During the Iraq war I photographed a Catholic Chaplain convention.

[eallen]

5. So long as they fight contraception, they undermine whatever work they do for the poor.

Feeding the poor while fighting contraception is like throwing a man a float after kicking him out of a liferaft.

The empowerment of women is the route by which traditional and authoritarian cultures become more liberal. While I dislike the Catholic Church's opposition to gay marriage, it is its opposition to contraception that has helped maintain traditional power structures in so much of the world, and kept hundreds of millions of people impoverished.