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Okay. So now the AIDS pandemic is the Pope's fault. Blame the millions
of AIDS orphans on him. Condoms are not new. They were not invented in
the last 30 years. This AIDS pandemic has been developing over the last
30 years. Some people in those countries use condoms. Again, I tell
you, whether you believe me or not, condom use will not prevent the
spread of AIDS. Condoms are not foolproof. Indiscriminate, illicit and
adulterous sex and forcible rape are responsible. If you do not address
these behaviors, all of the condoms in the world will not help you.
----- Original Message -----
From: Devine Akabutu <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, October 24, 2005 0:16 am
Subject: Fwd: [Eweland] Undressing the Pope
>
>
> "J. Atsu Amegashie" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:To:
> [log in to unmask]: "J. Atsu Amegashie"
> <[log in to unmask]>Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2005 22:06:07 -0400
> Subject: [Eweland] Undressing the Pope
>
>
> Undressing Religion: If Pope Benedict were Santa Claus ...
>
> Edward Kutsoati
> Tufts University, USA
>
> October 23, 2005
>
> Christmas 2005 is almost here, and most kids are thinking of their
> wish-list for
> Santa Claus. I am too old for that. But if the head of the
> Catholic Church,
> Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI) were Santa Claus, I
> would have one.
> As a Ghanaian (and sub-Saharan African), my wish-list for the Pope
> willsay:<br>
>
> 1. a box of condoms; and some birth-control pills <br>
>
> Bostwana has consistently been hailed as an economic success story in
> sub-Saharan Africa. These economic gains are now threatened by the
> HIV/AIDSpandemic. Botswana also has a high catholic population, and
> the press in
> Botswana believes that if His Holiness were to change the
> church's stand on
> birth-control, it will have a significant impact on the lives of
> ordinaryAfricans by enhancing the numerous efforts being taken by
> governments and NGOs
> to combact poverty, HIV/AIDS and a host of other problems. A May
> 2005 editorial
> in one of that country's newspapers, <i> Mmegi,</i> minced no words:
>
> ``The church continues to refuse to transform at its own peril...
> There is no
> sound theological basis to preach against birth control methods. It
> is also not
> unhelpful for the Church to close its eyes to the HIV/AIDS
> problem and
> maintain a rigid position
> on the use of condoms. These are the issues on which Ratzinger's
> papacy will be
> judged. He has the choice either to become a Pope for today, or to
> remain a
> prisoner to the past.''
>
> And if you think such problems elsewhere on the continent do not
> affect Ghana,
> think again. In the past decade or so, Liberians fleeing conflict
> in their
> country have sought refuge in Ghana. Lately, so have Sudanese from
> the Darfur
> region. The most serious threat facing life in sub-Saharan Africa
> is food
> security. And this year has been particularly bad. In fact, life is
> so fragile
> that even if sub-Saharan Africa were to wake up on New Year's eve
> to an end of
> its wars and the best government to boot, any short period of
> sustaineddrought will result in an alarming numbers of
> malnourished children. The
> reason is simple: in many parts of the continent, there are <b>
> too many
> people for the land.</b> Put differently, a family's lifetime
> needs, as a ratio
> of its lifetime resources, are astronomical.
>
> This has been compounded by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In an address
> marking the
> Day of the African Child on June 15, 2005, Dr. Douglas Webb (of
> UNICEF)disclosed that by 2010 (i.e., 5 years from now), ``there
> will be more than <b>
> 50 million orphans </b> in just 16 of Africa's 53 countries.''
> For most
> homes, there will be only one way out for a girl: she exchanges
> the only
> commodity that she has (i.e., sex) for food, school fees, exam
> results,employment or survival itself in an often risky
> environment. Soon, she too
> gets pregnant and the whole cycle begins; or she develops obstetric
> fistula,and therefore shunned by her community.
