There was a letter to almost exactly that effect in the Metro yesterday. I imagine today's page'll be full of replies; I'll let you know if there are any interesting ones.

So, were there?

The Metro letters page is a veritable mine of insight and bollocks.

Saw a Question Time program where some smug little leftie laid into the Catholics on this issue, and a middle-aged woman made Squander's exact point. There were a few jeers but no comebacks.

Well made point - and I agree with you!

Well, if the criticism is that he 'created or helped to create' the AIDS epidemic, then I guess you're right. But what if the question is: do the Church's teachings, as interpreted on the ground, help or hinder the spread of AIDS, given that one of their ideas (lifetime monogamy) is hard to follow for most human beings, and that another (no condoms) could easily be changed.

For me, it's not black and white. Yes, African sexual practices are to blame, yes African governments have had their heads up their arses when they ought to have been acting. But, yes, too, the church's attitude is killing people.

Well, there's a simple test for that theory. If it's the Church's attitude that's killing people, then they must be dying in similar numbers wherever the Church is powerful. However, it's just Africa. Is AIDS more prevalent among, for instance, Catholics than Protestants in Northern Ireland? I have no idea whether anyone's even measured those figures, so I honestly don't know. But I doubt it. And Irish Catholics certainly aren't as badly affected as Africans — if they were, we'd have noticed.

If they were - Gerry Adams would blame it on MI5.

I'm with Jarndyce: the condom-teaching is definitely a significant factor in the AIDS epidemic. Do you seriously dispute this? Comparisons to Northern Ireland don't clear anything up: people in first-world countries are (probably) far more likely to re-interpret/disregard teachings they don't like than their African counterparts. Also people in Northern Ireland are much more likely to see what a truly terrible bit of advice this is, whereas in Africa believe the lies they're told about how condoms don't prevent the spread of AIDS.

I take your point that if everyone did as the Pope said and only had one sexual partener then all would be well. But the teaching "only have one sexual partener" is extremely hard to follow, and the teaching "don't use a condom" is very easy. So when people give in to temptation and break the first (I'm sure they do so with a heavy heart), they do follow the second (not wanting to compound their sin). The distastrous consequences are there for all to see.

> the condom-teaching is definitely a significant factor in the AIDS epidemic. Do you seriously dispute this?

Condom use is definitely a significant factor in the AIDS epidemic. I'm not convinced that African condom use would be any different without the Catholic Church's involvement.


> people in first-world countries are (probably) far more likely to re-interpret/disregard teachings they don't like than their African counterparts.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people try to argue with me by repeating my point back at me.


> people in Africa believe the lies they're told about how condoms don't prevent the spread of AIDS.

Oh, yes, those lies are definitely a huge part of the problem, and the people telling them should be strung up along with anyone who claims that AIDS is a white disease or that drugs are the white man's solution to disease. The Pope wasn't one of them.


> But the teaching "only have one sexual partener" is extremely hard to follow

So I'm told. I've always found that it's having lots of sexual partners that's difficult. Which isn't to say I haven't tried.

So what about the devout catholic monogomous wife that finds her husband has AIDS but believes it's a sin to use condoms?

The poor woman is going to be killed by her husband. On the one hand, yes, the Pope told her not to use condoms. On the other hand, the Pope also told her husband not to kill her. I'm perfectly happy to criticise the Pope for giving bad advice, but I don't think you can reasonably do so without at the same time giving him credit for the good advice. Some of his teachings, taken in isolation, help the spread of AIDS. Others, taken in isolation, combat the spread of AIDS. The criticism of the Pope involves selectively ignoring certain bits of what he said.

This is very interesting.

"I'm not convinced that African condom use would be any different without the Catholic Church's involvement."

Well I am. At least I'm definitely not prepared to grant the CC the benefit of the doubt. What's needed (among other things) is a clear public-information campaign. This is made much more difficult with unhelpful papal edicts getting in the way. In the middle of a massive AIDS epidemic telling millions of people (who will believe you) that using condoms is sinful strikes me as singularly irresponsible, and even(unintentionally) evil.

"Oh, yes, those lies are definitely a huge part of the problem... The Pope wasn't one of them."

Maybe not, but he gave ammunition and room to manoeuvre to the liers. Many of the liers were Catholics trying to get people to follow papal teachings by any means possible.

