What is it about the Catholic church and sex?

I mean, I understand that the dogma of the church apparently preaches that sex is primarily a conduit for procreation. It’s like there’s this fear that someone, somewhere is enjoying sexual intercourse for the sake of sexual intercourse itself, without the added baggage of trying to make (or “accidentally” making) a baby.

It’s not productive to even get started with an argument about unwanted pregnancies, STDs, AWOL fathers in the inner city, or the stress that all of these problems place on the social fabric of society. The Catholic church doesn’t want to entertain arguments that are contrary to the realities that people face every day. Nope, you either get married and have babies to have sex, or you abstain. There’s apparently no middle ground.

The City of New York was passing out free “Subway Condoms” earlier this week. These nifty little critters get their name from the designs on the condoms (see the photo above). They’re obviously designed to be sorta hip, but more than anything, they’re designed to raise awareness and the need for protecting both partners in a situation where a child is not the intended end result of sex, or there’s the potential for inadvertently transmitting an STD.

And the Catholic Diocese of New York howled:

The plan, the Catholic leaders said, “is tragic and misguided,” adding that the only way to protect against sexually transmitted diseases is through abstinence before marriage and fidelity among married couples.

“Our political leaders fail to protect the moral tone of our community when they encourage inappropriate sexual activity by blanketing our neighborhoods with condoms,” said Cardinal Edward Egan, head of the Archdiocese of New York, and Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn in a joint statement…

No, what’s tragic and misguided is that the Catholic church ignores reality. If one person is prevented from contracting HIV, or if one woman is prevented from having an unwanted child out of wedlock, then the cost of the program (about $750,000) was well worth the investment by the City of New York. The lifetime cost of treating one person with HIV or the cost of raising one unwanted child in the social welfare system well exceeds the cost of this single prevention program.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could see the day that the Catholic church, with its millions of members worldwide, would raise as big a stink about the children dying in Iraq on a daily basis as they do about passing out condoms or topics of a sexual nature (in general)? Maybe then this unjust and horrifying war could be ended once and for all.

But then, ending holy wars has never been what the Catholic church is all about.