When I think of the Vatican's record in Africa, I think of its failure to acknowledge what happened in Rwanda, where priests and nuns not only led the death squads to Tutsi refugees cowering in their churches, but provided the petrol to burn them alive, took part in the shootings and raped survivors. Rwanda was Africa's most devout Catholic nation, and the role the Church played in condoning and fostering the Hutu extremism that climaxed in genocide is as shameful as its collaboration with the Nazis. – Michela Wrong
When I was young a familiar chant from loyalists was ‘kick the pope.’ I used to find it strange that anybody wanted to kick our great holy man. Now I feel that any African who doesn’t want to kick him must be a lower limb double amputee.
Africa is the continent most ravished by the HIV/AIDS virus. At the same time it is estimated that around 17 per cent of people living there are Catholics and that it the fastest growing region in the world for the church. As many other areas descale their eyes of religious goo Africa sees it thriving. In decline elsewhere because of the rise of secularism and the relentless push of science, the church hierarchy is quick to spot the potential in a vast fetid pool of misery where harmful social and political bacteria fuse and mutate, creating the optimum conditions in which the virus of religion might flourish. Pope Joe Ratzinger is in the continent at the moment, celebrating mass in Angola as I write. He wants to maintain the growth rate for Catholicism and is determined to ensure that the Catholic Church is not threatened by competition from ‘the growing influence of superstitious forms of religion.’ His superstition is better than theirs sort of thing.
His advanced priestcraft, against the other more retarded phenomenon of witchcraft which he has warned Angolans to avoid, fosters the illusion that there is a better reward in the afterlife for those who refuse to wear the condom during sex. On the way through the pearly gates the pecker checker will carry out inspections. There should be no shortage of priestly contenders for that job. Those who go bareback will receive tickets to the choir of angels’ eternal performance while the rubber renegades can try somewhere else. Ratzinger lacks the gall to sell this ridiculous position in more explicit terms that would spell out for the victims of his diktat that the afterlife of paradise is likely to come much sooner if condoms are not worn.
Quentin Sattentau, professor of Immunology at Oxford University argued that Ratzinger’s position:
represents a major step backward in terms of global health education, is entirely counter-productive, and is likely to lead to increases in H.I.V. infection in Africa and elsewhere … there is a large body of published evidence demonstrating that condom use reduces the risk of acquiring H.I.V. infection, but does not lead to increased sexual activity.
It seems an outrage that a body as large as the African Catholic community could be asked to accept the view of Ratzinger that ‘the traditional teaching of the Church has proven to be the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids’ and that the use of condoms should be avoided. On a plane taking him to Cameroon, there seemed no more appropriate a place for him to have made the comment - far removed from the ground. The world the pope and his ilk live in has been described by the author Malachi O Doherty as ‘medieval’. He has chosen to follow in the footsteps of the his arch conservative predecessor the Pole, Karol Józef Wojtyła, who in the words of Michela Wrong ‘probably contributed more to the continental spread of the disease than the trucking industry and prostitution combined … John Paul II has the blood of innocents on his hands.’
What, but more misery, suffering, death and disease can Catholicism offer Africa where it insists on tackling the AIDS epidemic through fidelity and abstinence not condoms? A silent genocide with more victims than either Dafur or Rwanda, and where the culpable masquerade as men of a loving god. If Joe Ratzinger does not want to wear a condom that is a matter for himself. By seeking to control the lives of others by ascribing some divine endorsement to such a life saving practice is a con of astronomical proportions. It is as cruel as it is enormous, making it hard to disagree with Rebecca Hodes, of the working Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa who dismissed the former Hitler Youth member’s remarks as alienating, ignorant and pernicious.
The lengths to which the church hierarchy will go to sustain this gigantic con is evidenced from the comments of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo who in late 2003 sought to blame perforations in the condoms through which fluid would seep. What altar boy testified to that I wonder? Perhaps his Most Reverend Eminence the cardinal chose one, purely for experimental purposes of course, from a faulty batch. In any event his ridiculous assertion was rubbished by the World Health Organization: ‘these incorrect statements about condoms and HIV are dangerous when we are facing a global pandemic which has already killed more than 20 million people, and currently affects at least 42 million.’
