The Pope and condoms: compassion missing

       The protesters handing out condoms to the Catholic World Youth Day festivities are expressing  a compassionate, christian attitude to the suffering of millions of people who do not use condoms. This is a compassion and ethical side of christianity that is missing from the Pope, president Bush cardinal Pel and the likes.

    Today is the 30th birthday of the first IVF child born. Following her birth, over 30 million babies have been conceived using IVF.  This amounts to about one child per classroom.  Is this not "pro-life"?

     The use of condoms by men in Africa would cause a decline in the number of children born with HIV, thereby reducing the number of backyard abortions/deaths.  

      

The people handing out condoms this week have a serious message. A message about life and death.    

Activists to hand out condoms in protest against 'immoral stance'

15/07/2008 12:00:00 AM

World Youth Day pilgrims staying in communal school housing will receive a welcome letter and a condom from anti-Pope activists.

The NoToPope Coalition says in addition to today's postal drop, it will hand out condoms at a peace rally on Saturday to remind young Catholics to ''make up their own minds about what they believe is appropriate behaviour''.

The coalition said while it respected people's right to practise religion, it disagreed with the Pope's stand on contraception.

Soubhi Iskander, from the Sudanese Human Rights Association, part of the coalition, said, ''It is an immoral stance. The Pope's policy on condoms is a death sentence for millions within Africa.''

Anthony Englund, from Sydney Atheists, also part of the coalition, said the young people who would receive the condoms were capable of making up their own minds about whether or not to use them.

''Young Catholic people are quite capable of distinguishing what they want from their church's theology and what they do not want,'' he said.

''By providing them with a token number of condoms we're reminding them they can make up their own minds about what they believe is appropriate behaviour in terms of their personal sexual health.''

Ms Evans, 33, who represents Community Action Against Homophobia and whose father was a Uniting Church minister, said the coalition would notify police of its route in the next couple of days but she feared the NSW Government "wants to be heavy-handed with protesters".

She said the Pope's teachings contributed to 67,000 women dying every year from backyard abortions and a suicide rate among gay youth that is seven times the average.

Why the Pope Is Wrong About Condoms

An interview with South African Bishop Kevin Dowling, an AIDS activist

By Deborah Kotz

Posted April 10, 2008

Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg, South Africa, has made a name for himself defying the Roman Catholic Church's absolute ban on condom use. He determined the church's views were unacceptable after witnessing the AIDS epidemic up close for 16 years in a mining town west of Pretoria. There, impoverished women living in tin shacks sell their bodies to feed themselves and their children. Most contract the deadly HIV virus from having unprotected sex. Since opening his first AIDS clinic in 1996, Dowling now oversees nine clinics that treat nearly 1,000 adults and children with lifesaving antiretroviral drugs.

South African Bishop Kevin Dowling.

(Jim Lo Scalzo for USN&WR)

Arriving in Washington on the eve of the pope's visit, Dowling met with White House officials yesterday in an effort to get more funds for hospice care for AIDS patients in their final weeks of life. (Congress is in the midst of reauthorizing the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief [PEPFAR] with plans to increase the five-year funding package from $30 billion to $50 billion.) He also sat down with U.S. News to explain why he believes preventing the spread of HIV must come before religious idealism.