Pew Research surveyed 5,676 Catholics from seven countries: Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico and the United States.

Catholics in these countries overwhelmingly favour the Church permitting birth control. Support for contraception ranged from 86% in Argentina to 63% in Brazil, the largest Catholic-majority nation.

Across all seven countries, most respondents expressed their desire for the Church to be more flexible on this issue.

There was also significant support for the ordination of women - except in Mexico where only 47% were in favour.

In Argentina, support for female priests has surged from 51% in 2013-14 to 71% today.

Opposition to married priests

Catholics in Mexico showed resistance to changes in other areas, with a majority opposing the idea of allowing priests to marry. In contrast, other countries surveyed were more divided on the issue of priestly celibacy.

The survey highlights divisions among Catholics on several key issues, particularly regarding the Church's stance on same-sex marriage and allowing priests to marry.

In Colombia, the majority of Catholics do not support the recognition of same-sex marriages, and opinions on married priests vary widely across the region.

Religiosity plays a significant role in shaping these opinions. Catholics who pray daily or attend Mass regularly are less likely to support changes such as women's ordination or the recognition of same-sex marriages.

For example, only 38% of Mexican Catholics who attend Mass weekly support recognising gay and lesbian marriages, compared to 52% of Catholics who attend less frequently.

Age is another key factor influencing these views. Younger Catholics across Latin America are more likely to support progressive changes.

Pope Francis remains popular

Despite differing views on specific issues, Pope Francis remains popular among Catholics in Latin America and the US. However, his favourability ratings have dropped compared to the early years of his papacy.

In the US, 75% of Catholics view him favourably, down from 85% in 2014. His home country of Argentina saw the most significant drop, with 74% viewing him favourably today compared to 98% a decade ago.

Catholics who pray daily tend to view Pope Francis more favourably than those who pray less often. For instance, in Mexico, 40% of Catholics who pray daily have a very favourable view of the Pope, compared to 29% of other Catholics.

Overall, two-thirds of Catholics surveyed across the US and Latin America hold a favourable view of Pope Francis. Many see him as a figure of change, with a majority noting that his papacy represents a significant shift in the direction of the Church.

Sources

UCA News

Catholic Culture

Pew Research Center

While other religious traditions permit their members to use various types of birth control to manage the number of kids they have, the 1997 Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family pointed out that "The Church has always taught the intrinsic evil of contraception."

The doctrine has been blamed for the decline in church attendance among American Catholics, and serious doubts have been raised as to how closely American Catholics adhere to it.

Some recent numbers from the National Survey of Family Growth give us an idea of just how many Catholics practice birth control.

The National Survey on Family Growth is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services with the goal of trying to understand factors that lead to marriage, divorce, adoption, pregnancy and other behaviours related to procreation.

It includes a battery of questions asking respondents if they have used specific types of contraceptives during their lifetime.

The data indicates that few U.S. Catholics are following the dictates of the pontifical council.

For instance, 92% of Catholics indicated that they had used condoms as a form of birth control — nearly the same rate as the other Christian traditions, as well as the religiously unaffiliated, who reported condom usage at a rate of 95% and higher.

Catholics were only slightly less likely to say that they used the birth control pill (68%) compared with evangelicals (74%) and mainline Protestants (81%).

Notably, Catholics in the sample were more likely to have used emergency contraception than other Christian groups.

Twenty-three percent of Catholics reported using the Plan B pill compared with 19% of evangelicals. The only group more likely to use emergency contraception were those of no religious affiliation — 29%.

Natural family planning is the only type of birth control allowed under Catholic doctrine.

One popular implementation of this approach is known as the rhythm method, in which a couple intentionally avoids sexual contact when fertility is at its highest point during a woman's menstrual cycle.

According to this data, just 20% of Catholics have ever used this method, a rate not substantively different from the rest of the sample.

It can't be said that Catholic teaching on birth control hasn't had any effect, but that effect seems to depend on the method and on how often the person attends Mass.

The share of Catholics who say they never attend Mass and report using condoms in their lifetime (88%) is actually about equal to the share of Catholic condom users who attended service at least once per week (89%).

However, some daylight emerges when it comes to birth control pills.

While about three-quarters of Catholics who attend less than monthly report using oral contraception, that number drops to a simple majority among weekly attenders, at 55%.

There is also a small but noteworthy increase in Catholics attending weekly who say they use the rhythm method, with 27% of the most frequent attendees saying that they used the church's approved method of contraception.

