Let Them Have Condoms

By
(Originally posted 12/01/05, this post has been edited to include new links.)

South African Bishop Opposes Vatican's Ban on Condoms

Can anyone tell me what's wrong with this story? Anyone? Perhaps it's this:
A Catholic bishop in South Africa has become a leading opponent of the church's ban on the use of condoms.

Bishop Kevin Dowling presides over Rustenburg, an impoverished mining town that has been ravaged by HIV/ AIDS. With so much suffering caused by the virus, Dowling considers the Vatican's ban morally unacceptable.

The Bishop works with young single mothers and their children who have HIV/AIDS. The women live around the mine to sell themselves to the men who work in the mines. Presumably when these men go home to their wives they infect them as well. No mention was made of teaching these women some life skills so that they don't have to make a living by selling their bodies. Nope, let's just push condoms at them (getting mad at those who challenge the world's dependence on condoms) and leave them to continue in a lifestyle that devalues them and will lead to their deaths.

Relaxing the Catholic Church's stance on condoms will do nothing to help the thousands of women, children, and infants who are regularly raped in South Africa. Nor will it do anything to change the attitudes of the rapists or those who pay poor women for sex.

This story gets more and more disturbing with every read and I'm having a hard time putting it into words. The sexual exploitation of women all over the world won't be alleviated by condoms. This Bishop, a person of authority in the church, essentially wants to enable these women to continue in sin and suffering. He seeks to help them avoid the consequences of sin not by helping them to go and sin no more but by offering them the flimsy false protection of a little piece of latex.

Depending on who you ask the failure rate of condoms is anywhere from 3% to 17%. It's all well and good for secularists to scoff at the idea that there's a better solution to the scourge of AIDS than condoms. Their skepticism can even help keep Christians on the straight and narrow. But Christians should really be able to expect more from those who shepherd the flock.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Rise Up In The Darkness

By
Image
The teenager who joked with me over physics and algebra homework tonight was 6 months old the morning of September 11, 2001. He spent that day like many other 6 month olds spend their days, exploring his world and being saved from his own curiosity by mom. That morning after I got tired of hauling him back from the edge of the bed he was intent on crawling over I took him downstairs to safer level terrain. I turned on the television to check the news like I did every morning back then. At first I was horrified by what I saw. One smoldering tower. Not long after, while all the reporters and newscasters were struggling to make sense of what they were seeing, one plane, another tower, and I was pissed. At that point I understood what was happening. Why did people think, and still think, that kind of wretchedness served their cause? I didn't care what the cause was. These were arrogant fools. But the news kept coming about just how wretched humanity had been to itself that day. The
Read more

Treating autism as traumatic brain injury

By
I've been doing research into autism, dyspraxia, how the normal brain works, and how an autistic/dyspraxic brain works (or doesn't work). Traumatic injury to different parts of the brain can cause the same problems suffered by autistic and dyspraxic children. Compare this list of the functions of different parts of the brain and the problems caused by injuries to those areas with these descriptions of dyspraxia and autism. What is Developmental Dyspraxia? Developmental dyspraxia is a disorder characterized by an impairment in the ability to plan and carry out sensory and motor tasks. Generally, individuals with the disorder appear "out of sync" with their environment. Symptoms vary and may include poor balance and coordination, clumsiness, vision problems, perception difficulties, emotional and behavioral problems, difficulty with reading, writing, and speaking, poor social skills, poor posture, and poor short-term memory. Although individuals with the disorder may b
Read more

Battlestar Galactica needs more colour?

By
Here are the letters I mentioned in the previous post. The one that started it (I'm guessing these letters were written after the show's first airing at the end of 2003): Galactica Needs More Diversity The problem I had with Battlestar Galactica was there were no major and very few minor African American characters. There were no Black men in the show at all or if they were, they had virtually no screentime. In the original series, Boomer and Tigh were both played by African American actors. In this rendition of Battlestar, those characters were played by Asian and White actors. In the Caprica city, there no African American extras. On the Galactica's bridge, there was only one African American actress. Another Black actress could be found playing a religious official that swore in the new President of the colonies. This was very troubling to me. Do you not want African Americans to watch your show? Do you want to project the idea that African Americans are not part of the
Read more