This is stunningly nonresponsive to the issue and is, regrettably, par for the course in these discussions.

We're Catholics. We like medicine. Flu shots are wonderful things! We like killing people a lot less. In vitro fertilization requires the creation and destruction of many, many embryos. Well over seven per attempt, when everything goes right, although the denominator is not really relevant to our reasons for disliking it.

The debate on whether an embryo is a person or not (in the moral personhood sense) is not an open-and-shut question of "science", and if a little humility about the limitations of knowledge is appropriate, it is probably also appropriate for those whose advocacies necessitate the destruction of life.

If flu shots required stabbing an African in the belly to produce, Catholic moral doctrine concentrates more on the immorality of stabbing the African in the belly and less on the exact flu-shots-per-African ratio (or Africans-per-flu-shots ratio).

One of the greatest tragedies of our time is happening right now in Africa, and if it was up to the Catholic church it would be a lot bigger than it is already

Nobody has ever died due to an overly strict adherence to Catholic teaching about sexual morality. Really, think about it.

Then go the next step: if blaming the Catholic church for deaths in Africa for opposing condoms is logically sane, then it must also be the case that condoning sex outside of marriage kills Africans. Which, I rush to mention, is inane.

As for the church being a teacher of sexual morality that is probably an even more inflammatory subject than this one already is.

The new study shows that by age 20, 75% of Americans have had premarital sex. That number rises to 95% by age 44."

Source: http://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/news/20061220/premari...

It's just that the doctrine isn't working, and it never has. Teaching people about condoms doesn't increase non-monogamous sex ratio's (those are high already), but it does increase condom usage. The guilt and exceptionally "sex-negative" culture that's been fostered in Western Culture, a large part due to Christianity, has caused us tremendous problems through sheer ignorance of human sexuality.

Unfortunately, it's often the women who are at the most at risk, even those in monogamous relationships (women are at a much higher risk of AIDS infection) as it's statistically the male who cheats and in many societies the ability to divorce is limited. This doesn't even touch on the power birth control and condom usage has given women in fully monogamous relationships to properly and effectively plan their pregnancies.

Oh, and should this even be hackernews?

I do not think the Catholic Church is unaware of this information nor does it dispute its veracity. I don't think you really believe that the Catholic Church is "sex negative," either. They strongly favor the association of sex with procreation, which is different than being against sex altogether. It is a minority viewpoint, but aren't minority viewpoints valuable and worth examining to see if society has gone too far in the opposite direction?

I also find it odd you see Western Culture as "sex negative." I would be surprised if you could name more than a couple popular Western TV shows or movies that endorse anything like the Catholic viewpoint on sex. Or did you mean something else by "sex negative?"

Here is a really poor wiki definition of "sex negative" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-negativity).

"Sex negativity" is more about a lack of tolerance of different forms and viewpoints of sexuality.

I don't think that upon reading the Catechism or looking at a history of the Catholic Church and it's view on sex/sexuality you come away with a very comfortable view of the actual sex act. Part of this may be due to the fact that those that wrote the doctrine were suppose to be chaste. It's interesting reading how the Catholic Church changed it's early viewpoint from allowing priests to marry early on, to outlawing it (in all but a few loopholes, such as getting the "calling" after you are married).

Most of the doctrine seems to view sex as some unfortunate necessity for procreation, not something to be celebrated by itself. It's never been that comfortable with sex for pleasure. This is in stark contrast to let's say the Greek/Roman societies before the rise of Christianity.

However, I feel like the word itself is partly biased because it assumes that a "sex-negative" viewpoint is bad and a "sex-positive" viewpoint is good (similar to the atheists movement to call atheism "brights"... which makes it seem like everyone else is dims) instead of using more neutral definitions.

Incorrect. If it were up to the Catholic Church, which it is not, the AIDS epidemic would be far smaller than it is. Why? Because if everyone adhered to the teachings of the Catholic Church, no one would have sex outside of marriage, which means HIV simply could not spread. It'd be gone within a generation.

