Pope Benedict XVI said on his way to Africa Tuesday that condoms were not the answer in the continent's fight against HIV, his first explicit statement on an issue that has divided even clergy working with AIDS patients.
Benedict had never directly addressed condom use. He has said that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against AIDS. The Vatican encourages sexual abstinence to fight the spread of the disease.
"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon, where he will begin a seven-day pilgrimage on the continent. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."
These are the views of the alleged Vicar of God on earth. The voodoo-like belief by modern Roman Catholicism concerning human sexuality has led the Vicar of God to make such an outrageously ridiculous statement about condom use.
For the Head of God's Church on Earth, the prospect of slowing the spread of an incurable disease through condom use is not a compelling enough reason for encouraging the use of them. God has spoken…condom use, "increases the problem."
Pope Benedict and Rick Warren agree on condoms…
(Rick) Warren’s defense against charges of intolerance ultimately depends upon his ace card: his heavily publicized crusade against AIDS in Africa.
Warren’s allies have rolled back key elements of one of the continent’s most successful initiative, the so-called ABC program in Uganda. Stephen Lewis, the United Nations’ special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, told the New York Times their activism is “resulting in great damage and undoubtedly will cause significant numbers of infections which should never have occurred.”
Warren’s man in Uganda is a charismatic pastor named Martin Ssempa.
Ssempa’s stunts have included burning condoms in the name of Jesus and arranging the publication of names of homosexuals in cooperative local newspapers while lobbying for criminal penalties to imprison them.When Warren unveiled his global AIDS initiative at a 2005 conference at his Saddleback Church, he cast Ssempa as his indispensable sidekick, assigning him to lead a breakout session on abstinence-only education as well as a seminar on AIDS prevention.
The Dr. Phil of modern evangelical Christianity, Rick Warren, touting his window-dressed fundamentalism in the form of his, "The Purpose Driven Life", finds agreement with Pope Benedict on condoms. They both favor abstinence-only approaches to human sexuality.
Benedict and Warren are both official spokesmen for the Christ of Christianity.
Is it any wonder, then, that Christianity is continuing to lose credibility in a modern world? Benedict and Warren are so caught up in their own self-righteousness over "the gay", that they have become totally blind to the part they are now playing in increasing the spread of AIDS.
I find it sickening in it's irony that today's American representative of Protestant Christianity, a movement originally begun as a "protest" of Roman Catholic abuses, has come full-circle to now agree with the science-denying, homophobic, voodoo-sexuality ignorance as reflected in Benedict's latest statement on condom use.
Christopher Hitchens writes in his book, "God is Not Great", that "religion poisons everything." Pope Benedict's latest expression of ignorance…..condom use "increases the problem" of AIDS….is simply the most recent expression of that "poison."
