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PDF versionAvoiding 'condom-gate' in Africa
by John L Allen Jr on Nov. 04, 2011
In two weeks Pope Benedict XVI will make his second visit to Africa, spending Nov. 18-20 in the West African nation of Benin. No one from the Vatican has asked me for advice on the trip, but I’m going to offer some here anyway.
In a nutshell, it’s this: Try to handle the condoms question more artfully. It would be nice if the pope’s second outing to Africa isn’t utterly capsized by the latest round of “condom-gate.”
To be concrete, I’ll volunteer three thoughts on a communications strategy.
- Don’t pretend the pope can go to Africa and duck questions about condoms and AIDS, especially because he’s muddied the waters himself with some recent comments. But also don’t pretend that he can just toss off a few casual remarks without inviting a media frenzy.
- Make sure whatever Benedict says is presented in a way, and at a time, that doesn’t overshadow other storylines about Africa that deserve to register in the West.
- Also ensure the presentation doesn’t make the pope look isolated, but rather gets across that he’s reflecting a broad religious consensus in Africa, as well as the conclusions of many secular experts. People may still contest whatever he says, but at least they won’t be able to caricature him as an octogenarian European crank.
To grasp the relevance of that advice, let’s take a stroll down memory lane to the last time Benedict was in Africa, visiting Cameroon and Angola in March 2009.
Heading in to that trip, Vatican officials said Benedict wanted to use it to tell a “good news” story, focusing especially on the mind-blowing growth of Catholicism on the continent. The pope also wanted to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with African Catholics in their struggle for social change, especially the fight against corruption. He memorably did so in Cameroon. On a platform next to strongman President Paul Biya, a former Catholic seminarian who presides over a regime once rated by Transparency International as the most corrupt on earth, the pope said, “In the face of … corruption or abuse of power, a Christian can never remain silent.”
For Africans, that image of the pope speaking truth to power was the key moment of the trip. In Europe and the United States, however, most people had no idea it ever happened, because coverage was instead dominated by the “Great Condoms Debate.”
To recap, Benedict spoke briefly to reporters aboard the papal plane en route to Cameroon, and took the inevitable question facing any pope on an African outing: What about condoms and AIDS? Famously, Benedict said, “The problem cannot be overcome by the distribution of condoms: on the contrary, they increase it.”
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In truth, he said more than that. His full response ran to 263 words, including the importance of solidarity with the suffering. If you understand papal argot, it comes off as a nuanced case for compassion, as opposed to a “just say no” exercise in moralism.
Nonetheless, the sound-bite quoted above was beaten like a cheap drum, and predictably let slip the dogs of cultural war. For the first time ever, a European parliament (in this case, Belgium) formally censured the pope, and Spain’s left-wing government under Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero dispatched a million condoms to Africa in protest.
As a result of the fracas, no other story about the trip ever saw the light of day. One can blame the press for missing the big picture, but the truth is that the Vatican should have seen it coming. Did anyone imagine that if the pope said what he did, without any context or background, it wouldn’t blot everything else out of the sky?
At the time, the Vatican made almost no effort to get three key points across, so they didn’t surface until much later in the news cycle – too late to make any difference.
First, the pope was simply giving voice to what Catholic bishops in Africa have been telling him for decades. African prelates usually say the condoms that arrive in Africa are often cheap and unreliable, and anyway, simply passing them out without education and moral formation sometimes encourages people to engage in even riskier behaviors. You can contest that, but it’s far from a peculiar papal hobbyhorse.
Second, other religious leaders in Africa hold the same view. The day after the “Great Condoms Debate” broke out, I interviewed the imam of the national mosque in Cameroon’s capital. When I asked him what he made of it, the imam said: “My only regret is that the pope didn’t wait to say it until he got here, so we could have said it together.”
Third, some secular anti-AIDS experts think the pope’s got a point. Edward Green of Harvard published an op-ed in the Washington Post three days later with data showing that nations which use the “ABC” approach, stressing abstinence and fidelity alongside condoms, have had more success bringing down infection rates.
In sum, the trip of 2009 produced two communications meltdowns: The full message Benedict wanted to deliver in Africa was obscured, and a false impression of Benedict as isolated and out-of-touch on a critically important issue was allowed to fester.
There’s every reason to believe the condoms question will come up again in Benin. HIV/AIDS has hardly disappeared, and the pope has actually courted confusion about where he now stands. In a 2010 book-length interview, Benedict said that condoms, while not a “real or moral solution” to AIDS, can nevertheless be a “first step in the direction of moralization.”
That line, coupled with a subsequent Vatican clarification, left many observers scratching their heads about what exactly the pope is trying to say – not to mention what the implications might be for Catholics on the front lines of anti-AIDS efforts in places such as Africa.
Given that background, the question is clearly on the table. The drama lies in how it’ll be handled.
* * *
The point of encouraging a more effective communications approach isn’t simply, or even primarily, about protecting the pope’s image. He’s a big boy, and few figures on the Catholic stage have more experience handling the slings and arrows of public incomprehension than Benedict XVI.
