Perennial mouthpiece of dissident Catholicism James Carroll, writing on the Boston Globe’s op-ed pages has yet another inane article about the Church’s teaching on condoms and AIDS.
Carroll writes that you can’t stop AIDS without condoms and the Church is letting people die by ignoring that.
Catholic hospitals and other ministries threw themselves into caring for those who became infected, and today, across Europe, Africa, and the Americas, much of such care is provided in Catholic settings. But the urgent need for active prevention soon showed itself, and because the disease can be transmitted sexually, that required the advocacy of condom use.
No, it doesn’t require the advocacy of condom use because there is a perfectly fine alternative that is 100 percent effective (as opposed to condoms, which are not): abstinence. Yep, it is 100 percent effective every time you use it.
But you can’t seriously expect people not to have sex. Why, asking people not to have sex could turn them into sexual predators who attack children (at least according to those who think celibacy was the cause of the Scandal).
The Vatican has a special responsibility here, for it not only repeatedly rejected condom use for the sake of HIV prevention, but argued—for example in its 2003 document “Family Values and Safe Sex”—that condoms, instead of inhibiting the spread of HIV/AIDS, promote it.
False sense of security
Technorati Tags: abstinence, AIDS, Catholic, condoms, contraception, doctrine