But people don't want to not have sex outside of marriage, because that requires self-control, and that's hard.

As Chesterton put it: The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

So assuming that it is perfectly natural to desire sex from the time that you are sexually mature (way before most people get married), which most likely relates back to our natural instincts of both pleasure and survival, why should you admonish someone for simply acting on it?

A catholic telling the world that they must wait for marriage before having sex is just as ridiculous as someone of the islam faith telling the world that they can't drink alcohol. Both are personal beliefs that are nothing more than constructs of the faith that they chose. If everyone in the world followed both of those rules strictly, a lot of problems would disappear... but that is unreasonable to ask, and arguably unjustifiable. So the question becomes, if people are going to have sex, how can we minimize the problems associated with this perfectly natural and desirous act? One of the cheapest solutions is condoms, which the church has publicly come out against... and as a result, they've had a directly negative impact on the STD transfer rate in Africa (and the world in general).

That is exactly why I think the Catholic church is simply a bunch of old men living in the past. Any human which really has humanities best interest at heart would recognize the realities on the ground and adapt. With the church history as I know it that will take another 300 years and we'll get some lame apology.

AIDS/HIV and other STD's are a huge problem in Africa, if people are not going to follow your edicts you may as well make sure that they do so in the healthiest way possible rather than to oppose the one measure that might stop this tragedy from happening.

The fact that abstinence/monogamy (which the church supports) would go a long way to stemming the epidemic does not give the church a free pass on their 'no condoms' policy.

have a read here:

http://www.lilith-ezine.com/articles/health/Sex-Rights-in-Af...

And for extra credits:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/oct/09/aids

The Catholic Church, to the best of my knowledge, is not running any African government nor coercing them to adopt any specific policy. They have opinions, yes, but are not responsible for the actions or inactions of others.

"you may as well make sure that they do so..."

If you cannot coerce them out of non-monogamous sex, neither can you coerce them into the use of condoms. It is all, equally, attempts at persuasion. Just because the Catholic Church has a more challenging standard does not make it impossible for people to use condoms.

I'm not sure I understand, so I want to make this clear. Are you saying that "If people do not wish to follow the Church's teaching, the Church should make sure they not-follow-the-teaching in the healthiest way possible?"

Suppose a friend wants to commit suicide. You say that suicide is bad, and she shouldn't commit it. But she says well, I'm not going to follow your advice -- so you should help me commit suicide in the healthiest way possible! How do you reply?

However, if they do commit suicide, and they proposed that they wanted to do it by blowing themselves up on a schoolbus; or doing it peacefully alone at their house; I'd be much more against the schoolbus example as it takes other lives with it (and thus is less healthy to society). I'd say I think suicide is a terrible thing, do everything I could to help or convince them otherwise, but ultimately if someone really wants to kill themselves they can and will. I'd advise them that if they are going to do it, they should hurt as little people in the process as possible. I think not telling them that suicide bombing is worse than suicide alone in your home would be rather immoral. As much as I need to convince them not to commit suicide, I need to convince them almost more they shouldn't commit suicide and in the process kill other people.

To make the analogy fit a bit better we are going to assume that the person having sex and the person who wants to commit suicide aren't suffering from some psychological disorder (which puts both situations on a bit different grounds).

Also remember having sex with condoms is equivalent of trying to commit suicide with a gun that has a very very very low percentage of killing you (I'd argue driving your car to work has a much higher percentage of killing you, than having safe sex, where you and your partners are responsible and get tested regularly for STD's) and sex brings with it pleasurable benefits that suicide does not.

So in review, poor analogy.

I think where we differ is that I'd argue to the theoretical friend that she should not commit suicide, and I wouldn't try the 'in the alternative, if you do decide to kill yourself at least don't kill anyone else' reasoning, if only because I would feel that it would undermine my main point of fervently trying to dissuade her from committing suicide.

