The Vatican has backed a Roman Catholic bishop who has told Catholic schools in his diocese to reject "safe sex" education because it is "dangerous and immoral".The Bishop of Lancaster, the Rt Rev Patrick O'Donoghue, said in a document calling for traditional moral teaching that "so-called" safe sex was based on the "deluded theory that the condom can provide adequate protection against Aids".
Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, the secretary of the Congregation for the Clergy, said in a letter that the document was fully in line with Vatican teaching.
However, Barry Sheerman, the Labour MP who chairs the influential Commons committee on schools, said he feared that it presaged a new fundamentalism among some Catholic bishops, encouraged by the Vatican.
Oona Stannard, of the Catholic Education Service, described the document as "the aspirations of one bishop for his diocese".
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