the UK Papal visit

Peter Tatchell has had his mistakes, but I'm with him 100% when he says the Pope himself is responsible for 100,000s of deaths with the Catholic Church's reluctance to say condoms could save people aganst AIDS. It's a disgrace.

P.
 
Peter Tatchell has had his mistakes, but I'm with him 100% when he says the Pope himself is responsible for 100,000s of deaths with the Catholic Church's reluctance to say condoms could save people aganst AIDS. It's a disgrace.

P.

We were just talking about this exact issue a little while ago. Forget unwanted pregnancies, Africa has been destroyed by this....
 
I don't know. There is a clear case against the Pope when it comes to child abuse, and if his actions in covering it up are not criminal I can't imagine why not. It seems he's guilty of conspiracy and obstruction of justice if nothing else.

But saying that people should not use condoms is simply freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and if people then choose not to, I think that the responsibility is on them.


Doing some reading on this before posting. This organization to Protest The Pope fails somewhat by basically saying that the Catholic Church does not adhere to the liberal point of view,which is both obvious and beside the point. In fact, they have a much more damaging weapon. The Vatican is well within its rights to condemn the use of condoms, but they go further than that and claim that their usage does not prevent AIDS.

In fact, it does so only 90% of the time according to the World Health Organization, and the method, unlike the Pope himself, is not...infallible. You could make a case that condom usage gives a false sense of protection, particularly in very poor countries where conditions may not be optimal for product quality and storage.

But even that is not the problem.

According to the article, the Vatican paid for a study which concluded that the AIDS virus, being 450 times smaller than spermatozoa, somehow gets through the net or filter of even a perfectly functional condom, and I'm pretty sure that this is not true.

So it's not a case of denying permission from his God to use the condoms that is the issue, but in telling people not to use them because they won't work anyway. It's the spreading of misinformation from a trusted and highly organized source with the resources to reach the people that need the information the most... and to lie to them.

The only thing I can say on his behalf is that the UK has played host to other criminal heads of state, though I had to search to find a suitable name, that being Pinochet. Of course the Pope lives in a glass (bulletproof) house but then you can't deny him entrance for that. You'd have to expel the royal family as well.


Nice shoes.
 
But saying that people should not use condoms is simply freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and if people then choose not to, I think that the responsibility is on them.

Utter bull-plop. It's their life, their reason for living, their credo. Someone else tells them this, not themselves.

P.
 
they said on the news this morning that the popes visit was going to cost the uk tax payers 10 million pounds.now i dont care who comes to the uk for a visit but to make uk tax payers pay the bill is just wrong.the 10 million should be spent on worth wile things like schools and health care etc not on a visit for a v i p to the uk.if the pope wants to come to the uk or any body else then they shoud pay for it ,not us:mad:
 
Their = Catholic Church

Them = Christians

Okay... so I still don't get it. The Catholic Church tells Christians not to wear condoms, and when they don't, it's the Catholic Church's fault?

I disagree. Anyway, I think "Their" would equal the Pope, and "Them" would equal Catholics.

Do we really have to decode Uncle Skinny's post?
 
Okay... so I still don't get it. The Catholic Church tells Christians not to wear condoms, and when they don't, it's the Catholic Church's fault?

I disagree. Anyway, I think "Their" would equal the Pope, and "Them" would equal Catholics.

Do we really have to decode Uncle Skinny's post?

The Catholic Church, from what I see, is not just a newspaper stand for many Christians, and perhaps even more so in Africa. The pope is not just a strange guy in a white cape.

He's also not just "speaking his own mind", but rather "instructing" people to act in a certain way.

There's a "chain of command" structure in it - and yes, he is responsible since he's at the top of the command chain.

And I agree that ultimately, religion aside, it's also everyone's private responsibility - but unfortunately that's not how this type of religious communication works: they set out rules and procedures you're supposed to follow in order to be a good christian.

And if the Church really believed it was up to everyone's private state of mind to decide whether or not contraception and condoms are an option, why don't they say so?
 
There was a really good documentary about the pope last night on bbc2, it was made by a gay catholic and I actually thought it gave different perspectives on the pope, it was really interesting. I'm going to hyde park corner on saturday to see him anyway, mostly because I'm facinated by the phenomenon.

images
 
The Catholic Church, from what I see, is not just a newspaper stand for many Christians, and perhaps even more so in Africa. The pope is not just a strange guy in a white cape.

He's also not just "speaking his own mind", but rather "instructing" people to act in a certain way.

There's a "chain of command" structure in it - and yes, he is responsible since he's at the top of the command chain.

And I agree that ultimately, religion aside, it's also everyone's private responsibility - but unfortunately that's not how this type of religious communication works: they set out rules and procedures you're supposed to follow in order to be a good christian.

And if the Church really believed it was up to everyone's private state of mind to decide whether or not contraception and condoms are an option, why don't they say so?


It's just easier to blame the Pope. That doesn't make it logical or true.

If you agree with me that ultimately it is everyone's private responsibility, then I'm not sure what the difference is what authority the Pope claims.

I never said the Church believes it's up to everyone to decide for themselves. I said that people should decide for themselves anyway.

1. Pope says don't use condoms.
2. Use them anyway.


None of this matters by the way. I'll tell you what's happening. This group that wants to stop the papal visit is basically calling the pope a killer, based on the AIDS deaths, because they think that is more effective charge. It doesn't matter that it's not logical. What's stopping the rest of the world from giving condoms to Africa? Why aren't they (we) there saying that what the Church is teaching is unhealthy and based on faulty science?

