"...we recognize not everybody will agree with us, or be able to toe that particular line, and if that's the case it is better to use protection than not."

mouse, that's what the various social service agencies would say. I've never criticised that. They make no moral judgments and neither do I. One is responsible to God, and to some extent to one's neighbor, for one's sins, not to the free clinic nor to me.

The Church can't say that. Firstly, the people you describe, who "don't agree or aren't willing to toe the line" wouldn't pay attention anyway.

Secondly, the Church is absolutely correct. Abstention from dangerous sex is not only moral but 100% effective in preventing sexually transmitted diseases. No more need be said.

But the discussion has now gone full circle, perhaps more than once, so what's the point in continuing.

I don't consider myself a particularly 'devout' Catholic, if I had to pick an adjective it would be 'pragmatic', but I don't like to see my Church villified for doing the right thing and promoting moral rather than sinful behavior - without equivocation and without apology.

I don't like to see other religious bodies wrongfully criticized either, but I am, as would be expected, more knowledgable about my own.