Photo Credit: saveitforparts @ Flickr

While visiting Sydney for World Youth Day, Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier explained that if the church had not instructed its followers to use condoms to slow the spread of HIV it was because such a call would make little difference

The cardinal compared the situation in Uganda where partner reduction contributed to a slow down of the HIV epidemics in the early 90s to that of South Africa where condoms were widely availability but did little to stop the HIV epidemic.

Cardinal Fox Napier is not completely wrong, but not totally right either.

Indeed partial abstinence, e.g. partner reduction, did slow the HIV epidemic in Uganda but the number of infections is now back on the increase, thank to a move away from condom-based prevention. Second condom’s availability does not mean that they are being used. There are three reasons for this, first because South Africans do not believe condoms are reliable (thanks in part to the Church), second because condoms can be a real passion-killer, and third but not least because the Church (again) do not support their use!

So what if the Church were to support condoms as an HIV prevention means?

“You expect that because people are hearing from bishops, `You must use a condom’, that they will do what the bishops say? We have already been preaching all our lives, don’t have sex outside of marriage.”

This is very interesting for two reasons. The first is that Cardinal Fox Napier is incidentally acknowledging the failure of the Church abstinence-only message and the second that the Church does not have the power it thinks is has over people.

It is getting even more interesting because Cardinal Fox Napier has faith in the people’s ability to control their own lives and avoid HIV infection:

“At the moment, if you go on a policy of condom distribution as the only solution to HIV and AIDS, you are telling people that they cannot take control of their own lives”.

The cardinal seems to ignore that one of the reason people do not use condoms is simply because they cannot take control of their own life!

And then,

“And, therefore, I think you are doing them an injustice by saying: `You are so stupid. Even though this disease is a killer, you cannot take control of your own lives’.”

But isn’t the failing message of the Church that HIV is a killer disease and that people should take control of their own life if they are not stupid they will do it by abstaining from sex?!

Or isn’t it really that “HIV is mostly about people doing stupid things in the pursuit of pleasure or money,” declares the cover on a proof copy of The Wisdom of Whores (the final version use the word “daft”). “We’re just not allowed to say so.”

This one is a real gem.

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