Replies

"I posted his exact words"

Yes, you did. But he never used the word "prefer".
He only said that it would be wrong to commit an intrinsically evil act, even if some limited good resulted.

The Catholic position has always been that sin is the only real evil. Sickness or death is not an evil in the strict sense of the word. There is only MORAL evil. Sickness and death are inevitable outcomes of the fallen state of mankind. An individual is not culpable for the fact that he gets sick and dies. It remains true that one can NEVER commit a sin in order to avoid physical suffering or death. It's a hard doctrine, but so is the Cross.

Thank you,Are you a priest.

The Catholic position has always been that sin is the only real evil. Sickness or death is not an evil in the strict sense of the word. There is only MORAL evil. Sickness and death are inevitable outcomes of the fallen state of mankind. An individual is not culpable for the fact that he gets sick and dies. It remains true that one can NEVER commit a sin in order to avoid physical suffering or death. It's a hard doctrine, but so is the Cross.

Thanks for this post. It's nice to have clear language as a touchstone to think about these things.

Jorge "I posted his exact words"

Yes, you did. But he never used the word "prefer".

No, I USED the word "prefer" in my interpretation of what he posted.
I never presented that word as a quote from him.

This is great, so I'm going include your entire quote, and then respond;

He only said that it would be wrong to commit an intrinsically evil act, even if some limited good resulted.

The Catholic position has always been that sin is the only real evil. Sickness or death is not an evil in the strict sense of the word. There is only MORAL evil. Sickness and death are inevitable outcomes of the fallen state of mankind. An individual is not culpable for the fact that he gets sick and dies. It remains true that one can NEVER commit a sin in order to avoid physical suffering or death. It's a hard doctrine, but so is the Cross.

Beautiful. So you are admitting that johnb2004's position was that it would be BETTER for the wife to catch AIDS (and die) RATHER than commit the sin of using condoms.

While your statement above shows you have more understanding of Biblical doctrine than most on this board, my disagreement is with your application of it.

The idea that we should do nothing to protect people from consequences of sin because there is nothing sinful about intrinsically "sickeness and death" and it is an inevitable outcome of sin is not only a horrible distortion of God's laws, but distorts the very nature and character of God.

It reminds me of the Pharisees who condemned Jesus for "violating the Sabbath" by healing people and allowed his disciples to pick corn(work on the Sabbath).

Jesus rebuked them with the statement "the Sabbath was made for man, man was not made for the Sabbath".

Jesus wasn't rejecting the law but was setting priorities when it came to the law that reflected God's true intentions and good will toward man.

We do the same thing when we allow ambulances to ignore red lights and other traffic laws in order to get a patient to the hospital and save a life.
Because just like Jesus said, we know our laws are made for people, not the other way around.

Therefore I disagree with your assertion that it is better, or that God prefers to see people die from AIDS rather than use condoms.