Lessons in Holocaust Denial, Part II
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 ...
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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