Catholics depart from official teaching on contraception

CAFOD, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, has broken with official Catholic teaching to argue that condoms may be an important weapon in the war against AIDS. According to Jonathan Petre in the Telegraph (London), a "growing number of senior clerics have taken a softer line than the Church's official blanket ban on artificial contraception", including Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the head of Roman Catholics in England and Wales.

Sexual abstinence remains the ideal, CAFOD are claiming, but at the same time "campaigns to counter the disease in the developing world [have] to be realistic and employ a range of methods."

Full story here [registration required].