The Pope has gone from denying one Holocaust to effectively
promoting another.
For those who thought
that Pope Benedict couldn't do more damage to his own reputation or that of the
Catholic Church than caused by his embrace of a Holocaust-denying bishop
earlier this year, it has taken him less than two months to achieve that
particular miracle of negative transcendence.
Traveling to Africa for the first time, Benedict stated that the AIDS
epidemic is:
[A] tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, and that cannot be overcome
through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems."
Over 30 million people are currently living
with AIDs worldwide. Approximately 23
million of them live in Africa. Over 25
million people have died of AIDS since 1981, of these, about 1.5 million die in
Africa each year. There are currently
over 11 million AIDs orphans in Africa. Over 59 percent of the people in Africa infected with AIDS
are
women. According to the World Health
Organization, condom use reduces the risk of HIV infection by 90 percent.
While
Benedict's defenders will no doubt argue that he is merely promoting church
doctrine, his proposed alternatives of chastity and fidelity are hopelessly
unrealistic. This is a reason there is
even a debate about the doctrine at the highest levels of the Church,
suggesting a level of doubt about the use of condoms unreflected in the Pope's
sweeping and reckless statement. The doctrine is dangerous and promoting it is therefore,
at best, reckless. Africa, according to a story on the Pope's statement which
ran in the Times of London, is "the
continent where the Roman Catholic Church is growing fastest."
CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP/Getty Images
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