Instead, what’s at stake is what economists call “opportunity cost.” A papal trip to Africa is a precious chance, if it’s not wasted, to shine a spotlight on a continent that usually registers in the West only when there’s a famine or a war. Even then, you can’t take anything for granted. The Second Congo War and its aftermath cost an estimated 5.4 million lives from 1998 to 2008, the deadliest conflict of the 20th century after World War II, and it might as well have been on Mars in terms of how much the typical European or American knows about it.
The key question about Benedict’s outing to Benin is not, therefore, how the condoms question will play. It’s this: If the Vatican manages to avoid that trap, what other storylines might draw some interest?
At least three come to mind.
Catholicism in Africa
I’ve quoted this statistic many times, but it bears repeating. The Catholic population of sub-Saharan Africa shot up from 1.9 million in 1900 to 139 million in 2000, a growth rate of almost 7,000 percent – the greatest spurt of missionary expansion the Catholic church has ever enjoyed. As a result, many African Catholics believe their historical moment has come.
Catholicism in Africa enjoys many strengths: Youthful energy and dynamism, a vibrant religiosity not (at least, not yet) corroded by secularism, a tradition of serving as a voice of conscience in public affairs, an intriguing experience of engaging Islam as a rough equal rather than a subaltern, and a pattern of relationships inside the church not (again, not yet) infected by ideological polarization.
Yet it also faces hard questions. To what extent do tribal and kinship bonds still trump a common identity as Catholics? Is the fairly clerical model of leadership in some places adequate for mobilizing an increasingly educated and sophisticated laity? Is Catholicism in Africa being weakened by shipping off some of its best and brightest young priests to the West, trading short-term revenue for long-term pastoral health? Will the vibrant religiosity of Africa endure as African societies become ever more part of a global village? Can African Catholics respect indigenous spirituality and belief, without baptizing paganism and witchcraft? Can Africa avoid repeating the mistakes of the church in America and Europe on the sexual abuse crisis?
Answers to those questions will go a long way toward determining whether the 21st century really does present an “African moment” in Catholic life.
Benedict XVI is travelling to Benin in part to unveil an “Apostolic Exhortation”, containing conclusions he drew from the October 2009 Synod of Bishops for Africa. In theory, the document should express a sort of game plan for the Catholic future on the continent.
This ought to be a Catholic equivalent of Bush’s speech to Congress after 9/11, or Obama rolling out his jobs plan – in other words, a highly anticipated make-or-break moment. If the pope presents a compelling vision, the document ought to be celebrated. If he recycles the usual verbiage without really advancing the conversation, it ought to be criticized – pulled apart in public debate and put back together again.
Either way, this is one exhortation that ought to matter.
Engaging other Believers
Benedict’s presence in Benin also presents an opportunity to examine how Catholicism engages other belief systems, including some with vast footprints which normally don’t command much Catholic attention, either from the church’s caste of experts in inter-religious dialogue or from ecclesiastical officialdom.
For one thing, the Vodun faith – better known in the West as “voodoo” – originated in this part of Africa, with some experts seeing Benin as a primary crucible. In Benin today, an estimated 18 percent of the population, which translates into 1.6 million people, are practitioners of voodoo, making it the third largest religious group in the country after Catholics and Muslims … and many of those Catholics and Muslims hold on to a sizeable share of beliefs and customs which have their origin in voodoo.
So what? Well, consider this.
Today, there are 75 million Methodists in the world, and that number is in steady decline. Though accurate counts are harder to come by for voodoo, estimates range from 30 to 60 million, and rising – in other words, a comparable pool of people. Over the centuries Catholicism has invested far more time and treasure understanding Methodism than voodoo, and you could make a good argument that it’s time to balance the scales.
If you’re the kind of Catholic inclined to dialogue, the argument would be that we need to reach out to this long-neglected religious group. If you’re more concerned with apologetics and Catholic identity, then the case would be that the church needs to understand voodoo better in order to protect Catholics from being seduced by it. Either way, surely it merits as much thought as we’re giving the Methodists.
In a similar vein, Benin is also a great laboratory for engaging the vast phenomenon of independent, non-denominational Christianity, often meaning storefront churches that blend elements of Pentecostal and Evangelical spirituality – a panorama which includes scores of African-initiated churches. According to the Atlas of Global Christianity, the “independents” today represent 16 percent of the global Christian total, some 369 million people.
It’s tough to imagine any serious effort toward Christian unity that doesn’t bring these folks into focus, and Benin happens to be home to one of the largest independent bodies: the Celestial Church of Christ, founded in 1947 by a local carpenter, Samuel Joseph Bilewu Oschoffa, who claimed to have experienced a divine revelation during a solar eclipse, and who believed that God had graced him with the ability to heal and raise the dead. There are more than a half-million “Celestials” in Benin, with a strong following also in Nigeria and outposts around the world (including the United States, with headquarters in Ewing, New Jersey.)
Catholics everywhere should be interested in how the local church in Benin thinks about the Celestials, and what relations in the trenches are like.
Finally, Benin is also a good example of what some experts regard as a distinctive form of “African Islam,” deeply traditional in ethos, yet largely untainted by the radical currents that loom large elsewhere. Christians and Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa enjoy a position of rough equality, neither one clearly dominating the other. As a result, African Christians and Muslims have had to work out a variety of different modi vivendi – often informally, on the ground, without pondering all the theological and constitutional fine points – which could offer fodder for reflection in other parts of the world.
