{"id":5137,"date":"2010-10-27T14:12:36","date_gmt":"2010-10-27T14:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2010\/10\/protect-thy-neighbor-catholic-parish-passing-out-condoms.html"},"modified":"2010-10-27T14:12:36","modified_gmt":"2010-10-27T14:12:36","slug":"protect-thy-neighbor-catholic-parish-passing-out-condoms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/10\/protect-thy-neighbor-catholic-parish-passing-out-condoms.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Protect thy neighbor&#8221;: Catholic parishes passing out condoms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s happening in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.daytondailynews.com\/lifestyle\/ohio-churches-religion-faith\/religion-news-in-brief-987388.html\">Switzerland:<\/a> <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nRoman Catholic parishes in the central Swiss city of Lucerne caused an uproar with an AIDS awareness campaign that involves giving teenagers condoms bearing the slogan &#8220;protect thy neighbor as thyself.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The parishes started handing out some of the 3,000 condoms Monday as part of an effort to engage young people.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We needed something to appeal to people who wouldn&#8217;t dream of talking to the church about that kind of issue,&#8221; campaign spokesman Florian Flohr said. The Catholic Church opposes the use of artificial contraception, prompting church officials to repeatedly speak against condom distribution as a way to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS.<\/p>\n<p>Officials at the diocese of Basel, of which Lucerne is a part, didn&#8217;t respond to requests for comment Monday, but a spokesman in the neighboring diocese of Chur told Swiss television that the condom campaign was &#8220;a mistake.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A Vatican spokesman said Monday that he hadn&#8217;t heard about the Lucerne campaign but repeated the church&#8217;s position against artificial contraception, including condoms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s happening in Switzerland: Roman Catholic parishes in the central Swiss city of Lucerne caused an uproar with an AIDS awareness campaign that involves giving teenagers condoms bearing the slogan &#8220;protect thy neighbor as thyself.&#8221; The parishes started handing out some of the 3,000 condoms Monday as part of an effort to engage young people.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ripped-from-the-headlines"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&quot;Protect thy neighbor&quot;: Catholic parishes passing out condoms - The Deacon&#039;s Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/10\/protect-thy-neighbor-catholic-parish-passing-out-condoms.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&quot;Protect thy neighbor&quot;: Catholic parishes passing out condoms - The Deacon&#039;s Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It&#8217;s happening in Switzerland: Roman Catholic parishes in the central Swiss city of Lucerne caused an uproar with an AIDS awareness campaign that involves giving teenagers condoms bearing the slogan &#8220;protect thy neighbor as thyself.&#8221; 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The parishes started handing out some of the 3,000 condoms Monday as part of an effort to engage young people.&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/10\/protect-thy-neighbor-catholic-parish-passing-out-condoms.html","og_site_name":"The Deacon&#039;s Bench","article_published_time":"2010-10-27T14:12:36+00:00","author":"jmcgee","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/10\/protect-thy-neighbor-catholic-parish-passing-out-condoms.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/10\/protect-thy-neighbor-catholic-parish-passing-out-condoms.html","name":"\"Protect thy neighbor\": Catholic parishes passing out condoms - The Deacon&#039;s Bench","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-10-27T14:12:36+00:00","dateModified":"2010-10-27T14:12:36+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/bdb748767d0f27ba523435391c927150"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/10\/protect-thy-neighbor-catholic-parish-passing-out-condoms.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/10\/protect-thy-neighbor-catholic-parish-passing-out-condoms.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/10\/protect-thy-neighbor-catholic-parish-passing-out-condoms.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"&#8220;Protect thy neighbor&#8221;: Catholic parishes passing out condoms"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/","name":"The Deacon&#039;s Bench","description":"Where a Roman Catholic Deacon Ponders the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/bdb748767d0f27ba523435391c927150","name":"jmcgee","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/b07\/b071769d942178df26e06d8859867b37x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/b07\/b071769d942178df26e06d8859867b37x96.jpg","caption":"jmcgee"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/jmcgee"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}