1. “It’s easy for us in this country – from the safety of our desks and warm churches – to moral-standpoint on “Africa and all its issues”. But what good does that do?”

Capitan, it is actually vitally important to make sure that you know who and what you are on about before you engage in any course of action.

This is what ethics and morality is all about.
It is completely ludicrous to suggest that any course of action is acceptable as long as it feels like its helping to remedy a situation.

That’s called the end justifying the means – and that’s about the most irresponsible and dangerous moral path that someone can head down.

Imagine if I proposed that the best way to deal with all the AIDS in Africa was by hunting down and shooting all the HIV positive people.
What can’t we do that?

I’ll tell you why; because it’s immoral!

To suggest that we should just commit to a course of action without even questioning the morality of that course of action is insane, and it’s exactly what is wrong with the West right now.

After all; what good does it do to question the morality of war? – lots of Americans think that the invasion of Iraq was actually helpful to dealing with the crisis of terrorism and helping the people of Iraq.

Or what good does it do to question the morality of abortion? – lots of people think that abortion is an excellent solution to teenage pregnancy.

The simple fact, Capitan, is that you are making moral judgments about the Church, and about Westerners not doing more in Africa – yet here you seem to be saying that you oppose the right of others to do exactly the same thing you are doing.

2. “I am incredibly frustrated by all the time and energy put into gathering facts and contructing arguments that discredit condoms, or discredit aid agencies, or discredit the theory behind helping people in need.”

a) Firstly Capitan, I don’t believe anyone (and certainly not the Church) has suggested here that because condom promotion is immoral and ineffective that means that we don’t have to do anything to help people in need.

In fact, if you read my posts I make several references to alternative moral strategies that could easily be employed as alternatives to condom promotion and other current approaches.

Once again, here you are saying that we should just do something without even examining the facts to see if it’s actually an effective or moral course of action – that makes no sense.

What you appear to be saying is that we should just ignore the glaring facts about condom ineffectiveness, the failure of condom strategies and the huge success that fidelity and abstinence is having, in favor of doing things that have been shown to be ineffective, or that don’t address the root causes of the crisis just because some Westerners prefer those methodologies?

b) The “aid agencies” I have made mention of, are nothing more than glorified population control agencies that actively participate in gravely immoral and racist activities aimed at controlling populations.

The UNFPA and IPPF are actively involved in actually carrying out forced abortions in China, on behalf of the communist government there.
When women speak out against this grave evil they are imprisoned and tortured.

If the UNFPA and IPPF are aid agencies then I’m Winnie the Pooh.

c) What’s wrong with challenging a methodology and ideology “behind helping people in need” if that methodology is actually not working, or is making the problem worse, or will not actually provide any lasting benefit?

Surely, any theory should be open to challenge and changing course to become more effective at helping people – if the people behind it are really truly concerned with helping and not just imposing their own morality or worldview on other cultures?

d) “This issue will not go away, and sitting here in New Zealand justifying our inaction – as Catholics and rich Westerners – is unacceptable. In my humble opinion. “

You are completely right that inaction on this issue, or any other serious situation where people are in genuine need is unacceptable and gravely immoral.

But let’s get one thing straight – no one here, least of all the Church, is suggesting that just because condom ideology is immoral and ineffective that means we are free to do nothing in Africa!

In fact; many of us are involved with financial sponsorship and support of organizations that are active in this area.

Let’s face facts – you appear to be suggesting that “if we don’t support condoms we are cruel, heartless beasts who can’t offer anything to Africa”.

This is nonsense.

It’s not “condoms or nothing” – it’s “condoms or abstinence and fidelity”.

Countries with condoms, and no AB are getting nowhere in the fight against AIDS – countries that have adopted an AB first and C as a last resort are winning that fight!

And countries that have AB and no C are doing even better (just look at the Philippines!).

What’s clearly obvious from this is that condoms are NOT what works against AIDS – it’s the AB bit that is the answer!

So the Church, with science and natural law on her side keeps boldly proclaiming the truth!

And in time, history will prove she was right, the question is will those who oppose the Church learn this sooner or later?

I am incredibly frustrated by all the time and energy put into gathering facts and contructing arguments that discredit condoms, or discredit aid agencies, or discredit the theory behind helping people in need. I wish I had the time to rebuff each and every one of your points BTM, but I don’t and for this I’m sorry.

