I don't understand why Joe is taking so much flak from some quarters. The question is a reasonable one: what do you expect from the RC church?

The Church has no choice but to advise people who want to stay free of STI's and unwanted pregnancy, to abstain from sex. As a piece of advice it trumps all others. Don't have sex and are 100% guaranteed never to get pregnant and never to get an STI.

How could anyone expect the church to counsel against its moral code, and in doing so to give inferior health protection advice to people? It just doesn't make sense in its own terms.

That is why we have secular health-care services and that is why the churches subcontract health outreach to medical professionals who practice without religious fear or favour. I have experience in the developing world where secular NGO's and CAFOD / Red Cross / Red Crescent have been working together on health and social care programs including contraception and HIV prevention and treatment. So it is not right to portray "The Church(es)" as irrelevant, callous and uncaring. My experience of the health outreach by the RC Church matches Ed. T's last published directive (post 06:25)

It would probably be more helpful if there appeared to be fewer pronouncements on these issues from Rome, but then I suspect that many of the "pronouncements" are not in fact anything of the sort but are the work of the militant atheists making sure that these areas of contention and subtlety are relentlessly brought to the fore and rammed back down people's throats.