"The condom will be with you...always"

[ihy]

At last it appears that the catholic church is ready to 'reverse' it's line on the use of condoms in the most aids stricken areas of Africa.

Whilst this is a religious bombshell akin to the Holy hand grenade of Antioch it does beg the question - is this the beginning of the end for Catholicism in this country?

You may argue that the faith has

Comments

[alien_radio]

Faith may not be on the downturn because of blunders by the church, the same blunders exist in america, but faith tends not to take a hit from it. And a downturn in people belonging to the major religions does not neccessarily mean a downturn in faith or that atheism is on an inexorable march to being the majority (lack of) faith.

I think the increase in newage mystcism and other quackery is taking up the slack of the gullible.

[ihy]

Ah but in America they practice the 'fear of God' and have a far more agressive stance towards non-believers than in this country. The religious populace hide behind a divine shield of faith that only God can judge them and therefore such blunders are shrugged off as non-believer cynicism.

'Other' religion was an option on the census in which 179,000 people (0.3%) stated as theirs. see here.

I do agree that there is a lot of new age mysticism however I believe that they would include themselves under Other religion. If they didn't then they wouldn't be religious would they? :)

[alien_radio]

I think people who follow ill defined mysticism would probably not class themselves as religious. they don't equate belief in non rational behaviour with religion, even if it's exactly the same thing. we already have a large chunk of the youth population with such a poor grasp of science that it already seems like magic to them, these people are not religious but can accept and believe in fanciful beliefs because to them understanding how a tv works is as equally difficult to explain as ghosts and crystal healing.

[glitteredwings]

Marx said that 'religion is the opiate of the masses'.

Some *other* Marxist (whose name and dates i really can't be arsed to look up at 7.14am) said 'the media is the new opiate of the masses'.