This issue will not go away, and sitting here in New Zealand justifying our inaction – as Catholics and rich Westerners – is unacceptable. In my humble opinion.

So, the Church has a message which
a) is not getting to everyone, and
b) is not being listened to by everyone.

What shall the Church do?
Well, if there is a problem here, it seems to be in the TRANSMISSION of the message, not the content of the message.

“…so what do we do with the poor and destitute who don’t get the message?”

I propose Conan, if this really is a problem, that we explore more ways of communicating the message. Why change it?

Think about it; we in the West have embraced the serious philosophical error of moral relativism (which teaches that there is no absolute truth, and therefore we have no authority to question the morality of another person’s actions).

The reason that we are throwing condoms at Africa instead of dealing with root causes like promiscuity and infidelity, is because we ourselves are so gravely immoral when it comes to human sexuality.

How hypocritical would it look for us to be trying to promote abstinence and fidelity when we are doing the exact opposite ourselves?

We have embraced the stupid and false notion that it is “judgemental” or wrong to challenge the immoral behaviour of another person.

We don’t want to confront the real issues at the heart of this problem because that would mean that the West would have to face up to some rather frightening realities of our own in this regard.

Instead we try and impose our philosophical errors upon Africa.

When you embrace philosophical error; the longer you embrace it the harder it becomes to overcome and the more entrenched it gets.

So we wander into Africa, and instead of dealing with serious root causes, we ignore them or offer solutions that allow the real problems to keep happening – even if it means exposing people to premature and avoidable death.

Our logic becomes circular and insane; promiscuous people need condoms so that they can keep being promiscuous, and then we need more condoms because of all the promiscuous people.

We try and comfort ourselves with reassuring (but seriously erroneous) platitudes like “what people do in the privacy of their own bedroom is their business”.

How ridiculous, and our current HIV, sexual disease, teen pregnancy and abortion problems just prove how false that notion really is.

It’s kind of like the local swimming pool offering a urinating and non-urinating section of the same pool.

A couple of things…

1. “What does the Church do if noone conforms to the moral law it preaches?”
That happens all the time though Conan, on all manner of issues.

Why are we not looking for ways to make adultery safe? After all millions of people are committing adultery on a daily basis and they are exposing their marriages, their wives and their families to physical and emotional risks.

Think about the example of Christ and the rich young man who went away sad – Christ didn’t say “hold on fella, come back, just sell a few of your things and keep the rest and than come follow me”

Or in John 6 when he talked of the Eucharist and when his followers began to disown him he said “this is a hard teaching and not everyone can accept it” – but he didn’t change the teaching because people didn’t like it.

That’s what freewill is all about.

All human beings are endowed with the freewill to choose to do the good, or to commit evil and turn away from the Good.

2. “What then? I’m all for preaching abstinence and fidelity but at what point do you acknowledge that it may not work?”

Conan, all the research on this issue shows us that abstinence and fidelity ARE the very things that are working and making the difference in the fight against AIDS and other sexual diseases.

Uganda, Kenya, Senegal, the Philippines are all places where abstinence and fidelity are kicking the **** of HIV.

In the US alone, at last count, we have at least 11 major sexual abstinence programs that have been shown to produce better results in combating sexual disease than condom programs do.

Yet, countries that promote condoms as the answer are ravaged with AIDS – in fact the countries with the most condom sales have the highest HIV rates.

Like I said earlier – you could take the C out of ABC and you’d still have a hugely successful weapon against HIV, but if you took the AB out and have C on its own then research is clear that the problem gets worse.

3. “I think the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS / HIV is a catch-22 type situation. It may work, but it will also fuel the problem of promiscuity etc.”

Actually Conan – research is clear that condom promotion does actually increase promiscuity and unsafe behaviors.

We must also remember that condom users fail to consistently or correctly use condoms all of the time, which simply increases the spread of the disease.

And finally; CONDOMS ARE NOT 100% FULL PROOF against HIV.

People are debating this issue as if condoms are risk free, or they are the magic silver bullet that will protect people from AIDS – but they aren’t.
The best they can promise is possible reduced risk – but the longer a person carries on having sex with condoms the greater the risk of catching HIV becomes.

Let me quote from the International Planned Parenthood Federation (an organization that exists to promote abortion and contraception)…

“the risk of contracting AIDS during so called protected sex approaches 100 percent as the number of episodes of sexual intercourse increases” – IPPF Medical Bulletin 31

In UK – approximately 80% of emergency contraceptive requests arise from contraceptive failures – which are mainly condoms.

