POPE ATTACKED ON AIDS COMMENTS
It was on March 17, on the airplane on the way to Cameroon at the beginning of his first African voyage, that Pope Benedict XVI sparked a world-wide controversy. The strange thing is that controversy was engendered not by some new, unusual, surprising or unlikely comments, but by the very simple reiteration that the use of condoms is immoral, and cannot be the solution to the problem of AIDS - a most obvious and constant teaching of the Catholic Church.
Here is the offending text, in response to an interviewer:
“It is my belief that the most effective presence on the front in the battle against HIV/AIDS is precisely the Catholic Church and her institutions. I would say that this problem of AIDS cannot be overcome with advertising slogans. If the soul is lacking, if Africans do not help one another, the scourge cannot be resolved by distributing condoms; quite the contrary, we risk worsening the problem.”
“The solution can only come through a twofold commitment: firstly, the humanization of sexuality, in other words a spiritual and human renewal bringing a new way of behaving towards one another; and secondly, true friendship, above all with those who are suffering, a readiness - even through personal sacrifice - to be present with those who suffer. And these are the factors that help and bring visible progress.”
The evidence for the truth of his statement is overwhelming, not only as a principle of Catholic morality, that condemns all forms of artificial birth control as a mortal sin, but also as an experiential fact. The only country that has succeeded in battling AIDS is Uganda, and this has been done not through the use of condoms, but rather by the promotion of chastity before marriage and fidelity afterwards.
Here are some pertinent remarks by Joseph Meaney of Human Life International:
“Who could have imagined the cultural decay in the last 40 years? An object only associated with prostitution and moral degeneracy then is now a sacrosanct medical necessity ardently defended by the most influential governments and institutions like the World Health Organization. It is time that we stood up for the truth…
Any honest expert such as Edward Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, has to admit; ‘We have found no consistent associations between condom use and lower HIV-infection rates, which, 25 years into the pandemic, we should be seeing if this intervention was working.’
The only countries that have managed to successfully fight the spread of AIDS are those which emphasized chastity - abstinence before marriage and faithfulness afterwards.”
Nevertheless, the Pope was publicly chastised and condemned for these remarks by several European governments, including the formerly Catholic countries of Belgium and Spain. The various episcopacies have come to the Pope’s defense, both in Europe and in Africa, with statements such as this one from the Congolese bishops (May 5) concerning condom use: “[It] is not only an ethical disorder but above all the proof of the trivialization of sexuality in our society. Instead of preventing the spread of the disease, and without even guaranteeing complete security, [it] heightens human seflishness, worsens the problem, and encourages people to let themselves be driven by their sexual instincts and divests sexuality of its religious and symbolic functions.”
These statements by the Pope and the bishops are perfectly true on the natural level, and refer to the perversity of modern sexual licentiousness, opposed to the most elementary and fundamental principles of the natural law. However, it is by remaining on the natural level that they open themselves up to secular attack. Their considerations are all about the dignity of man, of human sexuality and of human relationships. But what about the commandments of God, starting with the sixth? What about the value of the virtues of virginity and chastity, of self-sacrifice and of the Cross? What about the marriage act as having children as its first and primary purpose? What about the sacredness of the marriage bond as a sacrament? What about AIDS as a punishment and a chastisement drawn upon mankind by the sins and perversions of the end of the 20^th^ century? It is by placing itself on the secular level, and presuming to offer a secular and human solution to the AIDS problem, that the Church has opened itself to attack from without.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.