Maybe I'm being a moron but I'm confused as to how you think I was repeating you. I was (and still am) objecting to this: "If it's the Church's attitude that's killing people, then they must be dying in similar numbers wherever the Church is powerful."

This is a matter of taking responsibility for the (unintended but perfectly foreseeable) consequences of your actions, and I reckon that the Pope's culpable.

There's no such thing as unintentional evil. It's a contradiction in terms.


> In the middle of a massive AIDS epidemic telling millions of people (who will believe you) that using condoms is sinful strikes me as singularly irresponsible

If that's all you tell them, yes. However, telling them not to be promiscuous is extremely responsible — especially since monogamy is more effective at preventing the spread of AIDS than condoms.

This all comes back to my original point: you believe that no-one would ever bother following the one commandment, despite their believing that not doing so is a sin, yet you insist that people have very little choice when it comes to the other commandment, because they're so frightened of sinning.


> Maybe not, but he gave ammunition and room to manoeuvre to the liers. Many of the liers were Catholics trying to get people to follow papal teachings by any means possible.

Now you're just making things up, and badly, at that. The Africans who claim that AIDS is a white man's problem or that blacks should cure themselves of AIDS in their own black way without using white drugs are rdoing so because they reject Western ideas, including Western religions.

(Tangent: why do we get called "the West" in discussions about Africa? Why not "the North"?)


> This is a matter of taking responsibility for the (unintended but perfectly foreseeable) consequences of your actions

Yet you seem to be saying that the Pope should take responsibility for the actions of promiscuous Africans. Why don't you consider them responsible for their own actions?


> Maybe I'm being a moron but I'm confused as to how you think I was repeating you.

I was replying to your point that different people in different countries choose to interpret the same teachings differently, which is exactly my point.

"There's no such thing as unintentional evil. It's a contradiction in terms."

Someone who's actions are not murderous but display a callous disregard for human life could perfectly reasonably be described as unintentionally evil.

> If that's all you tell them, yes

No, just per se, and irrespective of anything else you say. Fine: telling them to be abstinent is perfectly responsible. Well done the Pope. That doesn't stop the condom edict in and of itself being massively irresponsible.

Sorry (if you hadn't guessed) the last one was me...

By your reasoning, it is irresponsible to tell formula one drivers to drive extremely fast only on proper race tracks with other professional racing drivers, because they might then drive very fast on public roads, endangering innocent members of the public. The second part of the instruction doesn't matter; telling them to drive at 200mph is irresponsible in and of itself.

Or how about telling people that they should have open coal fires in their houses, but only in a proper fireplace? Surely that's irresponsible, because they might then set a fire in the middle of the carpet. Or how about telling people to throw stones at tin cans but not at people's heads? (A slightly odd religious commandment, but hey.) Surely someone might ignore the second bit of the instruction, and then any resultant deaths would be the responsibility of the person who gave the instruction, right?

What utter, utter bollocks.

Oh, and a callous disregard for human life isn't unintentional. Callous people decide to be callous. If you think evil can be unintentional, you don't know what "evil" means.

" because they might then drive very fast on public roads"

Yes but you know perfectly well that they wouldn't. Similarly for your other examples. But you also know perfectly well that when you tell people to be sexually faithful/absitnent many of them won't, and so the worst-case scenario really does arise. In your examples it obviously doesn't.

A better analogy would be telling your followers to drink poison every day, and then to take the antidote. Very likely someone will fuck-up and die. Then in my view, yes, the person who gave the "drink poison every day" command would hold some share of the responsibility for that death.

That's a terrible analogy. My analogies contained deliberate actions. Are you implying that people are promiscuous accidentally? It's not a fuck-up; it's a choice.


> you know perfectly well that they wouldn't.

In the case of professional racing drivers, they do actually tend to drive far too fast on public roads, and they accordingly have a higher accident rate than other drivers.


> you also know perfectly well that when you tell people to be sexually faithful/absitnent many of them won't

Are you saying that religious teaching should be based on the principle of telling people what you already know they're going to do anyway? What would be the point of that? And how far would you take it? After all, some people are always going to steal things, so perhaps the Church should stop telling them not to. And we know that some people are always going to murder others, so we can get rid of that "Thou shalt not kill" nonsense.

