I was Away this weekend and in that time the Pope said something surprising!
In a break with his traditional teaching, Pope Benedict XVI has said the use of condoms is acceptable "in certain cases", in an extended interview to be published this week.
(Glares angrily at children)
NOW he fucking tells us. Go to your room!
Ha ha that is a Joke.
Because you see it is not us Married Heterosexuals who get to put the latex on the dingus, as perhaps the lotion is put upon the skin. Nooooo. As always, it is the HIV+ gay male prostitutes who get to have all the fun.
To illustrate his apparent shift in position, Benedict offered the example of a male prostitute using a condom.
"There may be justified individual cases, for example when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be ... a first bit of responsibility, to re-develop the understanding that not everything is permitted and that one may not do everything one wishes," Benedict was quoted as saying.
"But it is not the proper way to deal with the horror of HIV infection."
I'm sure this will be a tremendous relief to all the male prostitutes in the congregations at mass this holiday season.
Cough ahem cough.
Cough.
Look, it's not like this blog has much of a capacity to resist the temptation to gleefully harvest any low-dangling fruit as we jaunt along upon the low road. Or, for that matter, to not mix metaphors. Which is to say, there's a lot of jokes to be made here, and the Church, and Benedict, on this point quite deserve to be laughed at, derisively. But all that to the side, a minute; let's pursue the Real Point.
Benedict sparked international outcry in March 2009 on a visit to AIDS-ravaged Africa when he told reporters the disease was a tragedy "that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems."
Which is (previous link) Fun in regards to this:
"The problem was not Benedict, it was others in the Vatican who argued that if you said using condoms was OK in certain situations, it would send out the message that they were approved. This was a PR problem."
Bet your ass it was.
When the morality you get, presumably, from the straight pipeline to God causes you PR problems, well...
Joyce called Catholicism "a logical and coherent absurdity," and this class of thing is precisely why he was right.
Suffice it to say, if you believe in God, great, but remember always that He has a Special Place for condoms in His Plan for Us.
And that Special Place is the head of your dick. Suit up, gentlemen, please.