VATICAN & VIAGRA: WE WARNED YOU!

Cardinals Peck and Eloungo with reporters

Rome, WPI - Vatican spokesman Cardinal Pietro Eloungo announced today that the blindness associated with the use of Viagra was long predicted by Catholic teachings. Speaking to a largely Italian press corp assembled on the steps of Slt Peter’s Cathedral, the Cardinal, Directorate of the Holy Temple Society, a division of the Office of the Inquisition, formerly headed by Cardinal Ratzinger, the current Pope Benedict XVI, read a brief statement and answered questions.

US health officials are studying rare reports of blindness among some men using the impotence drugs Viagra and Cialis, The drug's label warns of erections lasting longer than four hours, painful erections lasting longer than six hours, headache, flushed skin and vision problems, but there is no mention of blindness as a side effect.

“This recent revelation proves to the world what we have been teaching generations of Catholic schoolboys: impure touching of one’s body can be very hazardous. Priests have been warning boys that blindness is often the result of lustful thoughts and self-abuse. We believe the news of the effects of this vile and craven drug proves that we have been right all along,” the statement read.

“Our prayers are with the families of these pitiful victims of illicit desire and we fervently hope that this disaster serves as a powerful warning to schoolchildren all around the world. Your body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit, when you abuse it with lustful thoughts and deeds you run the risk of terrible retribution by our offended Lord. Remeber, he hears all your thoughts and sees all your actions- even in the dark” he concluded.

Pfizer spokesman Richard Stiffie said the drugmaker was talking with the FDA about adding a disclosure to Viagra's label to say that in rare cases, men taking Viagra had developed blindness. However, he said there is no proof that Viagra caused the blindness.

“You see,” added Cardinal Woodrow Peck Archbishop of Phoenix assistant to Cardinal Eloungo, “this is less about Viagra then about self-abuse. We know, from the overwhelming insights afforded the Vatican through the global accumulation of data collected in confessionals, that many men misuse these drugs for private sessions of self-abuse, not for the healthy exercise of a man’s dominion over his wife as they were designed.”he continued nonstop.

“We have no doubt that the unfortunate victims in these cases were all self-abusers. This is a warning. Catholics worldwide should pray that young boys will heed the lessons of this terrible tragedy and keep their hands off their penises unless they are washing, urinating or following instructions from their parish priest.”

Viagra also is at the center of controversy over Medicaid's payment for prescriptions of the drug to convicted sex offenders in New York and other states.

Reprting from Rome, James Martin