>
> Can Pope Benedict help? Before you dismiss this question, consider
> this. Over
> the past 50 years, the Catholic population in Africa has grown
> by <b> 708
> percent</b>, more than twice the rate of growth of the continent's
> populationduring the same period; and far out-stripping the
> church's growth in Europe,
> where membership is actually on a decline. In fact, the decline of
> bothmembership and priesthood in Europe is so alarming that
> Cardinal Peter
> Turkson of Cape Coast (Ghana) worries that ``If Europe should
> become less
> Christian, it gives [Africans] a sense of being orphans, of having an
> experience of faith without parents'' (The Catholic Review of the
> BaltimoreArchdiocese, May 2005). Perhaps, Cardinal Turkson forgets
> that Africans had
> their own faith and beliefs before their encounter with white
> missionaries!
> Today, there are about 130 million Catholics in sub-Saharan
> Africa; that is
> about 1/5 of the entire population of sub-Saharan Africa. Each
> believesthat the Pope is the successor to Saint Peter whom Christ
> appointed as the
> first head of His church. He therefore stands in what Catholicism
> calls the
> apostolic succession, an unbroken line back to Peter, and has supreme
> authority. As such, the church's diverse followers are bound
> together in their
> faith in Jesus Christ and their obedience to the papacy. The
> Pope's view on
> matters of faith and morals are therefore authoritative.
>
> It is widely believed that the church's opposition to contraception
> can be
> traced to Genesis 38 vs 7-10, which condems <1> coitus interruptus
> </i> (i.e.,
> a man ``withdrawing'' before ejaculation). As the story goes,
> after the Lord
> ``slew'' Judah's first son, Er, Judah urged his second son, Onan,
> to ``go in
> unto thy brother's wife and raise up seed to thy brother'' so that
> Er's name
> will not be blotted out of Israel. [This was the practice in those
> days (Deut.
> 25:5-6)]. Knowing that any offspring will not be his, Onan ``went
> in to
> Tamar, but spilled his semen on the ground,'' thus preventing the
> creation of
> another human being. God was pissed, and so He ``slew'' Onan.
>
> Motivated by this story, St. Augustine wrote in the 5th century
> that, sex for
> any purpose other than procreation was impure; and eight hundred
> years later
> St. Thomas Aquinas equated birth control with murder. But it wasn't
> until 37
> years ago that Pope Paul VI made the opposition to the use of
> contraceptivesan official Catholic doctrine, as stated in the
> 1968 papal encyclical, Humanae
> vitae. Efforts in the past 25 years to get the
> papacy to change this doctrine were effectively blocked by Pope
> John Paul II.
>
> Mr. Barry Cornell of Sevenoaks (Kent, UK), could not hide his
> disappointmentwith John Paul II. So in December 2004, when the
> <i> Economist Magazine </i>
> asked its readers to send in nominations for the person they
> thought should be
> crowned the <i> wisest fool of the past 50 years, </i> Mr. Cornell
> sent in
> this entry (<i> The Economist,</i> Jan 29th, 2005; pp. 82):<br>
>
> ``My nomination is the person who has, through his cunning, played
> a major role
> in the defeat of communism, and through his idiocy helped consign
> the third
> world to a poverty induced largely by his opposition to birth
> control. Step
> forward that almost medieval manifestation of Christendom, His
> Holiness the Pope
> [John Paul II]''<br>
>
> Mr Cornell received the third prize.<br>
>
> But the main question is: is sex meant for procreation only?
> Could it be that
> we, homo sapiens, are biologically wired to have sex for pleasure
> as well?
> Perhaps, we can learn a thing or two by examining sexual behavior
> among other
> species at different extremes. Since other species do not have a
> pope nor a
> religious book, they display a natural behavior.
>
> First, consider dogs. The church's teaching on ``fidelity
> within marriage
> and abstinence outside it'' would have been a lot easier to adhere
> to if
> humans were like dogs. Ever heard of the phrase ``<i> men are like
> dogs''?</i>Well, that may be because while
> male dogs are willing any time and any place, the female dog only
> wants to
> when it suits her. But that's about where the similarity ends.
> Maturefemale dogs have an estrus cycle or heat, a period of time
> when they ovulate,
> and are receptive to male dogs. This occurs on average every 7
> months, and
> lasts about 3 weeks. The female is usually fully ovulated in the
> second week of
> the heat period, and most likely to get pregnant during this week;
> typically by
> several male dogs so that each puppy in the litter could have a
> differentdaddy. Female dogs do not desire sex outside the heat
> period.
