Pope says condoms won't solve Aids
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Independent Minds
Pope Benedict XVI said on his way to Africa today that condoms were not the answer in the continent's fight against HIV, his first explicit statement on an issue that has divided even clergy working with Aids patients.
Benedict had never directly addressed condom use. He has said that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against Aids. The Vatican encourages sexual abstinence to fight the spread of the disease.
"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the Pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon, where he will begin a seven-day pilgrimage on the continent. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."
Some priests and nuns working with those living with HIV/Aids question the church's opposition to condoms amid the pandemic ravaging Africa.
Benedict's first papal trip to Africa will take him to Cameroon and Angola. Africa is the fastest-growing region for the Roman Catholic Church, though it competes with Islam and evangelical churches.
The Pope also said today that he intends to make an appeal for "international solidarity" for Africa in the face of the global economic downturn.
He said that while the church does not propose specific economic solutions, it can give "spiritual and moral" suggestions.
Describing the current crisis as the consequence of "a deficit of ethics in economic structures," the Pope said: "It is here that the church can make a contribution."
On the plane, Benedict also dismissed the notion that he was facing increasing opposition and isolation within the church, particularly after an outreach to ultraconservatives that led to his lifting the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop.
"The myth of my solitude makes me laugh," the Pope said, adding that he can count on a network of friends and aides whom he sees every day.
In a letter to Catholic bishops released last week, the Pope made an unusual public acknowledgment of Vatican mistakes and turmoil in his church over the rehabilitation of Bishop Richard Williamson.
While acknowledging mistakes were made in handling the affair, Benedict said he was saddened that he was criticised "with open hostility" even by those who should have known better.
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Comments
Any argument to put forward there to counter mine that all religions are in competition to outbreed each other? Or too busy bitching about other posters. Not very moral that eh? And I am certainly ore moral than any religious nut I know. My house is in order thanks - I hope you keep the secure unit where you live in order too. If you can't, ask a nurse.
By the way, the unsayable is: black people have a biology that makes them more susceptable to HIV. As black people are more likely to get heart disease and strokes and diabetes. As the average IQ of black people is 70 where for whites it's 100. Humans are 99.5 per cent the same - there's a massive 0.5 per cent difference. We must accept this.
Anyway, in terms of over-population AIDS in Africa could be seen as a good thing. Their populations have quadrupled in the last 40 years, so this gives balanced. I'd rather the wildlife survived rather than the people actually. I hope they all go sterile from some new as yet unnamed disease. Then humanity may just survive the 21st century...
I don't think it's unsayable to write that black people have a greater susceptibility to AIDS, given that (in my understanding) some studies into a gene variation affording greater protection against malaria also show a decrease in protection against AIDS.
I do take issue with your unreferenced sweeping statement of racial differences in IQ though. I'm obviously not a member of the same library as you, and would dearly appreciate a link to some proof.
And finally, your wishing the wildlife survive over people, I'll put that down to a whoopspasm keyboard twitch and leave you to boil in your froth.
I'm glad that the Pope had the sense to say that contraception is not the answer, condoms are not fool proof - there is a lot that is capable of going wrong with them, it is not a solution. Evidently an education is what these people need.
If condoms were working in Africa as a prevention strategy, we would know by now.
Any option to preventing the spread of HIV needs to be tried, condoms may not be the answer, but the pope should shut up and allow medical experts to develop strategies to make condoms more readily available, so that more people have the chance of not getting HIV and dying of AIDS.
The Iranian President denies the holocaust - and we're ready to bomb him. Williamson denies the holocaust - and this arsehole Pope Ratzinger restores him as a Bishop!!
Benedict had never directly addressed condom use. He has said that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against Aids. The Vatican encourages sexual abstinence to fight the spread of the disease."
Re-read this carefully and slowly you knobs.. there's nothing there which says he thinks condoms shouldn't be used nor that the ONLY way to "solve" or "cure", whichever you prefer, AIDS is through abstinence. It's a very simple point which is being made: condoms ALONE are not a solution and a little less promiscuity would go a long way.
""You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the Pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon, where he will begin a seven-day pilgrimage on the continent. "On the contrary, it increases the problem.""
The distribution of condoms increases the problem? Practicable birth control is out of the question? The doctors and mother of a 9-year old who was raped by her stepfather and became pregnant with twins were excommunicated when they had her abort to save her life?
Face it, the Catholic Church doesn't know what the heck to do regarding the issue of sex. Never has.
But then, how could it, insisting on a clergy that cannot marry? Until it blew up in the Vatican's face in the 90s--it carefully hid the plague of pedophile priests preying on the young entrusted to their care.
Enough with the hypocrisy and stupid pronouncements that only make reasonable people furious!
The pope said :- "On the contrary, it increases the problem."
My intrepation of this comment is that he thinks condoms should not be used, i would like to know how you read this in any other way.
Perhaps you should re-read the article VERY slowly........
Considering the Catholic church has publicized their position that evolution does not contradict with their religious doctrines, and the depth of some of the great Catholic minds in areas like philosophy, by the likes of such giants as Thomas Aquinas, you would think that their 'intelligentsia' of today not be as reactionary as it appears to be. When are they going to come to terms with the reality that the impuse to procreate is one if not the the strongest impulse of our species, as it is any species, and that their policies of anti-birth control and preaching the false solution of sexual abstinence is an ignorant and dangerous position when Catholicism is the dominant religion in Africa where the AIDS epidemic is out of control. Your own damn clergy can't even keep their pledge of lifelong abstinence, so how can you expect it of common folk? These Catholic clergy are a self righteous, stubborn bunch but they do seem to come around when all evidence to the contrary threatens to marginalize their power and influence. Many abused wives died over the clergy's stubborn refusal to grant divorce before they changes their policy. How many people have to die of AIDS before they do the same? Not under the rule of this doddering German sheeple.
To summarize : It is unlikely that an african who disobeyed papal prouncement on fornication and adultery will turn around and refuse to use freely available condoms just because the pope said so.
The catholic church is a top-down autocracy. Indeed it prides itself on this fact. The pope's word is officially final and absolute. He is the arbiter of everything in the Catholic church and thus responsible personally for its policies - all of them.
To be a good catholic, you have to believe in the absolute and complete authority of the church and in particular the pope personally. This has been laid down in published church laws that are a matter of public record. This is in contrast (say) to the CofE.
The direct consequence of the last pope's and the church's policy banning physical barrier contraception for its adherents in the 2nd and 3rd worlds is (it is reliably estimated) some 2 million extra deaths through AIDS during the last pope's rule.
This pope continues the needless slaughter.
[Interestingly, when I very recently tried to make this very point on the blog of Tom Harris MP (Labour) he censored it on the grounds that it was "factually wrong" (it's accurate) and "simply too offensive." This was at http://www.tomharris.org.uk/2009/03/11/c