From: mss2@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Re:  Science and god:  Are they incompatible?  If so, why?
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 17:51:25 GMT

In article <memo.756718@cix.compulink.co.uk> maryb@cix.compulink.co.uk writes:

>Current state of the churches - the Catholic church is still (as fas 
>I know) saying that you shouldn't use a condom even to stop AIDS. 
>This can kill people.

	"To be fair, they're hardly saying that people should go
around having unprotected sex.  Their line is that the main point of
sex is procreation within a monogamous marriage, and that sex which is
_not_ directed towards that is sinful.  So, yes, to use a condom in
sex is a sin by that reasoning, since clearly such an activity could
have no procreative purpose.  However, I suspect that it would be
regarded as a greater sin to knowingly put another at risk for disease
in the first place.  Basically, Catholic doctrine _already_ classes
any activity in which a condom would save lives as being sinful on its
face, so I don't entirely understand how the additional prohibition of
condoms themselves should have any effect.  The participants have,
after all, already chosen to engage in something sinful under Catholic
doctrine-- and in fact I don't know whether Catholic belief
distinguishes _at all_ between fornication using contraception and
fornication without.  I'd guess that it's all lumped in, along with
masturbation, oral sex, and other nonprocreative or nonmarital
instances of sex, as the misuse of sexuality.

	"Which is not to say it doesn't in fact result in problems,
people having odd sorts of reasoning processes.  I heard a third-hand
story of a woman who had had multiple abortions because, as a
Catholic, she wouldn't use birth control.  Why committing what
Catholic doctrine would deem a greater sin (murder vs. fornication)
bothered her conscience less (if the story is true at all, which I
don't truly know) is beyone my meager powers of comprehension."

 The Anglican church has just voted to admit 
>women priests (finally)  but it has a very odd attitude to gay 
>priests - it's OK if they are gay as long as they are celibate. If 
>the theory is OK then the practise should be as long as it is done 
>responsibly.

	"As far as I understand Anglican belief in this area, the idea
is that they believe (in line with current psychology) that a
homosexual orientation is innate, and that people don't have a choice
with regard to being gay.  However, per their interpretation of the
Bible, they also believe that homosexual acts are sinful.  (There are
certainly cases in which people have innate drives towards what might
be more generally considered bad acts-- alcoholics, compulsive
overeaters, etc.)  They have decided that discriminating against
people for what they _are_ would be against the whole grain of their
religion, but by the same token a religion which makes moral
prescriptions expects its clergy to set an example.  From those
premises, their reasoning is logical: just as a priest might be a
recovering alcoholic, but could not be known to be a "practicing"
alcoholic and remain in good standing with the hierarchy, the Anglican
church treats homosexual priests the same way.  Obviously, the place
where much disagreement will arise is in the question of whether
homosexual behavior is sinful in the first place, with another large
division coming between those to whom the concept of "sin" is
meaningful and those who believe that it's semantically null."

Michael
-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Indeed I tremble for my country
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 when I reflect that God is just."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on
mss2@amber.uchicago.edu		    Virginia (1784)
Organization: Sophomore, Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA