Updates anyone?

Well, as I suspected, the Spanish Catholic Church isn't quite as ready to progress with the rest of society. This turned up in today's New York Times:

But after hours of silence, the Conference of Catholic Bishops issued an unsigned statement late Wednesday saying Mr. Martínez Camino's comments "must be understood in the context of Catholic doctrine, which holds that the use of contraceptives implies immoral sexual behavior."
"It is not true that the Spanish Church has changed its doctrine on contraceptives," the statement said.
Several Roman Catholic leaders in Spain suggested Wednesday that Mr. Martínez Camino had misspoken or expressed only his personal views that were not representative of his organization.

Mr. Martínez Camino ironically enough, was on the record as late as November 2004 as being very much anti-condoms. So what sparked his change? And can it be duplicated with other Church officials?

Spain's population is made up of Catholics to the tune of 80%, but in a recent poll, 70% of those surveyed said the Catholic Church was out of step with society (which could lead to increasing irrelevance--just what Chris always wanted), and 60% generally disagreed with the Church's position on social issues.

Now, the big question some of you may be pondering is just why an avowed Atheist like myself cares about Church positions on social issues. Well, there are several reasons to care really. The first reason is that the Church and Organized Religion still be a huge role around the world in influencing the memberships. So any step that these churches/religions take towards promoting a more realistic doctrine of social perscriptions, the less people there are resisting what have come to be viewed as common sense measures of prevention. Humans are fallible, and you can't put up "moral" or "religious" boundaries and expect 100% compliance 100% of the time. So let's have something to fall back on. Don't feel like waiting until Marriage? At least use a condom to minimize your risks of contraction of STDs and HIV/AIDS.

The second reason is that no matter how strongly I believe that there is no god, there are others who believe there is, and who am I to tell them they have to change their views? Really, if the prostylization is kept to a minimum on both sides, we can be happy campers, because my belief that when I'm dead, that's it really shouldn't affect the life of someone who believes in the hereafter, and so on. Live and let live, or whatever.