New "news" is often old hat. How many times, for instance, did Pope Benedict fall off the wall and crash into bits on the cobblestone of media ignorance? The last debacle came with an explosive outcry. All of them are based on the false assumptions that 1) Pope Benedict hates the very idea of sex 2) He is, at best, an idiot and at worse the proponent of a eugenics campaign aimed at killing Africans by depriving them of condoms 3) only condoms can prevent AIDS in Africa and 4) defending a human centered approach (rather than a condom based one) is the only rational, relevant and effective way to reverse the HIV epidemic in Africa.
Oddly, those in the know agree with the out-of-date, head-in-the-sand, ignoramus who lives in Rome. Edward C. Green of the Harvard AIDS Prevention Research Project has argued and continues to argue that AIDS prevention based on condom dissemination not only doesn't work, it works the other way. Studies show, that, in contrast, efforts that promote abstinence and/or monogamy work best. These are exactly the medieval methods the pope and his ignorant henchman have been advocating all along. Lucky or a principled strategy based on a solid understanding of the human person and what it's capable of?
Meanwhile the condom camp struggles because it devalues the people it supposedly serves. The "saftey net" condoms are supposed to provide leads, ironically, to increased risk taking. This, then leads to increased HIV, AIDS and STD infection rates. Seems the media mouth opened too soon?
As I alluded to earlier, the question of why the Church has spearheaded such a successful campaign against AIDS (in Uganda, for instance) is based on it's total understanding of what a person is, can be and should be. As Laura Schlessinger wrote recently, this has to do with the potential that the pope still sees in humanity, even as his media pundits sling mud at the notion that people can control themselves:
"When the Pope suggests that human beings are best off saving their sexual passion for the stability of a covenant of marriage, he is making a statement that the act of sexuality is elevated by the context, and ultimately protects both man and woman from a myriad of hurtful consequences from venereal diseases to unwanted pregnancies (complete with abortions, abandonment, single-parenthood, and homelessness to name a few).
The naysayers all have one thing in common: they refuse to want, believe or accept that human beings can commit to a higher spiritual state of thought and behavior. The Pope believes in us more than that.
I am not Catholic, so this is no knee-jerk defense of my spiritual leader. The truth is that he is simply correct and too many people don't want to hear it, because they want to live lives unfettered by rules. It is sad that they don't realize that this makes them a slave to animal impulse versus a master of human potential."
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