The headline is The Pope drops Catholic ban on condoms in historic shift but even after reading the article I can’t help but think (someone else said this long before I thought of it, but I don’t remember who it was), “If you don’t play the game you shouldn’t be in a position to make the rules.”
The View From North Central Idaho
Ramblings on explosives, guns, politics, and sex by a redneck Idaho farm boy who became a software engineer living near Seattle.
You aren’t thinking of the same game as teh Pope. He specializes in applied theology, not the best medicine. He has to keep things somewhat consistent, using an historical database going back a couple thousand years or so.
And tell Juan Antonio Samaranch about playing the game being required to make the rules. If he was still alive, he’d ban you from the Olympics for life for such heresy.
I believe the line goes back to the introduction of the birth control pill when the Pope opined that it would be forbidden under some strict reading of the official party line. A woman of Italian extraction was interviewed, on the streets of New York about this, and was quoted as saying “He’s-a no play-a da game, he’s-a no make-a da rules!”
I had Catholic friends say to me that the Official List somehow smiled on sheep-gut, but frowned on latex, when it came to condoms. But he might have been jesting…
Is this an official endorsement of latex? I can’t tell, and the article doesn’t say.
It does look like a softening of the old position, carefully phrased to be about people who worry about the life and health of their intimate partner.
Well, now maybe catholic priests will feel “safe” to use rubbers when they bugger the little boys. Gawd’s voice on earth has spoken!