Remember too, this inconvenient fact. Condoms are only 90% effective against AIDS according to the WHO. That's a lot better than 0% but still, not really great odds. That's one out of ten failures.

As I said, they have a much better argument. The Pope, as has been well-documented, protected priests that molested children and gave them the opportunity to do so again.

The Church also, as I said, created this false study that AIDS seeps through condoms. That's just not true and that's irresponsible. That is the charge the anti-Pope brigade could legitimately make, but it's too complicated. They want a red top headline, "POPE KILLS MILLIONS!" "POPE CAUSED AIDS DEATHS!"

They're using misinformation and media to combat misinformation and media. I understand people wanting to disrupt the Pope's visit. I am just looking at the tactics they are using to do it.
 
There's an interesting article about this on spiked; I don't know if any of you are familiar with them, but they started out as a much of Marxists but then drifted toward libertarianism. This is the second to the last paragraph:

Why is it worth pointing out these basic facts? Not in order to defend the Catholic Church, which clearly has a sexual abuse problem, or to minimise the suffering of those individuals who ‘only’ suffered being verbally abused, shown dirty photos or fondled over their clothing by Catholic priests - all of those acts are abhorrent and potentially punishable in a court of law. No, it is worth pointing out the reality of the extent of allegations against the Catholic Church in order to expose the non-rationalist, anti-humanist underpinnings of the current fashion for Catholic-baiting amongst the liberal, opinion-forming classes in the US and the UK. The wildly inaccurate claim about thousands of children being raped by the representatives of an institution which actively ‘protected and financed child rape’ suggests that modern-day atheism, this New Atheism, has zero interest in applying the tools of rational investigation and critical questioning to the problem of certain religions’ infrastructure, and instead is hellbent on using the politics of fear to invent a fantastical rape-happy ogre, in contrast to which it can pose as the pure defender of childlike innocence and societal integrity.
 
It's just easier to blame the Pope. That doesn't make it logical or true.

If you agree with me that ultimately it is everyone's private responsibility, then I'm not sure what the difference is what authority the Pope claims.

I never said the Church believes it's up to everyone to decide for themselves. I said that people should decide for themselves anyway.

1. Pope says don't use condoms.
2. Use them anyway.


None of this matters by the way. I'll tell you what's happening. This group that wants to stop the papal visit is basically calling the pope a killer, based on the AIDS deaths, because they think that is more effective charge. It doesn't matter that it's not logical. What's stopping the rest of the world from giving condoms to Africa? Why aren't they (we) there saying that what the Church is teaching is unhealthy and based on faulty science?

Remember too, this inconvenient fact. Condoms are only 90% effective against AIDS according to the WHO. That's a lot better than 0% but still, not really great odds. That's one out of ten failures.

As I said, they have a much better argument. The Pope, as has been well-documented, protected priests that molested children and gave them the opportunity to do so again.

The Church also, as I said, created this false study that AIDS seeps through condoms. That's just not true and that's irresponsible. That is the charge the anti-Pope brigade could legitimately make, but it's too complicated. They want a red top headline, "POPE KILLS MILLIONS!" "POPE CAUSED AIDS DEATHS!"

They're using misinformation and media to combat misinformation and media. I understand people wanting to disrupt the Pope's visit. I am just looking at the tactics they are using to do it.

Well, he's spoken on the issue a few times, and it didn't sound as if he was allowing contraception (neither in general, nor in Africa in particular), and that wasn't a personal message to his wife, but to the "Catholics" - the group he's leading. In that sense, his responsibility is rather obvious.

And when the pope says that the Catholic church is against the use of condoms, it means that medical groups run by Catholics in Africa are in theory not allowed to hand out condoms. Or to promote condom use and raise awareness for contraceptive techniques. This doesn't dispense non-catholics from stepping in (and they do), but you can't underestimate the impact Catholic organisations have in Africa (schools, medical centers, evangelists...). A lot of their HIV/AIDS programmes talk about love, abstinence and faithfulness - no problem with that, but it's a bit inconclusive, isn't it?

Right, condoms are not 100% safe for contraception and STDs. Why? Because they can slip off or break, or people don't use them correctly. Not because condoms decide they (dis)like your face and want to see you having children, or an STD...

As far as the protests go.. you're right, it's a lot about negativity, and little about positivity. I know people who are upset by all this, yet the minute you ask them to donate money for MsF in Africa, they refuse... I'd be glad if every protester donates 10 pounds to a non-catholic aid organisation.
 
Enormous waste of taxpayers' money to fund a visit by a brainwashed criminal. Lovely.
 
Well said Amy. The BBC saturation of his low-li-ness visit is almost as distressing as the sight of the Reverend (yeah,right) Ian Paisley singing Protestant war hymns on the BBC News. Can't we be rid of these people? The kind people have a wonderful dream......
 
I am sorry, I don't understand how we can ban someone like Geert Wilders from entering the country due to the anti-hatred laws (which I fully agree with), and because he's 'anti-Islam', yet allow the Pope with open arms? You might say that you cannot compare the two, but I certainly think that you can as the Pope preaches intolerance on other levels. And how much are the taxpayers paying for this when we are cutting public services and jobs left and right every single day? It's insane!
 
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