Two Day Magazine

...Condom Machine Makes Catholics Mad...

Great story from http://www.msnbc.com! A decision was made by a high school in Rome to install condom vending machines has set off angry Catholics in Italy, who claim that this move will encourage young people to have sex. Rome’s mayor says it is sending the youth the wrong message.

What message would that be? Have safe sex? How dare they!

But, the Keplero school says that they don’t care if the Catholics get their panties in a bunch, they are going to try out this experiment and see if if helps to curb teen pregnancy and the spread of STIs.

Wow, a school standing up to the church in the name of all that is rational? America could look to them as visionaries!

“This is not about stimulating the use of condoms or intercourse,” Antonio Panaccione, the school headmaster, told The Associated Press. “On the contrary, it’s about prevention and education.”

The school is going to install 6 vending machines at a price of euro2 ($2.70) which is lower than market price. Obvioulsy, the Vatican is opposed to artifical contraception and teaches that sex is meant for marriage and procreation. (Aren’t they in the middle of a gay sex scandal right now? Just sayin’!)

Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the pope’s vicar for Rome, said that doing this trivializes sex. It “cannot be approved by Rome’s ecclesiastical community or by Christian families who are seriously concerned with the education of their children." (I think the operative word here is education, not control. Give us education and access to birth control and we will make more responsible, informed decisions.)

The newspaper of the Italian Bishops’ Conference said that sex was being reduced to “mere physical exercise” (it is great for calorie burning!) The newspaper, L’Avvenire, stated that young people have no spiritual guidance on sexuality, and that educators are more concerned with “the health and hygiene consequences of sex” than its moral implications. (Yeah, because moral implications don’t give you herpes!)

The head of Italy’s national association of Catholic pharmacists, Piero Uroda, suggested that condoms were responsible for increased rapes and violence. “We are giving sugar to the diabetic.” (WTF?)

LILA, a national association for prevention of HIV, said distributing condoms could help combat this deadly virus amongst the young. Teen pregnancy has also been rising in Italy, and on average, Italian women have sex for the first time at 16. Almost 4 in 10 are having it unprotected.

Elena Bucchinelli, a high-school student in Rome, approves of this new initiative. “We young people are the most vulnerable to the risks of unprotected sex. Schools and families are the best places to receive this kind of information. Many young people think they know all that there is to know about sex. But, that’s not true.”

I think this is great. I feel that schools do have a responsibility to the youth in their community to give them all the information that they need to live healthier, more productive lives. Just because the church doesn’t condone this, so what?

The church isn’t living your life, isn’t going to raise your illegitimate child, isn’t going to cure your disease. They just sit in judgment of a school trying to do something positive for their students? If they want to be spiritual leaders, then be spiritual leaders. You can give both types of information to students and let them decide. People need to think for themselves, make their own decisions, and if they church isn’t happy with those decisions, they can do what they do best. Pray.