This just in: Bishop urges fasting to prevent food poisoning

By Lee Russ

Friday, November 24, 2006 at 05:13 PM

Not really.  But he is urging the sexual behavior counterpart of that brilliant policy.

Prelate challenges media to promote abstinence  

Nov. 24 (CWNews.com) - The mass media could help fight the spread of infectious diseases by promoting sexual abstinence, Archbishop John Foley told a seminar audience on Rome on November 24.

Speaking to a conference on infectious diseases, hosted by the Pontifical Council for Health Care, the American-born prelate said that it should be evident that it is important -- "indeed, fundamental"-- to avoid the activities and contacts that lead to exposure to infections.

This rule applies, he observed, not only to sexual diseases but to other ailments that are spread by human contacts.

Such as avoiding all human contact to prevent colds and the flu?  Well, come to think of it, if each and every one of us avoids all human contact, we can probably decrease the hell out of colds and the flu, drastically reduce the amount of personal violence in the world, and eventually, return the entire planet to those "lower forms of life."