> At the other extreme is the <i> bonobo </i> chimp (a.ka. the
> ``horniest apes
> on earth''). Sex is part and parcel of social relations among
> the bonobos;
> and not just between males and females. Bonobos engage in sex
> almost every day,
> usually several times a day,
> and in virtually every partner combination (although such contact
> among close
> family members are usually suppressed). In short, the bonobo use
> sex to
> maintain friendly relationships, to ease stress, and to reduce
> violentconflict (http://songweaver.com/info/bonobos.html).
>
> Now, suppose these two occupy the extreme ends of sexual behavior,
> then the
> human behavior must lie somewhere between. The next question is
> where to locate
> human (natural) sexual behavior on this spectrum? Before you take a
> guess,consider the following: Bonobos share more than 98 percent
> of our genetic
> profile, and they look more like humans than common chimps. They
> have longer
> legs, smaller ears and more open faces with higher foreheads.
> Secondly, despite
> the frequency of sex, a female bonobo gives birth to a single
> infant at
> intervals of between 5 and 6 years. So bonobos share at least one
> veryimportant characteristic with our own species; namely, a
> partial separation
> between sex and reproduction. As far as sexual behavior is
> concerned, I think
> we may be closer to the bonobo than the dog.
>
> And if humans are genetically wired to also have sex for pleasure,
> then the
> solution to Africa's population-resource ratio, and the spread of
> HIV may not
> lie in abstinence programs alone. We need a comprehensive approach
> thatincludes use of contraceptives and other forms of sex
> education. For
> example, the Abstention, Be faithful, and use Condom (ABC)
> program worked
> well in reducing HIV infection rates in Uganda. Unfortunately, in
> order to
> receive aid from the Bush administration, which is tied to
> abstinenceprograms only, the ``C'' in the ``ABC'' program is being
> downplayed in Uganda.
> Uganda's HIV infection rate is rising again.
>
> Luckily, comprehensive sex education programs are offered in
> pockets of
> sub-Saharan Africa. Ms. Dorothy Aken'ova and her staff at the
> InternationalCentre for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights
> (www.increse.org) are doing
> just that in Nigeria. Ms. Aken'ova's programs have received rave
> reviews and
> support from local leaders. Participants have also seen their domestic
> relationships improved significantly. Must be the bonobo-factor!
>
> Is Joseph Ratzinger ready to help by changing the church's view
> on birth
> control? So far, the chances are not good. On June 9 2005, Pope
> Benedict XVI
> made his first public comments on the issue of HIV/AIDS and
> contraception.Addressing bishops from six African nations all hit
> hard by the HIV pandemic,
> (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland), Pope
> Benedictreiterated the church's view that HIV/AIDS in Africa
> should be tackled through
> fidelity and abstinence and not by condoms. Contrary to the
> enormous social,
> economic and scientific evidence, the Pope still insists that ``[The]
> traditional teaching of the church has proven to be the only
> failsafe way to
> prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.''
>
> So, as the Zimbabwe's opposition newspaper, <i> The Daily News,
> <i> puts it: it
> is now up to African Catholic Bishops to ``take up the cudgels
> againstCatholic orthodoxy and campaign to save millions of Africans
> from certain
> death, from a disease which has not been tackled effectively with
> the doctrine
> of abstinence, which the church insists on.''
>
> I will add that these Bishops should avail themselves to what
> science has to
> teach us. As Bertolt Brecht stresses in <i> Life of Galileo,</i>
> `` The aim
> of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a
> limit to
> infinite error.'' Until then, I will keep my wish-list for Santa
> in a sock
> hanged outside my door.
>
> ------------------------
> J. Atsu Amegashie
> Department of Economics
> University of Guelph
> Guelph, Ontario
> Canada N1G 2W1
>
> webpage: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~jamegash
> Phone: 519-824-4120 Ext. 58945
> Fax: 519-763-8497
>
> ---------------------------
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