I don’t suppose there’s any hope for these people when they seem so hell-bent on denying the reality that slaps the people of Africa in the face every day. What is that reality ? That reality is AIDS and the thousands of people it kills and infects every year in the third world. The millions catholic people of Africa look to their leaders for guidance and information in life-matters and when it comes to issues of such importance as AIDS one would expect nothing but the facts. Facts backed up by the best and most reliable information it is possible to obtain.
So what do the people actually get in exchange for their attention and loyalty to the catholic church ?
They get lies, misinformation and facts trumped by a bankrupt and frankly dangerous ideology.
They get told that condoms do not assist in halting the spread of AIDS. They get told that the church has no intention of deviating from its (insane) position of ideologic opposition to condoms. They get told this by the catholic hierarchy and by the supreme leader of their mythology, the pope.
Millions of people in Africa have little choice but to pay attention to their leaders when it comes to information. These people almost certainly don’t have easy access to the internet and unlike you and I they can’t wander 250 yards to see their nearest highly qualified doctor. The catholic church in Africa finds itself in the situation of having an almost captive audience coupled with their claim to huge moral authority. This places them in an incredibly fortunate and powerful position to do really quite spectacular things in the fight against AIDS. It puts the catholic church in a position to make some serious dents in the numbers of people acquiring the disease and hence reduce the number of deaths due to AIDS. Not to mention the reduction in outlay of raw costs that must be made to obtain anti-retroviral drugs.
All of this could be reduced dramatically if the correct information was being disseminated.
But no.
We get the loony bishops denying the bald facts and saying that everyone must abstain from sex and keep their fidelity instead.
We know that doesn’t work ! What’s the point of continued prosecution of a position not supported by the evidence ?
Only an idiot or the terminally blind keep up this sort of utterly crass stupidity when faced with the actual deaths of millions. Do we really need this sort of thinking nowadays ? Haven’t we moved on enough ? Isn’t it time to stop paying attention to people like this ?
I think so. What say you ?