Only 15% of Catholics who never darken the church's door have used the rhythm method.

There was also a divide on birth control pills based on age.

The youngest female Catholics are about 5 percentage points less likely to use this form of contraceptive than non-Catholics.

But this gap disappears completely by the time they get to their mid-20s.

There's also a noticeable dip in usage of birth control pills among Catholic women in their late 30s that doesn't appear in the non-Catholic sample.

Taken together, it's clear from this data that there is a tremendous disconnect between the Vatican's teaching on contraception and the behaviour of the more than 60 million Catholics in the United States.

One may indeed wonder if that tension is driving some Catholics away from the pews or the faith entirely: Scholarly work from the 1990s found that Catholics would leave their local parish if they disagreed with the priest's comments on abortion to seek out more moderate parishes.

The data from the National Survey on Family Growth gives us little reason to think that this has changed.

• Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

The comparison was intended to reassure women of the vaccine's safety.

Instead, it has stoked anger in some quarters — not about the pause, but about the fact that most contraceptives available to women are hundreds of times riskier, and yet safer alternatives are not in sight.

The clots linked to the vaccine were a dangerous type in the brain, while birth control pills increase the chances of a blood clot in the leg or lung — a point quickly noted by many experts.

But the distinction made little difference to some women.

"Where was everyone's concern for blood clots when we started putting 14-year-old girls on the pill," one woman wrote on Twitter.

Another said, "If birth control was made for men it'd taste like bacon and be free."

Some women heard, on social media and elsewhere, that they should not complain because they had chosen to take birth control knowing the risks involved.

"That just made me double down," said Mia Brett, an expert in legal history focused on race and sexuality.

"This is such a common response to women's health care — that we point out something and it's dismissed."

The torrent of fury online was familiar to experts in women's health.

"They should be angry — women's health just does not get equal attention," said Dr. Eve Feinberg, a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist at Northwestern University.

"There's a huge sex bias in all of medicine."

Dr. Feinberg and many of the women online acknowledge that contraceptives have given women control over their fertility, and the benefits far exceed the harms. Rebecca Fishbein, a 31-year-old culture writer, started tweeting about the inadequacy of birth control pills almost immediately after the announcement of the pause.

Still, "birth control is an incredible invention, thank God we have it," she said last month in an interview. "I'll fight anyone who tried to take it away."

Contraceptives have also improved over the years, with intrauterine devices and oral options that offer an ultralow dose of estrogen.

"Overall, it's incredibly safe," Dr. Feinberg said.

"Everything that we do has risks."

But Dr. Feinberg said it was crucial for health care providers to discuss the risks with their patients and coach them on worrisome symptoms — a conversation many women said they had never had. Continue reading

• Image: www.carolinaheartandleg.com

One offers to track my ovulation and get me pregnant.

The other offers to do the same, but promising I won't find myself in the family way.

The latter seems to be winning the war, with quirky gifs and videos showing young women waking up and gleefully taking their temperature, inputting digits into their colourful app, and being told they can throw barrier contraception to the wind that day.

It's sold as being hyper-scientific, with the founders and developers formerly working at Cern, and "without a single side-effect": unless, of course you count unintended pregnancy as a side-effect.

The novelist Olivia Sudjic, writing for the Guardian, revealed her shock at getting pregnant within months of starting to use the Natural Cycles app, and found many other women had too.

In bare bones, the app is simply the Vatican-favoured rhythm method repackaged in shiny, Silicon Valley jargon and a slick interface.

And the rhythm method doesn't have the greatest reputation as a diecast means of preventing pregnancy: the Catholic church recommend it for married couples both trying to plan and delay pregnancy, but with the very clear message that couples employing it should be open to the possibility of new life.

Happy accidents can bring as much joy as planned babies - as a Catholic, I back the church's teaching that sex is about far more than pleasure, and also comes with responsibility and consequences for you and your family.

I could use the app to try to avoid pregnancy but would have to accept pregnancy as a possible outcome of any bedroom antics.

But other women are perfectly entitled to want a contraceptive less prone to chance and failure, and deserve the truth about the app sold as super accurate.

It's unreliable because our bodies are unreliable: fertility waxes and wanes with an assortment of biological factors, and tracking ovulation is never an exact science.

It's this fact that makes the marketing behind Natural Cycles so insidious: the science is pushed hard even though the founders are physicists, not gynaecologists.

