Dear Bishops:

What is it with the Bishops in Alberta? Did moving here come with an obligation to have the rational part of their brains lobotomized?

The latest utterances from their collective wisdom is protesting the distribution of a vaccine against HPV.

It wouldn't be so bad if they had actual reasons to work with, but no - the Bishops are all a-feared that giving girls a vaccine against HPV (which is a known primary cause of cervical cancer) will make them all sex-obsessed:

Alberta's Bishops released a statement on Monday warning parents that in allowing their daughters to receive the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccination, they are in effect condoning pre-marital sex and subjecting them to a plethora of other health risks.

"Catholic teaching is that sexuality is a God-given gift that should be reserved for marriage," the bishops wrote in the letter to parents.

"So-called 'casual' or 'recreational' sexual activity carries with it profound risks to a young person's spiritual, emotional, moral and physical health.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I fail to see where a vaccine to counteract an amazingly common virus has anything at all to do with whether someone has sex before marriage or not.

I hate to point it out to the Bishops, but puberty beats any vaccine to the punch in terms of provoking sexual curiosity. Whether the Bishops want to admit it or not, teenagers experiment sexually - period. It's been a fact since the dawn of time, regardless of what prohibitions are created.

Besides, the point of this vaccine is actually more about recognizing that a woman deserves some protection from whatever philandering a prospective husband may have done before marriage.

Of course, the Bishops have to attack the efficacy of the vaccine, pointing out that it isn't 100% effective (well duh, what vaccine is?)

But, for Alberta's Bishops, it seems that anything to do with sex is all about consequences, isn't it?