of the Bush administration puts it, once again, in the company of great defenders of human rights such as Russia, China and Saudi Arabia. This time, it breathes its sickness on gays. The US is one of nearly 60 countries which stamped its feet in opposition to France’s declaration (made in the [...]
I assume that Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, who died on Saturday, believed in an afterlife. I wonder if he’s given any thought to the millions of people he’ll meet in that afterlife who died young of AIDS because they didn’t use condoms. Some didn’t use condoms because they don’t like them, perhaps. Some because condoms [...]