It’s striking that the President of Benin, a former banker named Thomas Boni Yayi, is a Muslim convert to Evangelical Christianity. In other societies with a strong Muslim presence, that could be a source of conflict, as some Muslims regard conversion as a form of apostasy. Yet for the most part, Benin has managed to avoid the Christian/Muslim violence that has sometimes gripped its larger neighbor, Nigeria.
Maybe, if the world’s attention isn’t diverted by a flap over condoms, somebody during this trip will think to ask why that is.
Social justice concerns
Benin also presents an opportunity to focus on a couple of the most burning social justice issues facing Africa.
First is the struggle against corruption. If you ask the typical African activist, she or he will tell you that reducing corruption is a sine qua non of any other social justice effort. In a recent World Bank survey, more than 150 high-ranking public officials and analysts from over 60 developing nations ranked corruption as the biggest impediment to economic development and growth. Estimates of the total cost of corruption worldwide are in the neighborhood of $500 billion to $1 trillion, easily dwarfing the total amount spent by Western nations on overseas development assistance.
Benin is a great case in point, as the country was rocked just last year by Africa’s equivalent of the Bernie Madoff scandal. The meltdown of an investment house called “ICC Services,” which turned out to be running a ponzi scheme with the life savings of thousands of small investors, drained away five percent of Benin’s GDP, more than $330 million. All this in a country where 88 percent of the population lacks adequate health care, where more than 20 percent of children are undernourished, and where just 23 percent of the adult female population is literate (as opposed to almost 50 percent of men).
As it happens, several politicians in Benin caught up in the ICC Services scandal turned out to be members of the Celestial Church of Christ, who apparently used their church contacts to spread the ponzi scheme to nations such as Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso. The church’s leader died of a heart attack around the same time, which was widely attributed to stress caused by the affair.
The question to be asked is what effect, if any, a Christian formation actually has on producing a new generation of leaders, more inclined to think about the common good than lining their own pockets.
A second social justice question about Benin is whether the country can avoid the “resource trap” that has afflicted so many other developing nations with substantial deposits of natural resources, especially oil.
Benin is situated on the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea, cheek by jowl with Africa’s leading oil-producer, Nigeria. The conventional estimate is that Benin has potential reserves of five billion barrels of oil, worth about $400 billion at today’s prices. When you consider that Benin’s entire GDP in 2009 was $6 billion, you get some sense of how mammoth a potential windfall that estimate would represent.
Preliminary surveys also suggest that Benin has sizeable deposits of iron ore, gold, limestone, marble, and agro-minerals such as phosphates, most of which are still largely untapped.
If those resources are to serve the common good – as opposed to enriching foreign companies and a handful of local elites, the familiar pattern in so many other places – there needs to be a robust public debate about how those resources should be used, as well as an ongoing focus on accountability. Given the central role the Catholic church plays in national affairs, Catholics will have to be in the front lines, and that’s hardly a point that applies only in Benin.
Once again, if we manage to avoid condom-gate, there’s a chance the pope’s presence might prompt the Catholic world to chew over that challenge.
Edward Green of Harvard
Edward Green of Harvard published an op-ed in the Washington Post three days later with data showing that nations which use the “ABC” approach, stressing abstinence and fidelity alongside condoms, have had more success bringing down infection rates.
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By any chance, has Mr. Edward Green been in Africa and visited the African slums? Where, in the most sordid, promiscuous and inhumane conditions, millions live in thousands of crowded "huts" and every woman or teenager was/is raped and/or pregant? Do you think they even understand the words abstinence or fidelity? In places where, even if they go to mass, the men consult also the witch doctor, who recomends them to have sex with a young virging to be clean of HIV? Where the virgins are so rare that the men rape children as young as three?
I recommend Mr Green to have a good talk with a missionary who know the ground, not with rich bishops or fat African priests. Those are really faithful, to their bellies and their women - yes, they and their children are not raped. They live in good houses and usually own a good car. This is another story: is just a part of the miracle of the Church growth in the continent.
P.S.When I went to Africa and visited one of the continent biggest slums, the European priest who lived there estimated that the rate of HIV infection was something like 50% He didn't deliver sermons about abstinance or fidelity, by a simple reason: they refused to hear or talk about AIDS, because being ill with this kind of disease is considered a shame and hidden. After the burials, the Catholics prefer to talk about the ancestors vengeance, because they think that is somehow the result of having shown any form of disrespect towards them.
Rather than dealing with the
Rather than dealing with the science that shows the ABC method is most effective, you throw up an emotional argument. In the end, emotions don't save the day. If you look at the African nations (Uganda for example) that have most effectively reduce the infection rate of HIV, they are abstinence based programs. That is called a FACT.
Some of your examples are just down right silly. For example, you down abstinence for rape victims, but how in the WORLD are rape victims supposed to use condoms?!? You brought up a completely different issue!! So yeah, abstinence won't work for rape victims, but nothing else will protect them either!
Africa has many problems - don't get them confused. The "inhumane" conditions are also reflective of government corruption, poverty, poor distribution of resources, lack of education, etc. It is a rather large list.
Dr. Mr. Ph.D., M.P.A. Have
Dr. Mr. Ph.D., M.P.A.
