Well... I certainly agree in principle with your assessment.
But there is an elevated number of faithful wives who believe they live in a faithful marriage -- but whose husbands live a promiscuous life.
Shouldn't they be warned?
New Catholic: Duplicity is a sad fact of life, even though marriages of genuine integrity obviously exist and flourish. You'll not from my wording that I was referring to the latter, not the former.
I understand it, Dr. Blosser.
However, the ad would be innocuous in a "family" magazine if they mentioned female promiscuity, because many faithful women would ignore the problem -- which they may well suffer, thanks to unfaithful husbands of whose promiscuity they are unaware.
New Catholic:
The problem is the glorification of recreational sex in the public mind and entertainment media. Don't you think directly linking HPV and other CANCER-producing viruses with promiscuous sex in the public mind would deflate that image a bit? Some serious public discourse about such linkage surely couldn't hurt matters.
Wonder why it is only MEN who contribute to this forum?
Yes, why is it that this forum exudes such homoeroticism?
Not homoeroticism, exactly, but a pseudo-manly contempt for gays and women -- whatever it is, women do not seem to be very attracted -- the pheromes, I suppose.
Well, I for one am not interested in attracting any more women. I don't think my wife would be too pleased if I were.
While a bit of indignancy might be justified here, I cannot see you being satisfied with such a porous argument.
I suspect that if the ad discussed in any detail how the virus is spread it would have met the same reaction for its purient discussion.
Promiscuous intercourse does not cause the infection. That activity spreads the infection that is caused by a virus. This, of course, is not mere semantics for the above cited reason of marital duplicity, but also because of the insidious and often undetectable nature of the HPV infection.
The intercourse spreading HPV need not be promiscuous, and can be spread within the constraints of marriage by either partner. Of course, this can only happen in the case of Catholic converts or in the case of remarriage.
Blosser calls women whores. Would he call their male counterparts philanderers?
No, the correct term is whoremongers -- philanderer is a euphemism.
Whoremongers is still a term that degrades women more than men. If Blosser wants to degrade women he should degrade men equally -- it's only fair.
In short, he should call the men whores as well.
Yes. If.
So why use the language of degradation at all?
I dunno. For the sake of accuracy maybe.
Planned Parenthood's campaign to keep the lid on the connection between abortion and cancer...
Daniel S. Greenberg, this week's London Review of Books, on THE REPUBLICAN WAR ON SCIENCE by Chris Mooney, has this to say:
The president's base demands unwavering fealty to the anti-abortion movement, and the Bush camp has obliged, even to the extent of FABRICATING AN ASSOCIATION BETWEEN ABORTION AND PRESS CANCER. An online fact sheet from the National Cancer Institute that DISCOUNTED SUCH A LINK was removed in June 2002 to mollify anti-abortionists in Congress..... The NCI convened a meeting of experts, who concluded that "induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk".
What s your opinion on abortion, Father? What do you think of the abortion law in your native Ireland?
I agreed with the French bishops (in an essay in The Furrow, 1978 or 1979, that abortion is an act of death, but not murder; that it is impractical to bar it totally by law; that a politics of the third child would help; that dialogue with women on the subject is essential; that the subject should never be spoken of except with the greatest caution and gravity, and never be made a political or ideological football.
Abortion is allowed under Irish law only in the rarest cases, but our approach is quite hypocritical since Irish women in their thousands flock to London for abortions.
I think Clinton's mantra, "safe, legal and rare" with special emphasis on the last word makes sense.
As a volunteer recovery room assistant for Planned Parenthood, I witnessed firsthand the diversity of experiences that lead women to make such a difficult choice.
As you point out, religiosity or moral qualms about abortion do not necessarily preclude a woman from deciding to have one. There is not one kind of woman who gets an abortion; any one of us may one day find ourselves in the clinic.
If politicians on both sides would stop screaming at one another about absolutes and start thinking about the real women whose needs they purport to serve, perhaps a real debate would be the result.
Megan Greenberg
Middletown, Conn.
When I read your observation that "even the patients often have a negative view about abortion," I thought well, why wouldn't they, given the strong anti-abortion bias in the United States?
Contrast the United States with countries in which the national dialogue is not dominated by fundamentalist and conservative religions. Studies show that women do not suffer guilt and regret in enlightened countries as they do here.
If only more people could be more like the woman in the article whose priest said, "People make mistakes."
Claire Keyes
Pittsburgh, director of Allegheny Reproductive Health Center.
An "act of death", but not murder, huh? Interesting... What is it then? A ritual sacrifice?
Fr O'Leary:
From a magisterial standpoint, the 1970s position of the French bishops would seem untenable in light of the following statements from Evangelium Vitae (1995):
§57 Faced with the progressive weakening in individual consciences and in society of the sense of the absolute and grave moral illicitness of the direct taking of all innocent human life, especially at its beginning and at its end, the Church's Magisterium has spoken out with increasing frequency in defence of the sacredness and inviolability of human life. The Papal Magisterium, particularly insistent in this regard, has always been seconded by that of the Bishops, with numerous and comprehensive doctrinal and pastoral documents issued either by Episcopal Conferences or by individual Bishops. The Second Vatican Council also addressed the matter forcefully, in a brief but incisive passage. 50
Therefore, by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral. This doctrine, based upon that unwritten law which man, in the light of reason, finds in his own heart (cf. Rom 2:14-15), is reaffirmed by Sacred Scripture, transmitted by the Tradition of the Church and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium. 51
The deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of his life is always morally evil and can never be licit either as an end in itself or as a means to a good end. It is in fact a grave act of disobedience to the moral law, and indeed to God himself, the author and guarantor of that law; it contradicts the fundamental virtues of justice and charity. "Nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult, an old person, or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is dying. Furthermore, no one is permitted to ask for this act of killing, either for himself or herself or for another person entrusted to his or her care, nor can he or she consent to it, either explicitly or implicitly. Nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action"....
§58 The moral gravity of procured abortion is apparent in all its truth if we recognize that we are dealing with murder and, in particular, when we consider the specific elements involved. The one eliminated is a human being at the very beginning of life. No one more absolutely innocent could be imagined. In no way could this human being ever be considered an aggressor, much less an unjust aggressor! He or she is weak, defenceless, even to the point of lacking that minimal form of defence consisting in the poignant power of a newborn baby's cries and tears. The unborn child is totally entrusted to the protection and care of the woman carrying him or her in the womb. And yet s
And yet sometimes it is precisely the mother herself who makes the decision and asks for the child to be eliminated, and who then goes about having it done.
It is true that the decision to have an abortion is often tragic and painful for the mother, insofar as the decision to rid herself of the fruit of conception is not made for purely selfish reasons or out of convenience, but out of a desire to protect certain important values such as her own health or a decent standard of living for the other members of the family. Sometimes it is feared that the child to be born would live in such conditions that it would be better if the birth did not take place. Nevertheless, these reasons and others like them, however serious and tragic, can never justify the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.52
Commenting by HaloScan