I'd no more listen to a physicist's advice on my fertility than I would let a mechanic cut my hair.

To use the app correctly, women must record their temperature at the same time each morning, immediately upon waking, before sitting up.

Many things can throw off the accuracy: oversleeping, having a fever, being hung over, insomnia, taking your temperature shortly after waking, irregular periods and polycystic ovary syndrome.

According to these criteria I couldn't have recorded a single day accurately in the last week - I've had heat-induced insomnia, slept late, woken early, had a mild hangover, and woke one morning with a slight fever.

Trying to remember all of these conditions, when the app's marketing tells you it is reliable, gives some clue as to the reason why so many women are unhappy.

But it's not surprising that promises of natural birth control are so alluring.

The side-effects of most forms of contraception are maddening.

Friends on the pill have had their weight explode, their mental health suffer, and their skin return to teenage form, with migraines drastically worsened by daily hormones. Continue reading

• Dawn Foster is a Guardian columnist who writes on politics, social affairs and economics
• Image: Inside Housing

Penny Mordaunt, the International Development Secretary, met with Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States, and the head of the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, Cardinal Peter Turkson.

The discussions focused on development, Africa, women's empowerment, LGBT rights, religious freedom, female genital mutilation, child marriage and violence against women and girls.

She says faith leaders should help change "deeply held beliefs and attitudes" in order to allow women greater access to "reproductive healthcare."

Mordaunt says she "urged" Vatican officials to make it easier for young girls to have access to contraception.

She cited "the tragedy of 800 girls and women unnecessarily losing their lives every day through pregnancy or childbirth complications" to back up her argument.

"Everyone deserves the right to a safe childhood, to an education and to a life without fear.

"For many girls, this is not the case. Child marriage and a lack of control over their own bodies or access to reproductive healthcare, including contraception, means many girls have no hope of completing an education," she says.

"It is crucial we engage with faith leaders to help us challenge deeply held beliefs and attitudes.

"The Catholic Church can help us in that, and my appeal to them was to help us save lives, especially of young mothers.

"As we work with African leaders to help them build their nations it is vital that family planning is part of that plan. It will save lives and huge suffering."

Last July the British government hosted a Family Planning Summit.

At this, the government pledged to support the use of "voluntary modern contraception" by women around the world.

Mordaunt's comments coincide with the 50th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae. The encyclical underlines the Church's teaching that artificial contraception is wrong.

Last month, 500 British priests signed a letter endorsing the encyclical.

Source

• Crux Now
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Daily Express

A new Swedish study has found women taking oral contraceptives could suffer a range of health issues. Read more

Leslie Gauthier posted the letter she received from her "ob-gyn" from Jackson, Mississippi, on Facebook.

The Catholic doctor stated:" I am sending you this letter to notify you that as a Catholic physician, I can no longer prescribe any form of contraception (birth control) since continuing to do so puts me in a position of co-operating and promoting."

The doctor also stated she would "work to use alternative medications" rather than prescribing birth control pills to treat conditions like acne and period pain.

The letter stated the Catholic doctor would be happy to help Ms Gauthier learn to use "natural family planning" as opposed to "artificial birth control".

However, if Ms Gauthier wants any form of contraception, she'll have to see a different provider.

"I've seen [this doctor] on and off for at least five years and this has never been a problem," Ms Gauthier told Cosmopolitan.com.

"I've been taking birth control for non-contraceptive reasons in some form or another since I was 13 years old. So [the doctor] knows it's not fully for contraceptive reasons."

She says that even her mother, who is a "devout Catholic", considers the new policy to be "ridiculous"​.

Ms Gauthier was able to reschedule her appointment with a nurse practitioner at the same facility.

But she said she still feels judged and betrayed by a professional whom she had come to trust with her medical care.

The Jackson, Mississippi-based clinic is not affiliated with a Catholic institution.

It is legal in the United States for doctors to refuse to perform any service if they feel it conflicts with their moral beliefs.

Sources

• Cosmopolitan.com
• Image: Paleoforwomen

Theologians, philosophers and scholars issued the appeal in the American journal "First Things".

Among the signatories are academics from the Pontificial John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, as well as German philosopher Robert Spaemann and Swiss ethicist Martin Rhonheimer.

The appeal claims the paragraph is contrary to the Church's magisterium and could lead to confusion among the faithful.