Have you been in Africa? Since the 15th century knowledge is preferred to academic speculations about dragons, sea monsters, etc. I hate to disapoint you, but AIDS in Uganda is raising again.
This is a perfect example of
This is a perfect example of what is called an ad hominem argument. Its logical value is zero, or better, rimless-zero. In everyday language: it is a joke.
Outsider, A little research
Outsider, A little research into Mr Edward Green would reveal to you that he has impeccable credentials. His latest book is Broken Promises. So sad that the European priest wouldn't talk to his flock about abstinence. More might be alive had he done so.
Prof Green has been studying
Prof Green has been studying this problem before the West could spell AIDS and has been abroad several times. You can do a basic fact check before posting.
Derek
the person who asked me if I
the person who asked me if I have ever visited a slum repeats racial steotypes about the hyper-sexed African male who rapes every female in sight, even babies. The data are clear: Africans have fewer sex partners in a lifetime than Americans, Brits or W Europeans. These data were published in The Lancet vol 368 (2006)p. 1,706 – 28(by condom biased researchers)and have actually been around for a long time. This writer is very misinformed. And I am an anthropologist who has spent years in Africa, starting in 1977.
Prof Green, I presume. I was
Prof Green, I presume.
I was not criticizing your credentials, just sharing my experience. And I could even mention to you some priests that distribute condoms in Africa, but I don't want to denounce them. I have many doubts, however,about the chastity of Africans. By any chance, there are numbers in the Lancet about the role of condoms in reducing HIV infection in other continents? Or information about the rape plague in Congo? Or data about South Africa, the most developed country in the African continent, having the world's highest rape rate? Or, for instance, the use as rape as a weapon in Sierra Leone? I wonder who is using "steotypes".
This is just the beginning of
This is just the beginning of a report:
"Generose Namburho used to work as a nurse at a hospital in eastern Congo. One night, a number of Hutu militiamen invaded her home, killed her husband and tried to rape her. She screamed for help and the attackers hacked off her leg with a machete, cooked the amputated part and ordered her children to eat it. One son, 12 years old, refused and was killed. She saw everything, before fainting from the serious wound.
Women are a particularly vulnerable group in armed conflicts. And rape has increasingly become a weapon of war as much as a machine-gun or a shell, used either by a regular army or by guerrilla groups, because spreading terror among civilian populations is a very common means to try and achieve their goals.
“War rape intimidates the enemy. It demoralizes the enemy. It makes women pregnant and thereby furthers the cause of genocide. It tampers with the identity of the next generation. It breaks up families. It disperses entire populations. It drives a wedge between family members. It extends the oppressor’s dominance into future generations,” says Sally J. Scholtz, a philosophy professor at the Villanova University (Pennsylvania, USA).
In Africa, for instance, women and young girls, “as symbols of the honor of their communities, are raped to humiliate the women, the men in their families and their entire community,” says Véronique Aubert, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Africa Program.
According to Aubert, “rape and other forms of sexual violence have been used so extensively and with such impunity that we can only conclude that government security forces and armed opposition groups have been using these crimes as part of a deliberate strategy to instil terror in the civilian population.”
P.S. This steotype won a Catholic Award last month
Very charitable. You might
Very charitable.
You might like to visit a confessional before next Sunday.
There are people who can
There are people who can spend the whole day in the confessional. The priests I know talk a lot about them: they are the biggest burden in their lifes.
There are two issues:
There are two issues: national policy and individual behavior. The pope and Edward Green are addressing national policy. A nation that jumps aboard the condom train and starts mass importation and distribution of condoms will see its HIV rate go UP.
I don't know if you have
I don't know if you have noticed that, in the most part of Africa, countries have no money to support the mass importation of basic staples, much less condoms.
Looks to me that the Vatican
Looks to me that the Vatican should have sought your advise. Thanks for your usual good column.
A very good summary of a very
A very good summary of a very complicated issue. I wish you had dwelt more on two important points that Pope also faces in Africa: 1. The Catholic religion there, like in Haiti, is often blended with the natural religions, including Verdon, to make something quite different from what we know in the western world. 2. The African clergy often marry, have families, and neither they, nor their followers, see much wrong with that. It is the natural African way. I wonder how the Church will address these issues?
In the usual way: ignore,
In the usual way: ignore, obfuscate, and move on.
Or perhaps forming some form
Or perhaps forming some form of Rite, like the Copts or Marionites?
The Church owes a debt of
The Church owes a debt of gratitude again to John Allen's enlightening analysis of the context in which to situate the Pope's coming visit to Africa. We can only hope that the Pope's closest advisors learn of John's recommendations and take them seriously. The effective evangelization of the peoples of Africa in and from their cultural identity and the vitality of their local churches are too important to be oversahdowed by sensationalist headlines that ignore or distort the reality.5E
Quite apart from the Aids
Quite apart from the Aids crisis, which is horrible enough, Africa suffers from lack of andf access to family planning resulting in overpopulation and malnutrition as no other continent except maybe the area of South East Asia. The Church there as elsewhere has not taken any progressive steps in order to educate women though women in the West and other countries are simply ignoring the dictates of the octogenarian cranks. He is not the only one. Educated women have fewer children as many international organizations now are well aware of. Birth control does not encourage more sex. It results in healthier families. Maybe the Pope needs advice in this area as well....
