[Sarky]

Oh they are not going to be at all happy when science works out how to postpone ageing indefinitely...

[Sonics2k]

I'd love to see people justify this.

[Gbear]

Plenty of dopes around who are anti-birth control. At least this particular section are honest enough to follow their reasoning to it's logical conclusion.

Hopefully in doing so they'll drive yet more sensible part-time catholics away from Catholicism.

[Galvasean]

Originally Posted by RichieC

The more progressive we get the louder and more bellicose the denunciations from this dinosaur organisation will become.

That's hardly fair! At least dinosaurs had the decency to evolve into birds.

[robindch]

Originally Posted by Galvasean

That's hardly fair! At least dinosaurs had the decency to evolve into birds.

Perhaps we should rename A+A "The K-T Boundary".

[Galvasean]

Originally Posted by robindch

Perhaps we should rename A+A "The K-T Boundary".

That's Cretaceous with a capital C!

[Dades]

Originally Posted by Galvasean

That's Cretaceous with a capital C!

Wasn't there a Hallmark movie called that starring someone who looked like a Baldwin?

[Sarky]

I think it was called The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down.

[Solair]

Could he not denounce something that's actually evil instead of something that helps a lot of people to have kids?

I don't know, perhaps he could denounce nasty dictatorships and regimes that go out murdering their own citizens?
Maybe, drug barons making billions off the suffering of addicts?
Maybe, denounce greedy speculators who have destroyed economies and caused people to be plunged into misery ?
Systems that perpetuate starvation and slavery?

I mean there are just so many appropriate things out there to complain about and do something about. But, no, he's fixated on what people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms instead!

Sex and reproduction's pretty non-controversial and actually rather boring. It's not unlike eating, breathing etc. Everyone does it, it's good fun, it occasionally makes babies (either by accident or when people want it to) and most people don't make a big deal about it except right wing religious conservatives with major hangups.

I have no idea why it's 'dirty' or 'sinful'. It's just sex! Get over it!!

[Naughtius Maximus]

So should genetic diseases (actually all diseases) not be cured?

[iguana]

The thread title is misleading. The Pope isn't just condemning IVF, which the church has always had a problem with as weaker embryos are destroyed rather than implanted, which from the point of view of someone who thinks life begins at conception is wrong. But he is seems to be saying all fertility treatment is wrong, including that which follows the treatments studied and recommended by....., get ready for this,..... the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction.

http://www.popepaulvi.com/

EDIT: Ah ok, it's not the thread title that's misleading but The Journal article. He's in favour of most medical fertility treatments, just not the kinds that results in destroyed embryos. (Which is business as usual for RC.) And is hoping for more non-IVF fertility treatments to be developed.

To be fair, while I don't have a moral problem with IVF, he (or most likely his scientists) has actually made some good points. IVF is an incredibly expensive treatment, it's painful and invasive, it has very low success rates and it doesn't actually fix the problem, just circumvents it, so if you want another child you have to go back to IVF. It can also be incredibly tough emotionally and feel like a miscarriage when it doesn't work out because the couple know that for at least a few days the mother was carrying their potential child/children and a failure that cycles means that potential child/children died. Which is much tougher emotionally than just not conceiving.

On the otherhand there are some fertility treatments which may have great potential which aren't being studied enough as they aren't very profitable. And they really should be looked into more as diagnosing an exact problem and treating it successfully is a better outcome than circumvention. In fact the success rates the Pope John Paul VI Institute claims with their FertilityCare and NaproTechnology systems are actually significantly higher than IVF. (I'm not sure if that has been independently verified.)

[eyescreamcone]

I'd pay more attention to Kermit T. Frog's views on the matter.

I like to use the phrase
"Thank god for IVF"

It pisses off the fairytaleists!!!

[Spoonman75]

Originally Posted by Stark

But with IVF, a man doesn't have to insert his dirty pee-pee into the woman! It's a brave new world where sex is no longer a necessary evil for procreation.

No, but he may need to masturbate to supply the necessary sperm cells. I think that's what's annoying Ratzinger.

[Gurgle]

Originally Posted by iguana

which the church has always had a problem with as weaker embryos are destroyed rather than implanted

Careful now, embryos deemed to be non-viable are destroyed.
Not the same thing at all.

[seamus]

Originally Posted by Spoonman75

No, but he may need to masturbate to supply the necessary sperm cells. I think that's what's annoying Ratzinger.

As iguana points out, officially it's do to with the fact that it results in the destruction of embryos, even though "God" destroys millions of them every year.

In reality it's a manifestation of religion's worsening inability to bridge the gulf between the reality of existence and the fantasy of doctrine.

100 or even 50 years ago, conflict between scientific advance and doctrine could be rationalised by claiming credit for science on behalf of God or proclaiming that bad things happening (like an inability to procreate) was all part of God's grand plan.
Children of course, were a gift from God. People had sex, God worked his magic, and a baby happened. Now we've watched it happen from start to finish and we know that God's finger doesn't appear at any stage in the process, and this makes religious types very uncomfortable.

So as science gets better and better at correcting "God's gifts" like this, religion has difficulty keeping up, and rather than twist irreconcilable knots into the ridiculous beliefs, instead they've retreated to a "don't interfere with God's plan" tack. The absurdity of course being that if God was what they say he is, it would not be possible for a bunch of mere mortals to interfere with his plan by fecking around with science.