At issue is paragraph 137 of the Instrumentum Laboris, issued earlier this year.

The paragraph states that two principal points pertaining to Humanae Vitae need to be brought together.

These are the role of the informed conscience and the objective moral norm.

"Combining the two, under the regular guidance of a competent spiritual guide, will help married people make choices which are humanly fulfilling and ones which conform to God's will," the document states.

Signatories to the First Things appeal believe the paragraph assigns absolute primacy to the individual conscience in the selection of the means of birth control, even against the teaching of the Church's magisterium.

They add that there is a risk that such primacy could be extended to other areas like abortion and euthanasia.

Writing in L'Espresso, Vatican correspondent Sandro Magister stated that "the split between the individual conscience and the magisterium of the Church is analogous to that which separates pastoral practice from doctrine".

Magister pointed to comments by the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Muller, last month.

"We may not deceive the people when it comes to the sacramentality of marriage, its indissolubility, its openness toward the child, and the fundamental complementarity of the two sexes," Cardinal Muller said in Regensburg.

"Pastoral care must keep in view the eternal salvation and it should not try to be superficially pleasing according to the wishes of the people."

Sources

• L'Espresso
• Synod Instrumentum Laboris
• Image: CTS Books

"It has caused enormous angst [and anxiety], and probably the majority of Catholics, in the western world anyway, ignore the church's teaching on contraception," said Cole.

"Even if the church in the end doesn't change, it must be willing to confront, and to discuss."

"I believe the laity is at a point where it won't just take, 'they're not at the table for discussion' as an answer."

Cole also said the Church is absolutely and solidly pro-life, so it will never approve abortion or euthanasia."

Cole is one of 17 international auditors invited to speak at the synod

Source

• radionz.co.nz
• nzherald.co.nz
• Image: alumnionline.massey.ac.nz

But GPs are warning the pill is not safe for all women, and that medical oversight is still needed.

At present, only the emergency morning-after pill can be bought at a pharmacy without a prescription from the patient's doctor.

In May, a Medsafe committee will consider a proposal from Green Cross and consultancy Pharma Projects to change that. Continue reading

Responding to concerns by the Catholic Women's League members regarding the church's stand on contraception and the expensive exercise of raising children in a money-driven society in this era, Fr Turagakacivi said no laws or ideology would change the church's stand.

League members had enquired with health officials during a recent awareness forum if the church's stand was a reasonable one.

Turagakacivi said the church would always respect and preserve the sacredness and dignity of human life from conception and onwards.

He said no laws, ideology, or teaching would ever change the church's stand because the use of contraceptives robs a child's right to life.

He added no one had the right to deprive any child of their right to live.

Source

• Fiji Times
• Image: godlessgeeks.com

Funded by the (Bill) Gates Foundation to the tune of $5 million, the chip contains enough of the contraceptive drug levonorgestrel to provide contraception for the major part of a woman's fertile years.

Once implanted, the device will automatically melt a seal to release a few micrograms of the drug every month until it receives a wireless command to stop, or to start again if desired.

When developers were questioned about hacking concerns, they said the device will incorporate such precautions as individual password-protected remote controls and the need for an external transmitter to be held within a few inches of the device, which will be implanted in a region of fatty tissue.

MicroCHIPS hopes to market the device in some regions of the world starting in 2018.

This announcement raises two distinct ethical issues.

One is the question of security relating to any kind of medical chip implanted in the human body.

One of the news reports on the contraceptive device noted that former US Vice President Dick Cheney asked his doctors to disable his heart pacemaker's wireless interface out of concerns that someone might hack into it and zap him into eternity.

Such fears are not without foundation.

For example, password protection is notably weak in many cases, and short-range low-power RF links can be manipulated from greater distances by (illegal) high-power transmitters.

It is a sign of a narrow mindset to consider only technical means of hacking.

In the developing-world environments where the Gates Foundation intends the contraceptive chip to be used, there is often a strong animus against any method of birth control on the part of husbands and boyfriends.

Why should a man bother with sophisticated technical hacking when he can threaten to beat the stuffing out of the woman if she doesn't tell him her password? No one has figured out a foolproof way to prevent that kind of hack.

The second ethical issue, and the one that will probably get me into hot water shortly, is the question of contraception in general.