POWER AND CONDOMS ..........
POWER AND CONDOMS .......... Thanks, John for this outstanding and informative article. Your bold and pointed advice to the pope just proves how valuable you are to the independent Catholic media when you are "on game".
You are surely right that this is a key opportunity for a pope who may, if the Italian media rumors are correct, retire in six months upon his 85th birthday. While I do pray for his success, I am pessimistic and think the African Church will have to hope that, after Joseph Ratzinger's departure, he will be succeeded by more prophetic leaders and consensual Church structures.
Why am I pessimistic? You correctly identify three major issues facing Africa: corruption, accountability and AIDS/contraception matters.
Sadly, the current pope cannot speak credibly on these issues to Africans or anyone else. The rampant corruption in his own Church negates many giving his anti-corruption speech much of a hearing.
Of the many examples that could be offered, whether from current Roman princes or the 5,000 worldwide wealthy bishops, none is more egregious than the Macial case. While Joseph Ratzinger may have rejected the envelopes of cash that so many reportedly accepted, including the then No.2, Sodano, and Karol Wojtyla's personal Secretary, Joseph Ratzinger clearly kept silent about Macial for almost two decades, which surely advanced his Roman career.
Jason Berry in "Vows of Silence" documents in detail the frustrations of a Maciel victim who sat in vain with his Roman canon lawyer outside Joseph Ratzinger's CDF offices during the 1980's. Now within the past month this pope permits, if not directs, the premature termination of the Maciel investigation to avoid scandal. We do not know with certainty what scandals, but thanks to Jason Berry and other fearless journalists, we have a pretty good idea.
As to accountability, how can the pope throw stones at African dictators given his own record, for example, in the area of protecting defenseless children worldwide from rape by priests. To this day, he has not told every bishop to report all child sexual abuse allegations promptly to the police.
This pope also has repeatedly failed to explain directly, openly and honestly the disturbing allegations relating to:
(1) during the 1970's, the Munich pedophile in his diocese who continued to abuse children, even after being identified as a dangerous risk to children, and to the numerous reports over several decades of abuse at his brother's Regensberg choir school that were never fully investigated,
(2) during the 1980's, the Maciel victim's reports during his CDF visits that were ignored,
(3)during the 1990's, the horrendous sex abuse reports to the CDF about deaf children in Milwaukee and dozens of reports from seminarians about Cardinal Groer in Vienna that were, in effect, buried until the culprits died of old age, and
(4) during the 2000's, the deplorable conduct of Bishops Vangeluhwe and Mueller and Cardinal Law, as Law plans to celebrate his 80th birthday this week with a big Roman gala.
Moreover, I am not aware the any of the African leaders the pope plans on meeting are themselves subject a pending complaint for alleged crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court, as is the pope, and cardinals Sodano, Bertone and Levada.
As to AIDS/contraception matters, Joseph Ratzinger knows well that key issue here is the tension between following the Gospel mandate for love and compassion and the Roman clique's lust for power, specifically the maximization of the case for "infallibilty", needlessly but inextricably linked to the use of condoms, whether of the cheap or premium brands.
Finally, when reflecting on some of the unusual voodoo practices, please give some thought about what some Africans must think as they read about a silver vial of Karol Wojtyla's blood presently circulating among some Catholic elites in Mexico,I believe. These voodoo practicioners may well note that you cannot even stick pins in a silver vial.
For more information about the pope's current efforts to help elect next year a US Republican president which could negatively affect Africa's economic future, please note the NCR comment and related crosslinks under the comment heading, "KIDS AND THE 2012 ELECTIONS" , accessible by clicking on at:
http://ncronline.org/blogs/examining-crisis/accountability-transparency-... .
For more information on the use of condoms and the Roman cliques' lust for power, please note the NCR article describing the Roman clique's manipulations that undercut the approval of some forms of contraception by the pope's own Birth Control Commission, accessible by clicking on at:
http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/new-birth-control-commission-papers-re... .
If you liked this comment, please forward it to your list of e-mail addressees. If you didn't like it, please think about sending it anyway and let the addressees be the judge. Thanks much.
Hi, Jerry - aren't you the
Hi, Jerry - aren't you the guy that called for an ecumenical synod in Australia, then wrote that you were giving up on NCR because we didn't have the courage of our convictions? Have you now changed your mind, Jerry, or can't you resist seeing your name in print? And how does this make you better than the Vatican officials you mention?
You like to see your name in
You like to see your name in print, don't you? You are assuming your lack of arguments, by an attack ad hominem: that's Christian, that's polite, that's nice, isn't it? There were lot of fights among the Apostles and the early Christians, I think. Perharps I'm wrong, but even St. Thomas had doubts. Are you above them all? I'm not a saint, but I I have lots of doubts about people who only have cartainties. Even Jesus had a moment of doubt: Father, why did you abandon Me?" I'm closer to the doubtful than from the integrists. And I dare to think that the some happens with God.
Perhaps it would be more
Perhaps it would be more productive for all of us if you could keep to the issues under consideration here. This article and the responses are not about an individual. I am sure you would have some very useful ideas to share. Thank you.
