jamesq | This is Moral? (Reply)

On my morning jog, I ran by a newspaper box. The headline read "Catholic Students Won't Get Cancer". For a moment I pondered what possible mechanism would cause this (while also thanking my lucky stars that I went to Catholic schools). Then I realized that I probably hadn't read the whole headline. Checking online I discover that that was the case. The headline reads: Catholic students won't get cancer vaccine.

Apparently they're doing this on moral grounds. They don't want to be seen as condoning pre-marital sex. Because, naturally, no woman in the history of the world ever got HPV from her husband after their wedding night.

You know, even saying that this will inevitably hurt some percentage of blushing virgin-until-married women is missing the point. It's simply none of the church's business if some girl wants to celebrate her 16th birthday by taking on the football team. For the record, I'd probably agree that that's not a terribly healthy sweet-sixteen, but it's not my business either.

Simply put, it doesn't matter if the mechanism for cervical cancer is a sexually transmitted disease, a true catholic should be worried about saving lives. Pragmatically, a saved life is a life with a greater opportunity for a saved soul. Do they really need an atheist like me to tell them that?

Bishop Henry (and his masters in Rome) don't seem to worry about that though. Is it that they just want to make sure that sex leads to punishment or is it just that they lack a cervix?

(crossposted to