Contraception is an existential question for the human race as a whole, and thus goes to the very heart of what you think humanity is about. Continue reading

Source

• Mercatornet

Like many others, I have been answering the questionnaire put out by the Vatican in preparation for the Extraordinary Synod on the Family to be held next October. In fact, even non-Catholics can have their say, since the questionnaire and ways to get one's answers into the responses that bishops' conferences will send to Rome are available to anyone with access to the internet.

Unfortunately, the questionnaire was not developed with respondents like us in mind.

It is a typical Vatican pre-synod questionnaire intended for bishops. In fact, it even contains Latin.

Such questionnaires are not really intended to gather information.

They are one of the things on the checklist of the synod preparatory committee and are done simply because they are supposed to be done. Therefore, the questions are not prepared by social scientists who actually know how to prepare surveys that elicit usable information.

However, like many others who are attempting to decipher the questions and answer them, I think this first feeble attempt at soliciting the reflections of the whole people of God deserves cooperation and encouragement.

Perhaps next time, we will see something better.

For the most part, the questions are innocuous. But one stands out for its breathtaking irresponsibility: "How can an increase in births be promoted?"

Are they serious?

There are already seven billion people on the planet and we continue to increase. Resources are being depleted. Other species of animals as well as plants are being driven to extinction by the pressure of human numbers.

Global warming results from the burning of fossil fuels to provide power for living, transportation and manufacture. The increased demand for power means increasing reliance upon dangerous nuclear power. Air, water and soil are being degraded. Food shortages occur in precisely those areas with the greatest population pressure. People are driven to live in urban slums in a search of a livelihood.

Children are born, but die before getting a chance to live in much more than a biological sense. Malnutrition and the diseases of poverty cripple others.

Social, health and educational services are inadequate to ensure a truly human life. Crowding increases crime, unrest, oppression, war and a general uglification of the human environment.

For the Church to call for an increase in births is not just stupid, it is immoral.

Catholic social teaching stresses the importance of the common good. What common good is advanced by merely increasing our numbers?

Quality of life, not quantity

Contrary to what some people seem to think, the Catholic Church does not oppose family planning.

Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae forbids particular "artificial" methods of regulating births and has given rise to a Catholic cottage industry of "natural family planning."

But, whatever dispute there may be over methods - and for the most part there is no dispute because Catholics have opted to ignore the teaching - the fact is that the Church can encourage intelligent and responsible limitation of family size even without retreating from Pope Paul's teaching.

Instead of asking how we can increase births, the Catholic Church should be a world leader in calling for responsible family planning that will ensure that all people who are born have a chance to live beyond age five and have access to the food, healthcare and education that will enable them to live with the dignity of the children of God.

Among other things, that means changing our economic systems and priorities, because economic development and security for all increases the number of healthy births while reducing the overall number of births.

Essential to such change is the education and empowerment of women.

Yes, there are parts of the world where the population is declining. I live in one of them. But, to be Catholic means to consider the whole world as home and to take each and all of the world's people into account as brothers and sisters.

To speak of human births as simply a matter of multiplying people without responsibly dealing with what that multiplication means for those people and God's world is to speak like an animal breeder.

The Church must be concerned with people as the children of God, not with numbers.

But on the other hand, if people at the Vatican really think we should be increasing the number of births, perhaps one way to do so might be for them to abandon the requirement of celibacy for the clergy.

- Fr William Grimm is publisher of ucanews.com based in Tokyo. Article first published in ucanews.com. Used with permission.

And yet, Ms Grigg-Spall (pictured, right) has so much in common with the pill's diehard champions. Like Ms Fluke, she grew to adulthood thinking that taking this medicine daily was as natural as having toast for breakfast. Like Ms Pelosi and Ms Richards, she thinks contraception is a reproductive right. (No, she is not from what she calls "the religious Right".) But, although once "hooked" on them, she has fallen out of love with synthetic hormones and wants everyone to know why.

In her mid-20s, when she should have been feeling on top of the world, Holly Grigg-Spall was feeling depressed and empty, ho-hum about sex. And that was when she was not feeling anxious and paranoid or erupting into furious arguments with her boyfriend. "I felt I was losing my mind," she says.

She had been on the pill since she was 17, when her mother and family doctor told her it would solve the problem of heavy and painful periods as well as protect her against pregnancy. She did not yet have a boyfriend and would not become sexually active for another four years, but she accepted their view that it was the responsible thing to do. She knew nothing about how the pill worked - other than stopping babies arriving - and did not think to ask. Continue reading

Sources

• Carolyn Moynihan in MercatorNet
• Image: Mail Online

Carolyn Moynihan is a New Zealand journalist with a special interest in family issues and deputy editor of MercatorNet.

