TSR Christian Society

Firstly, the study, instigated by the heavily biased Family of the Americas Foundation, was based on 505 couples, hardly the largest sample size. In addition, rates are comparatively low because those who abhor contraception are often in communities which either condemn or shun divorcees. It's as good an argument as saying arranged marriages are better because they have low divorce rates - yet the only reason that is so is because it's socially unacceptable to divorce, despite the fact that many people in that situation are cripplingly unhappy.

I find it hilarious when people say they'll "let God decide how many children they have" - every time they end up with a crapton of children, isn't that a strange coincidence? Golly, it's almost as if it's a biological fact that if you keep having sex you'll produce children. Fact is, the teaching on contraception is nothing to do with not trusting God, otherwise natural family planning wouldn't be allowed either (it's still taking measures to prevent conception.) It's about making lots of followers for the Church, no matter how many AIDS-riddled children in Africa there are born in the process.

And your objection is merely based upon your seeming hatred of Catholicism.

Even if it is only a small sample (though 505 couples is not too bad; it is 1010 people after all) 0.2% is still an amazingly low figure and not just some random anomaly.

And that simply isn't true that they are in communities that abhor divorce. These sorts of people are usually scattered throughout secular society surrounded by people who disagree profoundly with what they are doing,

hardly the easiest conditions to operate under and indeed something which would make it harder for the NFP method to work.

Your comparison with arranged marriage is also one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard, in most of those cultures a woman would become totally ostracised from society and could even suffer violence; to compare the two is crude at worst and stupid at best.

Maybe God wants large families, he does, after all, want to populate Heaven. And the last time I checked biology was one of the sciences and science is the language of creation flowing forth from the mouth of God. So indeed the fact that our bodies are built in such a way implies further it is the will of God. Perhaps if you'd bothered to quote the whole of my post (rather than a small chunk) you'd actually understand what the trusting God point is about. It's not just about trusting God to do the right thing but about trusting God with your vocation to marriage.

And if you knew anything about naturally family planning then you'd realise it isn't an artifial method - the chance for the transmission of life, and the total self giving of yourself to the other person, still remain open.

And, no, it's not just about getting new members of the Church, it's about the whole of civilisation. As I've already demonstated with opinions from both pro death advocates and pro life advocates, artifial contraception and its widespread acceptance has been tantamount to allowing abortion to be accepted as a norm. It removes any semblance of self responsibility.

Your closing comment about AIDS is the most disgusting thing I've ever read and you should be ashamed of yourself.

It's the neo colonial attitutes of flooding Africa with condoms (with abortions close behind, suprise, suprise) that has lead to a spike in AIDS. Indeed to quote the world's greatest living expert on AIDS/HIV in the third world, Professor Edward C Green of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies "The pope is correct, or put it a better way, the best evidence we have supports the pope’s comments." (refering to when the Pope correctly said that contraception may be making AIDS in Africa worse). Uganda was hit by an Aids epidemic in the 1980s and the government thought condoms were part of the answer, though it also promoted abstinence and fidelity. By 1992 more than 18 per cent of Ugandan adults tested HIV positive.

But the country has a 41.9 per cent Catholic population so, using this as a base, the Church promoted the "Education for Life" programme, based on abstinence and fidelity while rejecting condoms. By 2007 only 5.4 per cent of Ugandans were HIV positive. No other country has effected such a recovery. The correlation between a devoutly Catholic population and containment of Aids is startling and demonstrable. By 2007 Burundi, with a 62 per cent Catholic population, had only a 2 per cent Aids infection rate. Angola, 38 per cent Catholic, had a 2.1 per cent rate. In contrast, Swaziland, only 20 per cent Catholic, had a 26.1 per cent infection rate and Botswana, just 5 per cent Catholic, had a 23.9 per cent rate. Beyond Africa, in the Philippines, 81 per cent Catholic, the HIV rate is a miniscule 0.01 per cent (source). You can google all these figures if you like - you'll see they're all correct and official UN figures.

Uganda's success in reducing high HIV infection rates is the result of high-level political commitment to HIV prevention and care, involving a wide range of partners and all sectors of society. Same-day results for HIV tests and social marketing of condoms and self-treatment kits for sexually transmitted infections, backed up by sex education programmes, have helped reduce very high HIV infection rates.

The drop in HIV prevalence in Uganda in the 1990s cannot be attributed to a single factor. It is likely to have been a result of both a fall in the number of new infections (incidence), and a rise in the number of AIDS-related deaths.

BBC NEWS An organisation helping people living with HIV/Aids in Uganda has questioned the authenticity of the government's statistics on the disease.

Uganda is often held up as a success story and the government lauded for the progress it has made with the official prevalence rate put at only 6%.

But after conducting research in districts across Uganda, an NGO suggests the real picture is far worse.

They found prevalence rates as high as 30% and bad access to anti-retrovirals.