Nor is it being seriously proposed by critics of Ratzinger that condoms will cure AIDS. Jon O’Brien, President of Catholics for Choice, hit out at the papal stance, saying ‘this is a myopic view of sexuality and a nonsense-based approach to public health. We have never argued that condoms are a panacea for Aids. But they are an absolutely vital health measure to help stem the spread of HIV and Aids.’ O’Brien went on to claim that the Vatican was seeking to pressurize governments and aid agencies across the world to ensure that the provision of condoms did not feature in any aid packages.
Modern science has devised a way to prevent the spread of this disease. As Craig McClure, Executive Director of the International AIDS Society, reflects, ‘to suggest that condom use contributes to the HIV problem is not merely contrary to scientific evidence and global consensus, it contributes to fuelling HIV infection and its consequences - sickness and death…’
The church can pray all it wants and throw holy water over the pecker but it is all rubbish with the one guarantee being that it will not work. Condom use performs more miracles than Lourdes, yet no sainthood for the person who came up with the idea. Ultimately, the pope is helping spread this disease. The power of religious opinion coming from a figure as senior as the Catholic pontiff over people who retain a superstitious belief system cannot be underestimated. It is not just issued as an opinion but as a law, a command, meant to be obeyed even if the power to physically enforce it is no longer an option available to the church. As Craig McClure observes. ‘Catholics throughout Africa rely on the spiritual guidance of the Pope.’
Africans, of course, like others do not have to blindly follow Vatican edicts on condoms or anything else for that matter. They are capable of making informed choices but that depends on the extent to which they are informed. Philip Gourevitch once pointed out that the Rwandan genocide was so successful in its implementation because the government backed radio was the one source of information that the public was getting. When it urged Hutus to go out and kill their neighbour that is what many of them did. Similarly Johann Hari condemned lies about condoms 'proclaimed from pulpits in rural African churches where illiterate villagers often had no other source of information’
There is a mountain of information out there. The challenge is how to get it to those whose lives depend on making the proper choices. Subverting ignorance is crucial to the survival of millions.
Julio Montaner. President of the International AIDS Society has challenged the promotion of ignorance most strongly:
Instead of spreading ignorance, the Pope should use his global position of leadership to encourage young people, who are our future, to protect themselves and others from HIV infection using all the tools we have at our disposal, including condoms … his remarks are insulting to the tireless efforts of committed scientific, public health and human rights leaders around the world to protect the poorest of the poor from HIV infection.
‘Let there be light’ so that Ratzinger may be thwarted in his efforts to lead multitudes of victims into the ‘heart of darkness’.
Written 21 March 2009
Anthony,
ReplyDeleteWhile I understand that your desire to promote secularism frequently leads you to attack the Catholic Church, the merits of this particular issue are far far more complicated than you allow in your post or indeed what the papers would have us think.
While I will not defend Cardinal Trujillo's absurdities, Pope Benedict's comments deserve a fairer hearing. Edward Green, AIDS researcher at Harvard University agreed with the Pope's remarks, (http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=102138) While plenty of assertions have been made about the Vatican's influence and destructive attitude on this issue, no one has presented one shred of evidence that Catholic populations have higher rates of infection than Africa's Muslim, animist, or atheist populations? Do Mass goers, those you know most likely to actually listen to the Pope acquire the virus in a higher proportion than non-Mass goers? There is no evidence of this whatsoever.
Perhaps you would like the Catholic church to shut down and fold up. Fair enough. But you would be shutting down an awful lot of hospitals, aid, medicine, nurse workers, and people who go into the areas of Africa others won't. I'm sorry that's not been your experience with the Church, and that's fine but realize that not everyone's experience. It is supreme foolishness to pretend that only the Catholic church has a set of pre-existing ideas on sexual matters that it embraces as it does its work, the liberationist sexual ethic that flourishes in the West (and undergirds many aid organisations) is just as much a pre-existing cultural belief, that amounts to imperialism in its own way when exported to other areas of the globe which reject that ethic.
