Updated 5pm with additional Dalli comment

Equality Minister Helena Dalli has taken aim at a priest's sexual education vlog that warns of the "dangers" of using contraceptives, saying she had thought these "dark times" were long gone.

Dominican priest Fr Ivan Attard said in a Facebook vlog entitled ‘Sexual Junk Food’ that contraceptives were turning sex into something done for personal pleasure rather than reproduction.

This was leading to a breakdown of relationships, abuse, and could even end up putting people off sex in the long run, he said.

The use of contraceptives, he says, showed how many thought about sex today.

Back in the day, the priest muses, it was clearer that “the sexual act, married life, and reproduction, was one and the same”.

Over the years, however, contraceptives had reduced sex to a mere act of sexual pleasure and release.

This, he warns, is leading to abusiveness and a weakening of values.

“It's as though, when I want to have sex, I have it, rather than trying to hold back,” he says, warning that this was leading to the falsification of sexuality and relationships.

In keeping with his fast food motif, the priest then tells his viewers that if he loved eating pizza, and would eat pizza for breakfast, lunch and dinner, day-in day-out, he would end up hating pizza.

If, however, he ate it less frequently, he would savour a slice far more.

The same, Fr Attard says, was true of sex.

Not to mention, contraceptives were also about big industry, something not many would talk about, he says.

“It’s not as though contraceptives are distributed free of charge,” he says.

"Women and girls are not rabbits"

Dr Dalli, meanwhile, lambasted Fr Attard’s vlog in a Facebook post of her own – comparing his comments to “the dark times” when priests would pressure women to have sex solely for procreation, on fear of it being a sin.

Education was the solution, and not inciting fear, she said.

Before the days of contraceptives, the minister wrote, women would get pregnant 10, 15 or even 20 times in their lives.

She recalled how her great grandmother had once told her that when she would go to confession, the priest would tell her to "do right" or else she would be committing a sin.

When her great grandmother would plea with the priest that she could not afford to raise another child, the priest would tell her that "a worm lives under a rock" and that she could make do.

"Those dark times have long gone," she wrote.

Speaking in Parliament later in the day, Dr Dalli said the comments could not be defended as freedom of expression.



"Women and girls are not rabbits. Claiming contraception is dangerous is deeply irresponsible. We're talking about women's health and women's lives," she said.



"We need education not fear-mongering. We already have a problem with unprotected sex among young people. The last thing we need is someone telling people not to use contraception."