Mr Slevin, If you are
Mr Slevin, If you are interested in the true story of Benedict's response to the sex abuse crisis, consult Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis by Greg Erlandson and Matthew Bunson. http://www.osv.com/PopeBenedictXVIandtheSexualAbuseCrisisBlog/tabid/8019...
The true story of Pope
The true story of Pope Benedict will never be known in the next five hundreds years (if the Vatican and its archives will resist for so long). One of the big secrets from Pope Benedict/John Paul II: the dealings with Fr. Marcial Maciel, and the way they faced the sex abuse scandal. It is not a good sign that the envoy of Pope Benedict gave just a few thousand dollars to four or five who claimed to have been abused among the Fr. Maciel followers and declared the case closed. One of the biggest scandals in Church history resolved with a few thousand, from a source which filled the hierarchy pockets with uncountable millions. That's marvelous.
Jerry, your fixation on
Jerry, your fixation on pedophilia is striking. If someone commented on the weather you would respond with a lecture on pedophilia. I am beginning to wonder if this unhealthy obsession says as much about you as about those whom you are supposedly castigating. You seem to think about it an awful lot. It is...strange and rather creepy. I think you need a vacation from it. Try commenting on the topic of the article. If you can't then there is something definitely wrong with you.
STRIKE TWO, FR. J .......
STRIKE TWO, FR. J ....... NCR may let your scurrilous remarks like this one slip through, but I won't. I have told you once before to stop with your libelous statements. One more strike and you are out. You will know you have crossed the line when you get my summons and complaint citing you for multiple libelous comments.
I will subpoena NCR, if necessary, to be able to find you whereever you are. Your clerical moniker will not shield you. Others may tolerate your malicious statements, but I will not. If you cannot formulate responsive, civil comments, I respectfully request you consider a cessation of your NCR blogging activities, before I take you to a place you don't want to go--the nearest available courthouse. I hope I have made myself clear.
I tried to respond before and
I tried to respond before and I will try a last time. The only reason I am doing so is that you will know that I am not intimidated by your thugish tactics. You don't have a leg to stand on. You have heard of freedom of speech? Don't think you can throw mud around at everyone else and not have some splash on you. I hope I have made myself clear.
Dear Sir, Forgive me to be a
Dear Sir,
Forgive me to be a pain in the neck, but I would be prouder if Pope Benedict, instead of adressing the poor Cameroon African head of state, would reserve the same firmness towards the Italian prime minister, who in the last days placed Italia on the brink of one of the most dire scenarios in the country’s history.
Please, take a look at the last survey, already old:
“Corruption is perceived as significant. Italy ranks 63rd out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2009, a steep drop from 2008. Corruption and organized crime are major impediments to investment and economic growth in southern Italy, and Italians regard investment-related sectors as corrupt.” (Transparency International Report)
To know more about the cumplicity bethween the Vatican and Mr. Berlusconi high standard of imorality and corruption, a friendship only broken because he faces, finally, the courts, the costs of his orgies and steping out of government, after ruining and poluting with his mediatic monopoly Italians and Italian minds, read the more recent report:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/18/file-art-of-st-peters-bas_n_825323
The link is not
The link is not working.
Please, try this
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/18/file-art-of-st-peters-bas_n_825...
Context and background won't
Context and background won't matter. The press has probably already written the stories. They don't care about the other issues.
Outsider, it is so good to see you take on the white man's burden to help those people of color become civilized Europeans and Americans. How do black people survive without folks like you to guide them? Liberal racism and ethnocentrism is stunning.
Cinicism is the weapon of the
Cinicism is the weapon of the feable-minded. Have you heard the special noise a child produces when he's dying of starvation? There is something funny about that? Please, grow up, and try to use your brain.
Throwing condoms at it will
Throwing condoms at it will not stop the problem of starvation. That is more a problem of economics and food distribution. Condoms are not the solution to all the worlds problems.
Who knows? Where the hunger
Who knows? Where the hunger is more acute, people eat grass. Why not rubber? Just some questions: You had your meals today, didn't you? You have a house and bed, don't you? You take for almost granted that you will have your breakfeast tomorrow, dont't you? If you have any kind of conscience, just try to look at yourself, and think that not all the women, children or men in the world are so comfy. I must reveal the secret of self-satisfied people like you: if all the seven billions of humans that inhabit the planet had the same standard of living, consuming, and wasting as you do - sneering, with a full bely and such comforts - we would need seven Earths. Comdoms are the only question, aren't they? Because, if you fight against them, you can think that you are spotless and really Pro-Life. That's called magical thinking, or, if you prefer, religious hocus-pocus
John, a good effort on an
John, a good effort on an ideological plane to deal with the condom problem.
As another person in this thread indicated you seem to be aware at a level where so many africans are not actually living. I do not think we can affors to deal in absolutes. I do not care to argue the morality. Here, like it or not life itself supercedes any moral talk. The simple fact is that condoms
save lives and aids may not be the biggest problem. Its rape and rapacious activity driven by a really warped religiosity which combines our faith with superstition. Do not get me wrong, even in Ireland we still have ugly superstitions dating back many centuries. Things like wart wells, pisogs, and a plethors of weird traditions mostly in the agricultural regions. It is also interesting to note that a comment was made about the married africaan clergy.