I regret that your writings on the Church is undermined by ridiculous juvenille comments (the Hitler Youth comment is as debunked as can possibly be for someone who takes 5 minutes to research the facts, but I suppose that would get in the way of the shock appeal, no different than a Rangers supporter in that regard), whilst your writings on the North and the "peace process" are brilliant models of clarity and rational discourse.
Anonymous, some interesting comments. There is a much better link on Green than the one you provided. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2009/03/aids_expert_who_defended_the_p.html .
ReplyDeleteWhile he is not without merit his defences did not bear up too well against the scrutiny and probing of Crawley.
For those of us who are not scientists but who take our lead from science because it really has no competitors that explain the world, the scientific evidence is heavily in favour of the use of condoms as a strategy of prevention. Green, despite backing Ratzinger, nevertheless diverges from him on his position on condoms distribution. Point is, whatever view Green holds, with the evidence available should condoms be made available or not? The answer seems a clear yes and Ratzinger is contemptible in opposing it. There is nothing wrong with his other recommendations, even if made for reasons that have more to do with religious observance than with real life situations, but to suggest no condoms, and to undermine aid packages if they contain condoms, seems malign.
Yes, there are good people in the church who do good work abroad. I give to SVP because I see them doing good with my own eyes. But if you are suggesting that there is some necessary link between behaving ethically and religion, I reject that entirely.
Hitler Youth – debunked? It’s hard to see this comment as something other than an attempt to mislead. Given the weak Green link I would have expected at least some link showing, as you clearly imply, that Ratzinger was not in the Hitler Youth. It would have taken you at most five minutes. Are you telling me he was not in it? Because that is what a literal interpretation of your remarks would conclude. I said nothing other than that he was. So there is no space to debunk anything other than the comment that he was in the Hitler Youth. I guess you will search google for five years without coming up with evidence that Ratzinger was not in the Hitler Youth. I defend my Hitler Youth comment on polemical grounds rather than analytical ones, for its scorn value above shock value. It can hardly have been said for shock value given that no one can be shocked. It is probably more of a shock to learn that he was not in it so I await your link. Hopefully you do not give me a link telling us that he was in it ‘but, however, yet, nevertheless …’ That would only sound like ‘While President Clinton smoked a joint he didn’t inhale.’ To which I would only say, ‘aye, right’.
Moreover, the Hitler Youth comment invokes wider imagery of the church’s disgusting stance during the war including the German church and the Vatican. And in a more nebulous way it drifts into the totalitarianism of Ratzinger and the way he operated purging dissidents within the church.
Of course I would like to see the back of the church; it disbanded and its clerics decommissioned. But the only way of achieving that would be draconian so I would not go for that option. It has the right to exist like any other body of opinion, should it be a football supporters club, a Satanist society, or a tree worshipping group. So I would not lobby for it to be banned. I would oppose faith schools of all types including CMS. It is not just the involvement of Catholic clerics in widespread chid rape and the hierarchy’s complicity in the cover up that makes me loathe to see them near schools, simply my own view that schooling should be the responsibility of the state in society not the clerics. Religion could be taught in schools but only as a phenomenon and not as a truth.
So I can write about the peace process all I want but get back into my box when it comes to superstition? Not a chance.
Anonymous said: "But you would be shutting down an awful lot of hospitals, aid, medicine, nurse workers, and people who go into the areas of Africa others won't". I think one has to recognise that catholics who dedicate their lives to humanitarian aid are probably representative of people who would spend their life in this type of work anyway, whatever their religion or lack thereof. After all there are many other organisations like Medecins Sans Frontiers, Oxfam or Emergency which are not moved by a religious ethos and which are staffed and supported by no less worthy individuals. The official doctrine of the church is, on the other hand, promulgated by a group of male celebates who often live together in obedience to certain rules. Have you ever wondered why they seem obsessed with sex and human reproduction while sins against other commandments seem to get much shorter shrift?
ReplyDeleteAlex
A useful link, to which I am indebted to Damian O'Loan for providing.
ReplyDeletehttp://belfasttobrussels.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/the-popes-contribution-to-neo-nazi-propoganda/