THERE THEY GO AGAIN

"Where do you begin" is becoming a daily mantra.

Not content to bluster hatefully, ignorantly and hypocritically about same-sex marriage, today it's the news that the Catholic Church is renewing its campaign against contraception.

The Catholic bishops of the United States voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to oppose any form of public approval for homosexual activity and criticized the decision by the Episcopal Church USA to ordain an openly gay bishop. No surprise, given their recent rants. But they also decided to launch a public campaign to convince Catholics of the wrongfulness of contraception.

The bishops acknowledged that only 4 percent of Catholics of childbearing age use natural family planning, a church-endorsed method of achieving or avoiding pregnancy by timing sexual activity according to a woman's menstrual cycle.

So instead of waking up and smelling the coffee, they're going after that 96%. Jesus Christ, these guys have no clue.

At a news conference yesterday, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver said that the advent of contraception has led to a raft of social problems, such as same-sex relationships, divorce, and abortion, because it has separated sex from procreation.

'This contraceptive mentality which has been rampant in the last 40 to 50 years is certainly a silent killer,'' said Bishop Joseph F. Martino of Scranton, Pa.

The other day senior Vatican spokesman, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo's said that condoms are useless in preventing the spread of HIV (because the virus seeps through the porous latex) and therefore should not be used, even in AIDS-wracked Africa, where as much as 20 percent of the population is reportedly infected.

So I get two conclusions from all this:

A. If one wants to be a good Catholic in the 21st century, you can't use birth control, and you can't have an abortion. You're rewards for being holy are 1) you get to have sex for a few days every month, or 2) you get to have tons of kids. This would be of particular interest to Catholics in Africa and Latin America, where the numbers of the faithful are much higher than in America, and where of course having lots more kids is the way to raise the living standard.

B. These latest screeds seems calculated to insure that this Church can cause as much death and misery as any other form of medieval religious oppression. They won't be one-upped!

I'm trying hard to see how this rejection of common sense and attempt to reverse hard-fought gains in freedom, consciousness and the right of women to control their lives and future is any different from the life under the Taliban.