There to the situation is rife with abuse of children. That will explode in its own time. I would also challenge you to travel to South America where
many priests have wives and the bishops know it well enough but being of the
upper class the just ignore it. You could ask in many a village and the
people can readily tell you who the priests woman is. Culture dictates practices. Our European notions of clerical fidelity are simply not a problem in other places. Ask any catholic parent here in the states if in
raising their kids they had found condoms and you will find that in fact
many have. More to the point they were invariably glad rather than shocked.
Religion was never intended to be the police force on such matters. We really
need to return to the Gospels a written. Jesus' message was clear enough and
he never mentioned policing peoples sex lives. The best advice for the Pope
would be to totally avoid condoms altogether. A message of Gods Love for
his suffering people in Africa where Famine and Drought are the real issues
would be of more value. I hope he has enough sense to follow your advice.
But, I have my doubts, absolutists seldom can help themselves from putting
their feet in their mouths, its a genetic trait.
God Bless.
TomC
What is with you guys?! Did
What is with you guys?! Did you not see the line about the Harvard professors indicating the ABC method is most effective?!? Uganda experienced the sharpest drop in HIV infection using the ABC method. The science does NOT support your emotionally driven argument. Jesus talked about desires of the flesh by the way - that includes sex lives. Don't play amateur theologian. You also make it sound like the Pope goes looking for these opportunities to talk about sex and condoms. He was asked a freaking question!!! Does he make like a politician and ignore it or side step so he doesn't have to deal with difficult questions?!? No - he's got guts. Jesus had guts to. I'm sure you would be there giving him bad advice about how unrealistic it is to ask people with hard lives to repent.
John Allen asks "Can Africa
John Allen asks "Can Africa avoid repeating the mistakes of the church in America and Europe on the sexual abuse crisis?" Heaven knows, but what about that brewing sexual domination scandal involving African priests and young nuns that NCR wrote about so well some time ago? It hasn't exploded in the secular media yet. Is it still going on there, is it widespread, and have Rome or the African bishops ever taken any action?
Since the pope condemns all
Since the pope condemns all condom use, that takes him out of any discussion about the quality of the condoms and training to use them. If he opens his mouth on this subject, he will be attacked. All other issues then are covered up and not mentioned.
John, You need to get
John, You need to get yourself up-to-date in terms of the latest Reports which simply show that the Pope was, sadly, so very correct in what he said back then in March 2009. The use of condoms vis-a-vis AIDS makes the situation so much worse. Check it out on:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/279984/greening-aids-prevention-i... and http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/health/04hiv.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
I'll one up your
I'll one up your recommendations John: The Catholic Church needs to SERIOUSLY re-think their teaching on birth control. At the VERY LEAST: make an official statement approving the use of condoms to prevent the spread of disease. Maybe the Holy See isn't ready to admit that people are sexual and will continue to be sexual and that we have a serious over-population problem, especially in the underdeveloped areas of the world where hunger and poverty are bigger "Pro-life" issues than the prohibition of contraceptives. If they are not ready to deal with that issue, then at least STOP the spread of AIDS and other life-threatening sexually transmitted diseases by permitting condom use! If they cannot take this stand, then they are the ones with blood on their hands and should be held accountable for every death that might have been preventable by the simple use of a condom.
Lauri Lumby
Authentic Freedom Ministries
http://yourspiritualtruth.com
Thats what the media types
Thats what the media types like Allen prefer. People and organizations to dance to the fiddle of the media. Wake up Allen. We are not your pawns. The truth does not need reams of context and background information. It is time for lazy journalists to do their research.
The condom statements by the
The condom statements by the Holy Father
are consistent with catholic moral teaching!
Any other opinion would sow schism and discord.
Perhaps Mr Green should wear a condom on his tongue
when he feels the urge to formulate doctrine.
With respect: Let's not get
With respect:
Let's not get our hopes up.
The only difference between what happened before
and a good implementation of this excellent
advice on the U.S. media would be:
(before): A condom story on page one or two.
(after) : A 4 to 8 sentence
story completely missing the Pontiff's context
and points on page 20 (use the German visit
as a good example of a best-case media scenario).
John, The Holy Father knows
John,
The Holy Father knows what he is doing. He doesn't need our advice. No matter what he says, the press will inevitably misunderstand, misrepresent and/or distort it. This is typically the case. As long as the Pope articluates true Church teaching (which he always does) then all is well. Who cares what the media say.
Well done article John. It’s
Well done article John. It’s good to see your “Catholic knowledge” of such an enormous continent as Africa. The day when you break your leg and get laid up in bed for a couple months, give yourself a real treat and peruse the book by F. Eboussi Boulaga: “CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT FETISHES, An African critique and recapture of Christianity”. It’s the English version 1984 by Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY of the French original “Christianisme sans fétiche” put out in Paris in 1981 by Editions Présence Africaine, Paris.
Boulaga, a Jesuit priest. native of the Ivory Coast “perhaps the leading theologian of francophone west Africa” according to Simon E. Smith S.J. of the Jesuit Refugee Service, Nairobi, Kenya, who writes the Foreword to the book: “Eboussi left the academic and bourgeois circles of his normal ambience as a Jesuit professor of theology several years ago to return to his native village to re-think the whole Christian project as it encounters a new Africa. He then departed both the Society of Jesus and the priesthood.”