Recalling that Thursday was the 45th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae makes me cringe. In fact, I am pained whenever the 1968 papal decree comes up for discussion. I feel like a person who has witnessed a tragic event and made an intense effort to turn over a key piece of evidence — the "smoking gun" — that would make the truth known only to see lawyers either misplace the evidence or fail to use it effectively. I contend the evidence I am talking about would have been climactic — making it virtually impossible for Pope Paul to ignore changing the church's current birth control policy, or conversely, if used today, make it relatively easy for Pope Francis to correct the church's second "Galileo affair."

For readers not around 45 years ago when Pope Paul promulgated the decree that renewed the Catholic church's ban on all artificial forms of birth control, it may be helpful to offer a brief review of that history. Pope Pius XI first imposed the ban in 1930, six months after the Anglican Lambeth Conference allowed its church's married couples to decide the issue by themselves. In October 1964, several Catholic bishops raised the issue of birth control during a discussion of marriage and the family at the Second Vatican Council. Cardinal Leon-Joseph Suenens of Malines-Brussels pleaded with his brother bishops to study the issue and "avoid another Galileo affair. One [failure of the church to keep abreast of scientific advances] is enough." Continue reading

Sources

• Frank Maurovich in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Patheos

Frank Maurovich, founding editor of The Catholic Voice, left priestly ministry in 1977.

"Increasingly the institution of marriage is being replaced by simply living together, which has followed upon the sundering of the link between sex and fertility. This is not just a revolution in the area of moral norms; it reaches much deeper, into the very definition of man. If the drive which is innate in man as a physiological being conflicts with the optimum condition that we call a human way of life (sufficient food, good living conditions, women's rights), and therefore has to be cheated with the help of science, then the rest of our firmly held convictions about what is natural behaviour and what is unnatural fall by the wayside."

Milosz - who is buried in the basilica at Skalka in Krakow, traditionally held to be the site of the martyrdom of St. Stanislaus - had a complicated relationship with the Catholic Church. He was not a man who automatically accepted ecclesiastical dicta on the basis of religious authority. Thus his insight into the cultural consequences of cheap, effective and readily available contraception is all the more striking, in that it runs in close parallel to what Paul VI wrote in Humanae Vitae: an encyclical that was not so much rejected (pace the utterly predictable 45th-anniversary commentary) as it was unread, untaught, ill-considered - and thus unappreciated. Continue reading

Sources

• George Weigel in ABC Religion & Ethics
• Image: Letters to the Editor, etc

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.

Melissa Pont, 23, said her family practitioner, Dr Joseph Lee, would not renew her pill prescription, instead lecturing her on a baby's right to live and on using the rhythm method.

Lee is a doctor at the Wairau Community Clinic in Blenheim. He is a catholic and has four children.

He told the Herald on Sunday "I don't want to interfere with the process of producing life."

Lee also does not prescribe condoms, and encourages patients as young as 16 to use the rhythm method.

The only circumstances in which he would prescribe the contraceptive pill would be if a woman wanted space between pregnancies, or had at least four children.

"I think they've already done their reproductive job".

He acknowledged natural birth control was "not very reliable".

The New Zealand Medical Association (NZMA) says a doctor who refused to prescribe the contraceptive pill to a woman was within his rights, but that it was wrong to share his views on the matter.

Melissa Pont was denied the pill by her doctor Joseph Lee who has been working at the Wairau Community Clinic in Blenheim for about a year.

She was instead told about other contraception options such as tracking her reproductive cycle.

NZMA chairperson Mark Peterson says the code of ethics allows doctors to not prescribe the pill, but they do have to refer the patient to another doctor.

Peterson says it is inappropriate for a doctor to discuss personal ethical views.

Wairau Community Clinic lead GP Scott Cameron said a pamphlet at reception warned that some doctors did not prescribe birth control, and staff tried to screen patients. He would consider installing a sign.

The clinic is run by the Marlborough Public Health Organisation. Chief executive Beth Pester said Lee's choice not to prescribe was "his ethical choice", but she was concerned he discussed natural birth control with patients as young as 16, and would talk to him about that.

Source

• The New Zealand Herald
• Radio New Zealand
• Image: SMH.com

Asked if they believe the pope is infallible when he teaches on matters of morality or faith, only 40 per cent of the total sample (and 45 per cent of those who said they attend Mass weekly) said yes.

