Thread: The pope

Yes but are the following the other church teachings (like not having sex outside of marriage)? If someone says "I don't use a condom while having sex with my girlfriend because the Pope says not to use condoms" then I call BS.

the AIDS rate in Africa would be waaay lower.

That number actually has a lot to do with the high level of prostitution. There's no way that many condoms could be distributed.

Opinion: The Pope Spreads AIDS

The Holy Father is responsible for the deaths of thousands

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 7th October 1999.

The evidence stacking up against Pope Pius XII is compelling. The man who claimed to be the friend of the persecuted now emerges as an active Nazi collaborator. John Cornwell, a Catholic historian who had hoped to clear Pius’s name by examining the Vatican’s archive, has discovered instead that the pope helped Hitler to stamp out opposition in the German Church. He disbanded the Catholic Centre Party (one of Hitler’s main impediments), encouraged priests to “certify” converted Jews and helped persuade the Catholic Prime Minister to form an alliance with the Nazis. In response to these revelations, the Vatican, as if to prove that it inhabits another planet, has announced that it will proceed with its plans to declare Pope Pius XII a saint.

But, close as Pius’s association with the Holocaust might have been, he is unlikely to have been directly responsible for as many deaths as the man who now sits in his place. John Paul II, the Holy Father and Angelic Shepherd, God’s representative on earth and the only living person who is officially and constitutionally infallible is a mass murderer.

Every year the Pope kills tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of the world’s most vulnerable people by the simple expedient of forbidding Catholics to use condoms. While his imprecations are dismissed by most churchgoers in the First World as a load of papal bull, in countries in which there is little access to alternative sources of information and in which women have few rights, every papal decree against contraception sentences thousands to a lingering death.

There’s no question that the Pope sympathises with the victims of AIDS. In Italy he has hugged AIDS patients in public. In San Francisco, he kissed an HIV-positive baby. He has urged sufferers to “feel Jesus at your side, and through your hope bear witness to the life-giving power of his Cross.” Unfortunately, however, he has exercised the power of the cross only to spread death.

Teaching people about safe sex, the Vatican says, is “a dangerous and immoral policy based on the deluded theory that the condom can provide adequate protection against AIDS.” Sex education, “above all in relation to the spread of AIDS” is an “abuse”. In 1995, when a French bishop suggested that people infected with HIV should use condoms, the Pope promptly sacked him. Last month the Vatican used its seat at the UN General Assembly (where, preposterously, it has national status) to disrupt, yet again, the UN’s family planning and AIDS prevention programmes.

There are 122 million Catholics in Africa. Whenever the Pope visits them he explains that the only acceptable form of family planning is strict sexual abstinence. He told the Nigerians that exploiting the poor and ignorant is “a crime against God’s work.” But every year he exploits the poor and ignorant by preaching against the condom.

Many of Africa’s Catholic bishops know that the Pope’s position is absurd, and quietly, privately, they have tried to undermine it. But they are also keenly aware that, unlike dioceses in prosperous countries, they are almost entirely dependent on the Vatican for funding. They know that they and their churches will survive only if, in public, they do precisely as they are told. So in Zambia, Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, some of the countries with the biggest AIDS problems on earth, prominent bishops have insisted that condoms should not be worn. Some, who share the Pope’s views, go further, and suggest that condoms spread AIDS by selectively leaking the virus.

Every time the bishops speak out, they reverse years of awareness raising (often, paradoxically, by Catholic charities and local churches) about AIDS and how to prevent it. Men looking for an excuse to practice unsafe sex seize on the Church’s teachings. People who do use condoms deny it, ensuring that the safe sex message spreads more slowly than the disease.

The Pope’s position reflects not only a fundamentalist interpretation of the laws of God. Like Pius XII, he insists on total political control. Autocratic, backward-looking, both popes have sheathed themselves in ecclesiatical mythology, an infallible barrier to impregnation by reality.

The Vatican wants to celebrate the year 2000 by canonising Pius XII for helping the oppressed. A better way to mark the millennium would surely be the indictment of John Paul II for crimes against humanity.

BBC: Catholic Church attacks Zambian anti-AIDS campaign

The Roman Catholic Church in Zambia has attacked a government-funded safe sex advertising campaign aimed at curbing HIV and AIDS.
The Church's secretariat said the campaign was offensive and in bad taste, encouraging promiscuity and moral decay. It said the adverts suggested to young people that sex was something nice to have if it was done with a condom.
The Zambian Health Minister, Enock Kavindele, said the hard-hitting campaign might be offensive but that the government was dealing with a grave situation which needed shock therapy.
He said he'd told religious leaders that they faced preaching to empty churches if the AIDS crisis wasn't dealt with firmly.
One-in-five Zambians is infected with HIV, and the country has more than half-a-million AIDS orphans -- a figure set to double in the next fourteen years.

