More Public Health And The Holy See
You may recall that the Pope made some remarks last month about condoms making the AIDS epidemic in Africa worse? The Femmeinistes were apparently not the only people who had trouble swallowing the Pope’s foray into public health issues. France, Germany, UNAIDS, and the respected medical journal The Lancet have all called the Pope’s remarks irresponsible and dangerous, and the Belgian parliament even went so far as to pass a resolution calling the remarks “unacceptable” and calling for a formal protect by the Belgian government. Belgium’s ambassador to the Vatican lodged said protest on Wednesday, spurring the Vatican to issue a formal statement on Friday. From the Associated Press:
The Vatican deplored “the fact that a parliamentary assembly should have thought it appropriate to criticize the Holy Father on the basis of an isolated extract from an interview, separated from its context.”
It said Benedict’s remarks to reporters had been “used by some groups with a clear intent to intimidate, as if to dissuade the pope from expressing himself on certain themes of obvious moral relevance and from teaching the church’s doctrine.”
I have to say I’m unconvinced. I’m a little unclear on how anyone could reasonably intimidate the Pope short of direct threats of physical violence. He’s the Pope. The Vatican is a sovereign state, if possibly the smallest in the world. He’s not subject to Belgian rule. What are they going to do, impose a trade embargo? March the Belgian army into St. Peter’s over idiotic public health remarks? If a formal protest lodged through diplomatic channels with no associated action or threat of action is intimidating to the Seat of Peter these days, I have to wonder how the Crusades ever happened.
I suppose the real issue is someone daring not only to disagree with the Pope’s statements but to have the temerity to say so through formal channels. I can imagine that if you are the Pope, argument is not something you’re used to. (Would that I could invoke infallibility when I start arguing with my father!) But frankly, if he’s not going to confine himself to speaking on purely religious matters (an area in which he can reasonably argue to be if not the ultimate then at least the penultimate authority), then he needs to realize that he is as vulnerable to criticism as anyone else with an opinion.
The full story from the Associated Press here.
More evidence that the Catholic Church as headed by Pope Benedict in not operating in the 21st Century. (How dare anyone criticize the Pope in public!)
And what is this about “on the basis of an isolated extract from an interview, separated from its context.” In what context would public health officials agree with the statement “[AIDS] cannot be overcome by the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, they increase the problem” ?
I have no issue when religions expose their own ideology to others (to each his own so to speak) but when leaders who are in positions of power use that to promote their own gain at the expense of other’s lives and health (so what if a few thousand of them die, they probably deserved it for being ‘non-christian like’ – or maybe it was “god’s will”) then they have crossed the line into irresponsible and dangerous behavior and absolutely should be called on it.