A total of 79 per cent (62 per cent of weekly Mass attenders) favoured the use of artificial methods of birth control.

And 78 per cent (66 per cent of weekly Mass attenders) said they are more likely to follow their own conscience than papal teachings on difficult moral questions.

The poll found 69 per cent (61 per cent of weekly Mass attenders) believe the next pope should allow priests to marry; and a similar proportion (57 per cent of weekly Mass attenders) believe he should allow women to become priests.

Legalised abortion was opposed by 56 per cent (70 per cent of weekly Mass attenders); and a similar proportion (67 per cent of weekly Mass attenders) opposed the death penalty.

A majority of 53 per cent (44 per cent of weekly Mass attenders) said they believe the Catholic Church is out of touch with the needs of Catholics.

The New York Times/CBS News poll was based on telephone interviews, in English and Spanish, with 580 adult Catholics.

Three-quarters of those polled said they thought it was a good idea for Pope Benedict to resign. Most wanted the next pope to be "someone younger, with new ideas". A majority said they wanted the next pope to make the Church's teachings more liberal.

Sixty-two per cent said they were in favour of legalising marriage for same-sex couples. Catholics approved of same-sex marriage at a higher rate than Americans as a whole, among whom 53 per cent approved.

Source:

New York Times

Image: Another Voice-Greenleaf

The online survey by the Barna Group covered 1296 Christians aged 18-29, including 536 "who had experience attending a Catholic church prior to age 18."

Among all the young adults who identified as Catholic, 60 per cent saw the Church's teachings on sexuality and birth control as outdated. Among those who were still religiously active, 37 per cent had some level of concern about these teachings.

Similarly, 57 per cent of all respondents (and 40 per cent of active Catholics) said that Mass could be "a boring obligation".

The survey found higher levels of alienation among young people who had attended Catholic schools.

Among respondents who had attended a Church-related school, 65 per cent said that Church teachings on sexuality were outdated and 61 per cent said Mass attendance could be a boring obligation. Both figures were higher than the results for the overall sample.

Barna said one of the surprising revelations of the research was that those who had attended a Catholic or faith-related school were essentially no more favourable — or unfavorable — than the norm toward Catholicism, the Church and Mass.

Attending a Catholic school didn't seem to cause additional disaffection, but neither did it insulate students from such frustrations. In fact, about one-quarter of all young Catholics said they had a mostly negative experience in Catholic school.

Many of the young Catholics also said they felt excluded in church at the expense of older adults. One in four said they had felt their parish valued older people more than younger people.

Source:

Barna Group

Image: University of Notre Dame

The doctors' predicament came to light during a "Faith in the Life of Medical Professionals" workshop organised by the Catholic Bishops' Commission for Healthcare and the Association of Catholic Doctors.

Birth control has been heavily encouraged in Bangladesh, a country of more than 152 million people, since the 1990s, reported the Catholic news agency UCA News.

The agency said abortion is illegal unless the life of the mother is deemed to be in danger, but doctors say it is common.

Dr June Jacqueline Gomes, one of the Catholic doctors at the workshop, said turning away a woman who wants an abortion means the patient will never return to her practice, so few of the country's 90 Catholic doctors dare to refuse to perform one.

Dr Gomes said she has performed "hundreds" of ligations — tying women's tubes to prevent pregnancies, which is also against Catholic teaching.

Dr Anthony Albert, who works in a private hospital in Dhaka, said he was trained in menstrual regulation — "a kind of induced abortion" — after he graduated, and "I have done hundreds of MRs in my life, otherwise I might have lost my job."

Keynote speaker Bishop Theotonious Gomes of Dhaka, head of the bishops' commission, said a Catholic doctor shouldn't just look for money.

"Catholic social teaching puts human life on top of everything and we never support destroying life. Even if our faith collides with reality, we need to stick to our faith," he said.

Bishop Gomes added that the Church is currently thinking of establishing a "model Catholic hospital" in the Bangladesh, where people could receive treatment in accord with Catholic teachings.

Sister Mary Olympia, a nun from Associates of Mary Queen of Apostles congregation who is also a doctor, said she often feels the Church needs to relax its rules.

"Sometimes, without an abortion a mother can die or without artificial birth control the family of a partner with HIV can break down."

Source:

UCA News

Image: UCA News