Bonnie Erbe, Useful Idiot
Posted by: tony on 03/19/2009 05:27 PM
Updated by: tony on 03/19/2009 05:27 PM
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Expires: 04/19/2009 12:00 AM
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I was pointed to an article in U.S. News and World Report by Fr. Z. It's yet another Pope bashing screed by yet another liberal airhead. She writes:
Back to Africa: Pope Benedict told a tumultuous welcoming crowd in Yaounde, Cameroon's capital, that not only do condoms fail to prevent the spread of AIDS, "On the contrary, they increase the problem." It was his most provocative, delineated anti-condom pronouncement since his election in 2005. Moreover, he made the statement as he began his visit to the most AIDS-ravaged continent. In Africa, more than 25 million people have died of AIDS, and another 22 million plus are living with the disease.
And the Pope is 100% correct. Another Pope, Paul VI, predicted this in his encyclical, Humanae Vitae. This encyclical, about the role of marital love and the dangers of artificial contraceptive use got the same reception as this most recent Pope's pronouncement.
If you are afraid of pregnancy or STDs, you will generally not have sex a lot. Oh, you may slip up once in a while, but you will generally not risk pregnancy or a venereal disease. If you have the false sense of security of a thin piece of latex, you will not worry about it, because after all, you have been told that this is "safe sex".
Let me use a simplistic example. Let's say that we use the most flattering statistics that condoms are 95% effective when used properly and you use them properly all the time. If you do not have access to condoms, you might slip up and have sex once, maybe twice over the course of a year. If you have a condom and you are safe, you might have sex 50 times over the course of a year.
If you silp up that once, you have a greater chance of getting pregnant or a disease because you're not using the condom. If you do it 50 times, you have a one out of 20 chance of getting pregnant or a disease each of those 50 times. It is the difference between tossing the dice once and tossing it 50 time. Sooner or later you might be seeing those snake eyes.
So having the condom prompts you to take a smaller chance an order of magnitude greater times guaranteeing that you will increase your chance of getting pregnant or some disease (many of them incurable). My example might double or triple your chance (depending on how much sex you have and how faithful you are using the condom).
Now she goes off the tracks:
The Pope advised them, according to the Reuters news agency, to exhibit, "correct behavior regarding one's body." Very helpful! That advice is completely useless to the typical "woman" in Africa who contracts the disease. Her profile is that of a teenage virgin sold into marriage against her will and "betrothed" to a much older man with many lovers who carries AIDS and refuses to use protection.
So advocating condom use will be helpful when a man treats his wife like chattel and refuses to use protection.
She finishes up with:
Pope Benedict has shown no sympathy for wives whose husbands have AIDS. A less compassionate or understanding view of their situation than his is hard to fathom.
Teaching that your body is a temple of God and that you should use your God-given sexuality in the way God designed is not "compassionate"?
"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." - G. K. Chesterton
It might be time for our society and world to try it. They might be pleasantly surprised.
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