My take on that is because this is simply a way to offset the ratio of Catholics : non-Catholics, if you forbid the Catholics to use condoms then in the long term there will be more of them. I'm not sure how that tallies with being 'pro life', because if you really were 'pro life' then those lives at risk from infection would count just as much or more as those lives not yet conceived.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3071001/ "In a study of 35 sex education programs around the world, the World Health Organization found there is no evidence that comprehensive programs encourage sexual activity.

The study also concluded that abstinence-only programs are less effective than comprehensive classes that include abstinence and safe-sex practices such as contraception and condom use."

At the same time it reminds me of a scene from the movie "Mean Girls" a comedy about the American High School where the gym teacher (who somehow in most high schools is also the "health teacher") uncomfortably states:

"Don't have sex, because you will get pregnant and die! Don't have sex in the missionary position, don't have sex standing up, just don't do it, OK, promise? OK, now everybody take some rubbers."

However, if having sex puts you at a high risk of infinite punishment forever (instead of infinite reward forever) it sort of changes the argument which is why the two sides have difficulty even discussing the topic. It's also why there are claims that after more and more studies show that sex education doesn't increase promiscuity (but it does reduce STD and teen/unwanted pregnancy rates), and the documented failures of abstinence only education, that even then many Christian groups will always say the studies are flawed. This is because the question was never open to debate in the first place, it was a divine infalliable law and we just need to keep running the tests until we get the predetermined correct answer. That's sort of where I see people arguing that many Christian groups are opposed to science. They love science, as long as it agrees with them (the same can we said for many secular liberals as well as Larry Summers found out).

I also think the Catholic church will reverse it's position on contraception for married couples within my lifetime. They sort of semi already have the steps to do that when they endorsed Natural Family Planning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_family_planning)

"Having sex at an infertile time in a woman's life (such as pregnancy or post-menopause) is also considered acceptable, since the infertile condition is considered to be created by God, rather than as an act by the couple." (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/docume...)

I always thought that was rather arbitrary that you could have sex for pleasure only, but only during infertile times to prevent pregnancy, which we can measure rather accurately today due to advanced technology that we couldn't do very well in the past, because that's part of the human cycle and thus part of God's plan. However, doing the exact same sex-for-pleasure while preventing pregnancy act by using a piece of technologically simple latex that also protects against STI's is an awful sin.

However, due to the vast pluralism of viewpoints in society and our governments responsibility to not endorse any set religion, they suppose to consider the heaven/hell side of the argument in it's policy decisions. It should of course allow others to consider it independently, and thus we have an opt-out program with our sex education.

In all fairness, the Catholic Church does a lot for people in 3rd world countries (I live in an African country and they provide a lot of services). As an example, the school and hospital system in such poor countries as Lesotho was at a time almost 100% CC run and funded. The CC has probably the most extensive hospital system in Africa – and this provides medical service to thousands of people.

Some abstinence programs did work (for instance in Uganda which uses an ABC approach). On the flipside of the coin some programs promoting just condom use were huge failures (a good example is the “Love Life” program that was partially funded by the Bill&Melinda Gates Foundation – a lot of money went down the drain there). The best program (IMHO) is probably an ABC type program that promotes both.

And I believe that spreading the idea that condoms are bad was not just a big mistake the Church made and possibly will admit later on, it's a crime against humanity. I don't have anything against religions, I'm a believer myself, but misinforming people and putting them in danger is something we don't think of as completely wrong enough.

I do not think the article successfully makes the case that the Catholic Church is opposing science, at least not in the particulars cited. He does not say that the Catholic Church has disagreed with any of the particulars of the mechanisms behind IVF, only that they have moral objections to it.

He does seem to be implying that the fact he practices science gives him the right to dictate morality to the rest of us, or something like that. If that is not what he is saying, I don't think he has much of a point at all.