In NZ – a well educated country that is saturated with condom education and condoms – last year was our highest number of HIV cases ever; with one new HIV infection every two days.

4. “But this approach distresses workers on the ground, who regularly see wives who stick by the Catholic teachings of fidelity in marriage infected by their promiscuous husbands. The women and men then die, leaving young children and babies as orphans.”

I’m not sure where you got this quote from, but I’m pretty confident it’d be an organisation that supports condom use in the fight against AIDS.

I mention this because it will affect the way they report issues relating to AIDS in Africa, condoms, etc.

I personally know of a priest in Africa who has told close friends that he has experienced an increased interest in Catholicism from Africans, because the faithful Catholics there have the lowest incidents of HIV infection – and people are seeing that and want to sign on to whatever it is they’ve got!

But aside from that, let’s examine what they are actually saying in the article you quote, and why it is so seriously flawed.

a) You’ve got a promiscuous husband who is committing a gravely immoral act of adultery, and in doing so he is exposing himself and his wife to AIDS

b) The suggestion here is that he will eventually give the disease to his wife and they will both die leaving orphan children

Here’s the problem with introducing condoms into that scenario

a) It reinforces the notion that it is acceptable for the husband to keep committing the gravely immoral act of adultery, and to keep exposing his wife to HIV as long as he uses a condom

b) CONDOMS ARE NOT 100% FULL-PROOF against HIV, which means that the more the husband does what he does, the greater the chance becomes that the wife will STILL get infected with HIV – it may take a little longer with the use of condoms, but the research tells us that sooner or later she will get the disease – so what has really been achieved here???

c) What happens when, even with condom use, the wife gets AIDS from the immoral husband and they both die – now you have an even greater evil; where a child is left orphaned and exposed to all sorts of serious risks (short term and long term).

Why would the Church endorse such a course of action as being morally acceptable?!!

The root cause of this scenario is not the lack of condoms – it’s the behaviour of the husband.

But instead of trying to address this, the condom answer requires that we normalise and try and live with that behaviour by trying to reduce the risk involved in it (but all you end up doing is increasing the time it takes for the person to actually contract the disease).

How does that empower women in Africa?

It doesn’t, because it African men that infidelity and exposing your wife to physical death is acceptable.

Let’s apply this reasoning to another scenario.

I’m in the car with my pregnant wife and I decide that I want to drink and drive, and travel at speeds of 150kph plus in urban city streets.

Does my wife become empowered by wearing her seatbelt and making sure that the ABS is on?
Do my actions now become acceptable and safe because my wife has a seatbelt on?

Is my wife in a better situation because she has a seatbelt on?

Now let me propose a better way of dealing with the scenario you mentioned…

a) Education of the African people, both moral and intellectual, to promote fidelity and the message that promiscuity and adultery are dangerous and socially unacceptable practises.

Now for those reading who think that this is impossible; just stop and think about the success we’ve had in less than 20 years with cigarettes, drink driving and other health and safety campaigns that do exactly this!

b) Make rape a socially and legally unacceptable practise, through education and policing and court infrastructures.

c) Empower women through education and the support of the law to be able to say “no” their husbands without fear of reprisals, rape or violence

d) Equip families with the financial resources they need to become self-sufficient; which would empower women to get away from husbands who continue to fail to live up to the initial methods of dealing with this situation.

Condoms don’t deal with any of these issues, all they do is continue to perpetrate them and make the problem worse.

It may be harm minimisation but most would see it as a quick fix to a problem that could become rampant. I read of this example:

“In Aids-ravaged Africa, the Church has steadfastly maintained its traditional line that chastity and abstinence are the best way to prevent Aids.

But this approach distresses workers on the ground, who regularly see wives who stick by the Catholic teachings of fidelity in marriage infected by their promiscuous husbands. The women and men then die, leaving young children and babies as orphans.”

What does the Church do if noone conforms to the moral law it preaches? What then? I’m all for preaching abstinence and fidelity but at what point do you acknowledge that it may not work?

I think the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS / HIV is a catch-22 type situation. It may work, but it will also fuel the problem of promiscuity etc.

Also…

A person with AIDS is not exempt from moral law – they cannot just wander around sleeping with people and knowingly exposing them to death.

That is a gravely immoral act.

Just as it would be a gravely immoral act for me to wander round injecting people with anthrax because I wanted to feel good.