When millions of people in a country like Brazil, which is, for all intents and purposes, a sexual free-for-all have AIDS, who do you blame?
The government for encouraging prostitution in the streets of Rio to attract tourists?
The porn industry, which so flourishes in that country?
The transsexuals, a group Brazil is known for?
Why no, of course not.
You blame the Pope because he’s against condoms.
But at the same time, the Vatican’s ban on condoms has cost many hundreds of thousands of lives from AIDS. So when historians look back at the Catholic Church in this era, they’ll give it credit for having fought Communism and helped millions of the poor around the world. But they’ll also count its anti-condom campaign as among its most tragic mistakes in the first two millennia of its history.
I find it an interesting juxtaposition. The other ills in Brazil (you know, the ones causing these issues in the first place?) are also things the Pope is against, and yet somehow those can be ignored. But the one issue that these fine upstanding Catholics can’t ignore is the ban on artificial birth control.
Think about that.
So if Pope Benedict wants to ease human suffering, then there’s one simple step he could take that would save vast numbers of lives. He could encourage the use of condoms, if not for contraception, then at least to fight AIDS. That choice between obeying tradition and saving lives is stark, and let’s all pray he’ll make the courageous choice.
The courageous choice? He’s also made a choice to not support prostitution and pornography, and yet the entire country is full of it! Why is some dogma unfollowable, but others so strictly followable that it’s “causing deaths?”
That could only possibly make sense to a liberal like Kristof looking for an excuse to pin the world AIDS crisis on anyone but the people having sex.
Source: Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times (color me stunned) via Open Book