Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7947460.stm

:banghead:

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Science: 100,000,000
Religion: 1

You've won the battle, religion, but you wont win the war!

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

So in essence, a million HIV-positive humans is Ok so long as they're good Catholics..


Erm, yeah right..


There are times when the Moslem POV actually starts to seem sensible.

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

The catholic church really has got to start coming into the modern age before it ends up looking completely stupid. When faith puts life at risk there is a problem that won't be sorted by anything but modernising.

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Poor Pope!
He is not in the real world.

I perfectly understand that abstinence from sex will stop the spread of disease, but its just not going to happen!

Condoms are better than nothing.

I presume he thinks that by giving out condoms it may then encourage folk to have sex, as they then will think they are safe from contracting of passing on disease.
It probably will, but thats better than
not using them.

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Particularly as not every African is a Catholic and even when Africans are Christians they quite often bolt on their old faiths and beliefs to Christian values.

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

The Shepard has spoken .
will the sheep blindly follow ?:(

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

No religious 'spoutings' , nor condoms by the bucket load ( they don't get used ) will stop the spread of aids / hiv through the mainstream African population. Marital fidelity, give me a break, with more than one girlfriend / mistress in most cases, in many town ( ships ) as well as a wife, the aids / hiv virus is having a field day. I worked in one small town with a 1 in 10 ratio, and rising, scary to think what it is now :(

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

*takes his 12 pack of mates back to tesco*

Maybe the popes just a big fan of bareback? :D

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

The pope giving advice on birth control when he cannot even get his own priests and bishops to keep it in their trousers and not to touch the alter boys.

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

I wonder if he truly believes what he is saying, or is he having to spout outdated dogma to prevent condemnation from the conservative church. If it's the former then it's no wonder the church is considered unimportant and irrelevant these days.

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Ok this is not going to be liked but why do we keep on insisting on helping these people? we constantly see adverts asking for money save a staving child etc. They breed like rabbits its not the rest of the worlds fault. If science is to be believed a very large part of Africa will be uninhabitable by the end of this century all these Africans will be migrating north and south then in the millions the more you keep alive the bigger problem it will be. If they are 3rd world and not trying to help themselves leave them to the mess

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Are they not just guilty of the natural animal instinct for race/tribe survival?

They know a myriad of different things will take many of their offspring, so they produce more to hopefully ensure the continuation of the family tree.

If they failed to do that the future of their race/tribe/creed could be threatened.

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Perhaps if it were affluent European Catholics being struck down by Aids en masse the Pope would have a different sermon.

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Agreed, however, they should take responsibility for their own rabbit-like existance.

I have to agree with Zinglebarb on this one, I don't see why others should be asked to pay. Give your charity money to kids in the UK :tu:

Or give it to the chuzzlemonkey charity :D

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

maybe they are but if that is the case they do not need our support just let nature take its course

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Most people in Africa do not have education. Priests play important role in Africa. I heard an idiotic catholic priest in South Africa saying Aids can go through the molecules of condoms....

What the Pope is doing, is a massive crime

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

no he would not it is their doctrine "every sperm is sacrad every sperm is great if a sperm is wasted god gets quite irate" ;)

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Whats bareback mean please?

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

animal without a saddle ;) it's a metaphor

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

:erm:

Google it? Its probably best we don't take this thread down that road. ;)

EDIT:::

Or Maribel can explain for me!

:D

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Well thankfully £57 million worth of donations to Comic Relief suggests many people disagree with you ... :erm:

A high birth rate is simply characteristic of an undeveloped, or developing, society. The birth rate is high because the death rate is high. Families have lots of children, knowing that the chances of all those children surviving to adulthood are small. The same was the case in this country until about the end of the 19th century.

As a society develops, first the death rate falls, then after a lag the birth rate falls as well. That's where India is at at the moment, but only just. They have had decades of high birth rates and falling death rates, which is why there's about a billion of them right now.

Africa has a number of major problems, and some of them are our doing. The major colonial hangover is the fact that what infrastructure is there, was generally designed to allow us to get natural resources from the interior to the coast, so it could be shipped off to wherever we needed it. We did very little about connecting territories together. That makes communications, including trade, between modern African nations more difficult than it should be. We also carved up the land according to the colonial aspirations of European countries rather than the natural allegiances of the native populations. In some cases we created divisions that didn't exist before. That has been a recipe for conflict in Africa's post-colonial era.

And Africa, far from being overpopulated, is actually very underpopulated. As well as lacking financial wealth, it lacks much of the manpower required to haul itself out of poverty.

Anyway, to the topic. I think people are taking a fairly unsophisticated view of why Herr Ratzinger is promoting non-use of condoms. It's as much to do with the Catholic view that Every Sperm is Sacred (cue Monty Python) as it is about making a point about abstinance being the best way to avoid STDs. I'm not saying I agree with him, just that he deserves to be engaged with and argued against on the terms he's set out rather than a distortion of them.

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

I know this is going to sound callous but you help more of them stay alive they breed like rabbits spread aids and ask for help you help more of them stay alive they breed like rabbits spread aids and ask for help and so on

You says its underpopulated but thats only cuz a good portion of the land mass is pretty inhospitable

One thing that always makes me wonder is when they say such and such has to walk 20 miles every morning to get water. Why aint they just moved nearer the water

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

No - it's underpopulated because the problems of disease and famine are so severe. There are more people dying than there are being born.

