The Pope tells Cameroonians condoms are not the answer to stopping AIDS. The solution lies in a “spiritual and human awakening” and “friendship for those who suffer”.
Gregg Zachary calls the Pope’s visit a tactical move in the Church’s war against evangelical churches. Hmm. Perhaps one could also increase the number of followers by, say, keeping them alive.
7 Responses
The Pope on condom: well if there’s anyone who should know about sex…wait, what? I’m also saddened that the Pope offered moral and spiritual (but pointedly not economic) support for Africa
Christine’s comment is not only incredibly cynical but also manages to put forth one of the most false anti-Catholic prejudices still existing: that Catholics are having babies because they want to take over the world. This is the stuff that was seen in the venomously anti-Catholic Jack Chick comics. Very enlightened indeed
But by definition, anyone who has sex outside of marriage isn’t a proper Catholic. This also implies that that properly married Catholics don’t have AIDs – coz how could they have got it? So actually restricting access to condoms can’t possibly have any negative consequences for Catholics (by definition), therefore if there’s any effect at all it’ll be to increase the proportion of Catholics in the population.
The Pope totally wins!
to Anonymous 2:
That would be a nice story if the “Ugandan success story” was due to the anti-HIV education campaign. Oster (2009) clearly demonstrates that it was not the case : http://home.uchicago.edu/~eoster/hivexports.pdf
At least there is a man who responsible for the future of his belief, and that man would turn to be himself (Pope)
Condoms notoriously have a relatively high failure rate with some numbers saying it’s as high as 15%. By endorsing the use of condoms, the Church would be caving into the false idea that it’s impossible for us humans to control our passions. I don’t know about you, but I feel it’s irresponsible to be handing out condoms with confidence that it’s always going to be foolproof in preventing someone who’s infected from infecting someone else – it’s simply Russian Roulette. The Church has had great success in certain African countries like Uganda which used to have one of the highest percentages of HIV in Africa. It’s numbers have been steadily decreasing since an emphasis on abstinence and chastity has been strongly promulgated by the Church. The Pope is just telling the truth and that’s hard for our increasingly secular worldwide society to accept.
I totally agree. I don’t know about ‘tactical move’, but it just seems their strategy is utterly hopeless…