By the way, the noun is "fuck-up" and the verb is "fuck up": the verb isn't hyphenated, because it is two words, not one. Just doing my bit to disseminate knowledge.

"Are you saying that..."

No I'm not. Let's try another analogy:
suppose you instruct your 1 billion followers in bomb-making, and command them all to make bombs. You also command them not to use the bombs they've made. Suspend your disbelief and suppose the bomb-making is safe enough that no-one is likely to get hurt, unless they deliberately (but easily) set the bombs off. Obviously some of them will do exactly that, some people will die, and some of the responsibility for that will be yours.

Thanks for the English tip.

The Pope's advice was that you shouldn't use a condom. The Catholic Church actually teaches that they are pourous to HIV, therefore even if you are banging a prostitute, don't wear one, then go home and shag your wife.

Sick.

Having travelled round several African countries and seen the damage that his missives have caused I must say that I find your argument quite naive. A lot of African's aren't strict Catholics, their faith is a mixture of Christianity and tribal religion, many are also very uneducated and take the words of the Pope as literal truth - or the word of God even. It is quite different from a secular educated society where even most Catholics freely admit that he was talking out of his arse and use condoms like they were going out of fashion.

> even if you are banging a prostitute, don't wear one, then go home and shag your wife.

This is definitely not the Catholic Church's advice. Their advice is not to have sex with anyone you're not married to. So you're talking about people who break Catholic teaching.


> A lot of African's aren't strict Catholics, their faith is a mixture of Christianity and tribal religion

Yet you blame the Pope for their actions. Bizarre. Would you also blame him for the beliefs of Protestants? After all, their faith is a mixture of Catholicism and other beliefs.


> many are also very uneducated and take the words of the Pope as literal truth

I fail to see how that's relevant, since we're discussing people who choose to ignore one of Catholicism's primary teachings.


Larry,

None of our analogies have been that brilliant (I'm struggling to think of a close parallel), but that one's really dreadful. Bombs are inherently dangerous. Sex without condoms isn't.

"Bombs are inherently dangerous. Sex without condoms isn't."

During an AIDS pandemic, yes it bloody well is (unless you're going to get all philosophical about the meaning of "inherently", in which case replace it by "in practice, extremely".)

Anyway what does it matter if bombs are dangerous? In my scenario the leader tells his followers not to use the bombs, and if they did what he said everyone would be perfectly safe. In fact let's make him preach total pacifism: now if everyone followed his teachings then violence would be an unkown phenomenon. Surely then to blame him for the ensuing carnage is just ridiculous - don't you think that the people who set off the bombs should bear the full responsibility for their actions?

> During an AIDS pandemic, yes it bloody well is

See, here we face the left-wing refusal to even consider the possibility of having sex with just the one partner for life. If two people have sex with absolutely no-one except each other, then they're pretty safe — intravenous drug use aside. Promiscuity is not compulsory.

Your analogy is getting really silly, but, actually, no, I don't think you could blame a man who preached absolute pacificism and non-violence for any violence practiced by his followers. There is actually a parallel: Sikhs have to carry a knife at all times. If a Sikh stabs someone, do you blame him or his religion? I blame him.

"See, here we face the left-wing refusal to even consider the possibility of having sex with just the one partner for life."

Nonsense, no more than you ("the right wing") refuse to even consider the possibility of having a bomb and not setting it off. It's just that human nature being what it is I recognise that inevitably many people will fail to do this, and the consequences both for them and their victims (e.g the faithful wife of an unfaithful husband) could be catastrophic.

I don't accept the Sikh analogy, again because the worst-case scenario is relatively unlikely to occur, and on a global scale isn't that serious.

"I don't think you could blame a man who preached absolute pacificism and non-violence for any violence practiced by his followers."

Well silly though it may be, I reckon that my analogy has illustrated a central point of difference between us: even though the leader's bomb-building edict is obviously utterly insane, mind-bogglingly irresponsible, and could (when coupled together with human fallibility and wider political issues) lead to total carnage and millions of deaths, you would refuse to lay any blame for that at his door.

> I don't accept the Sikh analogy, again because the worst-case scenario is relatively unlikely to occur, and on a global scale isn't that serious.

Shut up about your nonsensical bomb-building religion, then.


> It's just that human nature being what it is I recognise that inevitably many people will fail to do this

Yes. Exactly. That is my point.