Again, according to Simon Smith, “His language is often hard to follow. But the game is well worth the candle.” Since the book fell into my hands some 10 years ago I have read it at least 6 times, and I enjoy it more each time. In contact with one of his former students, about a year ago, I was informed that Eboussi was still teaching in the University over at Yaounde in Cameroon.
John, since you seem to have such an inner track in Vatican circles you might recommend the book to Pope Ben.XVI although he has probably read it in the original French back when he was just cardinal but ran the Holy Office.
Justiniano de Managua el 5 de nov. 2011
Dear Sir, I applaud your
Dear Sir, I applaud your recommendation.
But I have many doubts about the Vatican’s hability to do some research. For instance, after the release of the Spielberg movie, they declared Tintin the perfect Catholic model to the youth. They ignored that his creator, Hergé, had nazi sympathies, defended Belgian colonialism – so cruel that inspired Conrad’s great classic “The Heart of Darkness”, the book that would inspire later “Apocalipse Now” -, that he’s widely criticized ( and ressented) in Africa by the patronizing, apologetic and full of racial stereotypes adventure “Tintin in Congo”. The Belgian heritage was so great that Congo is still plunged in one of the oldest and cruelest carnificines in the continent.
However, before pointing Tintin as a “Catholic model”, the only thing they would have to do was to take a brief look at Wikipedia: “Most damaging of all for Hergé was that these stories were published in Le Soir, a collaborationist newspaper. After the war he and other members of its staff faced lengthy investigations into their wartime allegiances. Hergé expressed his regrets in an 1973 interview: "I recognise that I myself believed that the future of the West could depend on the New Order. For many, democracy had proved a disappointment, and the New Order brought new hope. In light of everything which has happened, it is of course a huge error to have believed for an instant in the New Order".
The latest news about the
The latest news about the “Catholic Hero”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059145/Vatican-calls-Tintin-Cat...
"Beaten like a cheap drum"???
"Beaten like a cheap drum"??? Look, I appreciate the Pope's humanitarian efforts in Africa, and I do realize that contraception is just one issue among many, many issues that must be addressed. But there's GOT to be contraception. You can't get around the "Just say no" mentality with fancy rhetoric. There's GOT to be contraception.
if i understood the column
if i understood the column correctly, the message was "get your media right", not "condoms are good/bad for aids". if so, it seems to have been hijacked. also, if so, it does give me a chance to say something nice about b16, and that is: given the nature of the character we call "the press", it is nice to see how his message comes across clearly in spite of the media frenzy he causes. here is a man strong enough in his belief to utterly ignore what the media or the readers may say about him. i may disapprove forcefully with much of what he really and truly says (vis-a-vis condoms, jews, etc) but you have to admire someone who is that honest (even if it does take som reading between the lines to get at it).
if your intention, however, was to talk about condoms, why on earth bring that up again?
John, One minor criticism of
John,
One minor criticism of your reporting of the the growth of Catholicism from 1900 to 2000. The growth from 1.9 to 139 million represents an increase by a factor of 70 or, as you put it, 7000%. But that is not a growth RATE of 7000% which is usually stated on an annualized basis. That rate would have resulted in an astronomical overpopulation of the world. The annualized growth rate over the century is 4.3%.
Ken
The column mentions 20% of
The column mentions 20% of the children of Benin are undernourished and few have health care. Maybe in addition to words the pope could announce a social justice initiative.
Maybe 2+2 don’t equal 4 in this case, but putting together the plight of native peoples in Benin with what American diplomats (think Secretary Clinton or President Obama) often do overseas – contribute to a relief effort - I wonder if and how the pope might make an impact by committing resources to a specific initiative (previously cleared with the Benin government) to address these issues. Think of it akin to the earthquake in Aquila or the Tsunami in Thailand.
Kevin
If he mentions condoms at
If he mentions condoms at all, that will be it, that will be the focus.
You live in a dream world John Allen. You'd make the same complaint or St. Paul when people got so mad at what he said that they tried to kill him. You'd have the Lord Jesus Himself blamed for not communicating properly. There is and always will be truth to the statement that the world does not love the truth or want to hear it. That world killed Jesus for speaking the truth. It has hated saint after saint and not listened to what they said.
Communication (packaging) is important, but it does not change the nature of the world, which you seem to have difficulty seeing.
Pope Benedict XVI is going to
Pope Benedict XVI is going to Africa for three main reasons: (1) to present the fruit of the Second Synod of Bishops for Africa (2) to celebrate with the people the Republic of Benin the 150th anniversary of the coming of the Catholic faith, and (3) to pay homage to Cardinal Bernardin Gantin.
It is going to be a pastoral visit and not an economic summit or a conference on health matters.
This fixation on condoms and AIDS in Africa is becoming very nauseating. PLEASE LET THE JOURNALISTS, FOR ONCE, ALLOW AFRICANS TO GET THE MESSAGE OF THE POPE WITHOUT BRINGING IN THEIR STEREOTYPED STORIES AND IMAGES OF AFRICA.
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