ABC: Claims Catholic anti-condom stance contributing to spread of AIDS

LINDA MOTTRAM: The Roman Catholic Church has been accused of putting lives at risk in developing countries because of its ongoing stand against contraception, following remarks made by leading clergy in an upcoming documentary by BBC Television's Panorama program.

In it, church leaders say that condoms are assisting the spread of HIV, a message that's being promoted in some of the countries worst hit by the virus.

Paula Kruger reports.

PAULA KRUGER: In Kenya an estimated 20 per cent of the population is HIV positive, and yet workers at health centres say they are being prevented from distributing condoms because of church opposition.

Archbishop of Nairobi, Raphael Ndingi Nzeki has told the BBC's Panorama program that condoms are assisting the spread of the disease.

RAPHAEL NDINGI NZEKI: The Catholic Church does not advocate use of condoms under any circumstances. They think they are protected. They are not protected.

PAULA KRUGER: And it's a message that comes straight from the top.

The Chair of the Vatican's Council of Family, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo told the program health authorities should be warning people about the dangers of condoms.

...

DON BAXTER: In those countries where it does, and there are some African ones and now it appears, some Asian ones, then I think ultimately the Catholic Church someday will be held accountable and culpable for actually increasing the spread of HIV infections.

BBC: EU criticises Vatican's condom 'bigotry'

The European Union has condemned Catholic Church "bigotry" over the use of condoms to fight HIV.

European Commissioner Poul Nielsen made his comments on the BBC's Panorama programme, broadcast on Sunday.

The Vatican says there is no such thing as safe sex
Mr Nielsen said: "They are hurting and bringing into great danger the lives of millions out there."

BBC: Sex and the Holy City

This week marks 25 years since Pope John Paul was elected to Saint Peter's throne.

Yet as his reign is widely celebrated, millions of women around the world may feel they have reason to regret his long rule - and the global battles he has waged against contraception, abortion and condoms.

In the West, many Catholics ignore the Church's teachings on sex. But in poorer countries - from where the next Pope may emerge - the words of the priest on sex still matter, whether spoken from the pulpit or to a government minister.

The Pope believes everyone - not just the world's billion Catholics - should follow the Vatican's teaching.

The Catholic Church's stand against contraception is "a serious mistake which is costing human lives," Peter Piot, head of the UN's joint program against AIDS (ONUSIDA), said Friday in a interview in the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper.
"When priests preach against using contraception, they are committing a serious mistake which is costing human lives," Piot said.
"We do not ask the Church to promote contraception but merely to stop banning its use," Piot said.

On the ground, in countries worst affected by the HIV/AIDS holocaust, the policy is not supported by the population:

BBC: Poll
When people were asked if children under the age of 14 should be taught that using a condom can protect people from the virus there were huge majorities in favour, more than 90% in Brazil and Mexico, which have two of the largest Catholic populations in the world, despite the Catholic church's opposition to the use of condoms.

or even many church workers:

It is not immoral to use condoms to prevent AIDS

A South African bishop who daily faces the reality of AIDS in his diocese urges the church to reconsider its ban on condoms to stop the spread of HIV. It's not only a matter of chastity, he says, but one of justice—and a prolife issue as well.

More from the BBC.

>> That number actually has a lot to do with the high level of prostitution. There's no way that many condoms could be distributed. <<

Hogwash. How many people do you think there are in Africa? A condom costs about 2 cents or less. To treat someone with HIV/AIDS costs several hundred dollars anually. To that you need to add the cost of a country losing vast numbers of it teachers, nurses and other workers who should be in their most productive years. What is the cost of a child losing both their parents by their fifth birthday?

>> Yes but are the following the other church teachings (like not having sex outside of marriage)? If someone says "I don't use a condom while having sex with my girlfriend because the Pope says not to use condoms" then I call BS. <<

Great, you call BS. In the meantime the woman will have an unwanted child and start the steady decline into illness and death caused by HIV. The child will be an orphan living in an over-crowded orphanage by the age of three or four. By five or six he will suffer his own death from HIV/AIDS.


Right now, we are in the middle of an horrific holocaust. When your grandchild asks you "Where were you during the HIV/AIDS holocaust", what will you be able to answer?

Now go look up Robert Mugabe's stance on the issue.

Thanks anonytmouse for taking a relativly good thread and decending it into the normal relgious flaming.

Because no we are going to start bickering over minute points. There will be flaming from both sides.

Also using words like Holocaust just fan the flames (no pun intended)

Originally Posted by adrianxw

Abstinance/chastity is not now, and never has been a viable policy.

I do it quite well thank you.