So, while it's insane to expect people to follow the Pope's advice on abstinance, people will listen to the Pope's advice on condoms. We are worried that these people, who may or may not be Catholic, will still adhere to this one and only one doctrine that the Pope professes. Because the Pope states that it is a FACT that condoms make things worse, rather than his beliefs, people will still listen to him, and this will make the AIDS epidemic work. Do I get the idea?
No. Not exactly. False facts will inevitably take on lives of their own apart from their religious origins, in a largely illiterate culture. This goes for Africa, and also for the US, where the anti-condom campaign is
intentionally divorced from its religious origins to
encourage young people not to associate their false beliefs about condoms with religion.
Here's how it works: Sam and Pam are fooling around. Pam says "please, would you wear a condom Sam?" Sam says "No way! Condoms are laced with HIV, didn't you know? Besides, they don't even prevent pregnancy. They're like nets that sperm can pass through." Pam says "Really? Where did you hear that from?" Sam way more likely to say "Everybody knows it!" or "I heard about it on the radio" than "the pope says so." Why? Because it makes a better argument for not wearing a condom, and unprotected sex feels better to men. If Pam believes this, she can sit down to tea with her neighbours and say "Sam heard it on the radio", or "everybody knows" in complete sincerity and POOF. Nothing to do with the pope or the church. It's just a wandering unit of misinformation.
I honestly don't know why anyone is having trouble seeing this. "Do not have sex before marriage" is
clearly a religious opinion - an imperative statement you can obey or disobey. "Condoms are permeable to HIV and sperm / are laced with HIV / hasten the spread of HIV" are
false statements of fact, not imperative statements you can obey or disobey. When people aren't wearing condoms because they've been subjected to religious "abstinence education", they are not "obeying the pope". They are "believing false statements of fact".
It doesn't matter who such claims come from - anyone with a platform that can be used to spread
false facts with very little competition can change the "common sense" of a continent. (Take Faux News for example.) The RCC is using their position of influence in Africa to misinform the entire continent about the effectiveness of condoms in the prevention of infection and unwanted pregnancy.
I think that while you may be right, it's also possible that this may not happen. We don't know until we actuall gather the information to graph it and see whether the problem has worsened or not.
So, you are saying, it's OK for the pope - the voice of Christ on earth according to Victor - to LIE to the Catholic church, the media, and the whole world, and to refuse to chastise other liars within the church, and to refuse to prohibit the spread of
misinformation about methods of disease control by clergy. That's alright with you until the
facts have been gathered and the statistics crunched and analyzed (presumably by the secular community, since fact-gathering is not a particular strength of the RCC) and scientists establish whether or not the forked-tongue approach to abstinence advocacy has had any effect?
How very Machiavellian. I think where we disagree is that believe lying is
always wrong, even when the motive for deceit is what someone considers to be a positive outcome. For
some Catholics (those who are not disgusted by the RCC's position on condoms), it seems, lying is OK, as long as the lies are believed to further the cause of sexual repression, and sexual repression is believed to further the cause of spiritual salvation.
