Condoms and the Moscow Patriarchate

Moscow, March 20, (Interfax) - The Russian Orthodox Church supports the position of Pope Benedict XVI rejecting condoms including in order to prevent HIV infection.

"It is incorrect to consider condoms as a panacea for AIDS," the deputy chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin told a round table in Moscow on Friday, commenting on the international row concerned with the pope's statement in Africa.

AIDS can be prevented not by contraceptives but by education and a righteous life, the priest said.

"If a person lives a sinful, aimless and senseless life, uses drugs and is lewd, some disease will kill him one day, neither a condom nor medicine will save him," Fr. Vsevolod added.

Currently some organizations speaking on AIDS are seeking to simultaneously preserve the ideal of sexual freedom and the fight against AIDS, he said. It is impossible to reconcile these things, he said.

Comments

  1. BiscoMarch 21, 2009 at 10:26 AM

    This is why the Church is increasingly irrelevant in the West. I'm looking forward to a time when the Christian God is no more important to people than the Greek, Mayan or Aztec Gods. If only it would happen in my lifetime!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Byzantine, TXMarch 21, 2009 at 10:37 AM

    Relevancy could be determined by who continues to exist in the future. As a consequence of prophylactic lifestyle expect to have fewer children. The more people who have children the more their values are carried on to the next generation.

    Following that logic, if I have 5 children and you have 1 I get seven votes and you three (or two if don't like traditional two-parent system). Continue that on for a few generations and the vox populi looks more like the Orthodox/Catholic position and less like an episode of Sex and the City.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownMarch 23, 2009 at 3:42 PM

    Touche, Joseph! Although following that logic, the entire world may be under Sharia law in a couple hundred years. This is a good incentive for Orthodox and Catholic families to "be fruitful and multiply!"

    ReplyDelete

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