History has shown, time and time again, that if you improve healthcare and living standards, death rate drops, then birth rate drops. People don't have massive families for the fun of it. They have massive families because it's the only way to ensure anyone survives from one generation to the next.

If we help more of 'them' stay alive, in the long term it will stabilise the continent and the birth rate will level out by itself.

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

until they move north ;)

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

You do know that for every dollar donated in aid we take four out of the continent dont you? With 'aid' like that coupled with us propping up at times some of the worlds biggest nut jobs is it any wonder the place is a mess, comic relief, the biggest joke of all is that we think our interfering is doing them a favour.

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Rabbit like existance???

What an inflammatory choice of words!

Lack of education and finance and general leadership, and yes at times lack of moral standards maybe, but come on now.....

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

I meant its cus they hump loads. Not cus they live in rabbit holes! lol

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

It's strange that other species are intelligent enough to focus their efforts on ensuring the survival of their existing offspring rather then having loads more of them. The species that have the most offspring tend to be the ones that aren't bothered how many survive and don't take much care of them. Even an amoeba has the 'intelligence' to stop reproducing when times are hard.

If a high death rate is the reason for large families, then surely any new child would be to replace one that died which would mean that although there may be a large number of births the total children alive at any point in time is not large.

Condoms are far from 100% effective against pregnancy, which when you factor in other reasons why a pregnancy may not occur(eg wrong time of fertility cycle) they will be even less effective against HIV. Then there are the times when regular condom users forget, are unwilling, or are unable(eg drunk) to use them.

There was a study that a while back recently found that a third(yes that many) of homosexual men who knew that they carried HIV continued to have unprotected sex. So education and knowledge of condoms doesn't even come close to solving anything.

BBC News Website

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2009/03/46.jpg

This could be the REAL reason the pope is trying to undermine the fight against aids...

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Ah, the old "if it's not 100% effective, why bother" argument.

I look at it a different way - 2/3rds of gay men with HIV use condoms, therefore reducing greatly the likelyhood of infection, and use of condoms in Africa (and elsewhere) reduce the rate of infection - every bit helps (imho).

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

frankly I think after reading about his condom thoughts he is the sith.

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Well, he IS a former Hitler Youth, member of the National Socialist army,member of the Luftwaffe... all good qualities for the leader of the catholic church.

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Erm, no. People are dependent on their children to take care of them when they are old. Since you don't know who and how many will survive, the safe option is to have many children, which results in a net population growth. How many children would you have if you were dependent on them and you knew the chances of them living to adulthood are slim?


I posted this earlier in another thread:

Infant mortality by country

In the top ten of that list, one in five children do not live to the age of 5. By comparison, the figure for the UK is 6 in every 1000. And that's just the stats on infant mortality. Couple that with the fact that many/most people in these countries live on less than 1 US dollar per day, and you can start to imagine just how big the drama is. High birth and death rates are an enormous financial strain for the people involved.

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

well they do not need to go to school to see that screwing around is spreading aids its their in front of them

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Handing out condoms is not the way to go to fight against HIV/AIDS? What other ways are there? Other than research into a cure? Currently, what other way is there to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS? Stop everyone from having sex?

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Seeing as having a cure hasn't stopped Syphilis and Gonorrhoea, how will having one for HIV stop that. Indeed there have been reports that existing drugs for HIV have promoted a more reckless behaviour. It's the reckless behaviour that needs to be addressed, if not another disease will just come along in addition to HIV. That's if HIV doesn't just simply mutate to a form that is more difficult to detect/treat.

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Yes, in the Popes case!

He is avocating no sex before marriage, and then monogamy within the marriage.
I think that is great actually, but not realistic in the world we live in today.

Condoms are a fight against spreading aids in Africa and all countries infact.

An interesting fact is that George Bush sent money over to Africa to help the cause, his cause was to preech about abstinence! The money would of been better spent supplying condoms!

Also the Pope is having his speech "softened " now after all the controversy his comments have made!

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Ratzinger and controversy? Who'd have thunked it!

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

I have often wondered why the Pope's views about not using condoms are lapped up seemingly by all Africans but his views about monogamy in marriage ignored, makes me wonder in fact if the churches stance has had much to do with the problem at all.

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

People will often find evidence to support the right of how they choose to live.... it is obviously a pick n mix fest that you were not invited :)

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

I couldn't agree more, to me it shows a lack of knowledge concerning Africa's problems coupled with a lack of humanity.
As Chris said, thankfully these views are not prevalent everywhere as £57 million was raised for Comic relief, its easy having all the answers in the relative luxury we live in, I imagine things look a little different on a dollar a day not knowing if each day is going to be your last.
As regards the Pope, is anyone really surprised by his gormless comments on condoms?

Re: Pope tells Africa 'condoms wrong'
 

There HAS to be a possible joke here, No WAY can we have the pope, condoms, africa, polygamy and red nose day in one thread without there being a possible joke.

but anyway, to return to topic. The pope was a bad choice, pappa ratzi was never going to support JPII's reforms, since being in power he has kicked the papal observatory out of a place they have used for many many years, and will possibly reinstigate a version of the inquisition, and probably the castrati choir while preaching that living is against the word of god and that we should return to the dark ages while supporting mother church with all our worldly posessions.

"Take communion my son, then your turn to the dark side will be complete"