Score One For The Pope

Klavan On The Culture

By Andrew Klavan
http://pajamasmedia.com/
March 18th, 2009 7:53 pm

I’m not a Catholic—and I’m pretty sure I’ll never become one—but I’ve read a fair amount of the writings of Pope Benedict XVI and it’s pretty clear the man is a theological genius. It’s amazing to me that the Vatican could have followed a genuine hero like John Paul II with a mighty mind like Benedict’s. He is the Last European, the last man to truly understand the ideas that formed the foundation of Europe’s greatness. When he leaves, they may have to turn off the lights of the continent.

Pope Benedict XVI shakes hands with a girl after she offered him flowers upon his arrival at Younde airport on March 17, 2009, on the first day of a six-day visit in Africa. Pope Benedict XVI brought the "Christian message of hope" to Africa as he arrived in Cameroon today at the start of his first visit to the world's poorest continent as pontiff. (Getty Images)

Now, as Pope, Benedict is not just a thinker but a world leader and a legitimate target of punditry. I had no problem when commentators took swipes at him for lifting the ex-communication of the Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson. As near as I can tell, the Vatican didn’t do their homework on that one. Williamson, judging by an interview I watched, is a Jew-hating psychopath and the church could have toddled along quite happily without him.

But this latest flap about Benedict’s remarks on condoms and AIDS—this is absurd. As the Pope arrived for his first visit to the AIDS-wracked continent of Africa, he made the following remarks in answer to a reporter’s question:
“If the soul is lacking, if Africans do not help one another, the scourge cannot be resolved by distributing condoms; quite the contrary, we risk worsening the problem. [or possibly, we make the problem worse.] The solution can only come through a twofold commitment: firstly, the humanization of sexuality, in other words a spiritual and human renewal bringing a new way of behaving towards one another; and secondly, true friendship, above all with those who are suffering, a readiness - even through personal sacrifice - to be present with those who suffer. And these are the factors that help and bring visible progress.”

Oh, what a howl of outrage was there! “The Pope deserves no credence,” said the editors of the New York Times. “Impeach the Pope,” wrote College Professor Robert S. McElvaine in the Washington Post. The Pope is “horrifically ignorant,” said feminist journalist Bonnie Erbe. And from one end of the liberal news world to another “experts” were cited—though rarely named—who said the Pope was wrong.

Is he?

First of all, the Pope is a religious leader not a doctor. His job is to give spiritual not medical advice and I don’t think any “expert” anywhere can deny that “a new way of behaving towards one another,” sexually would improve people’s lives and perhaps ultimately put an end to AIDS altogether.

But more than that, it really does seem that moral approaches to AIDS prevention work better than merely physical ones—that is to say, that condoms cannot do the job, “if the soul is lacking.”

For instance, between 1991 and 2004—according to Edward C. Green writing in the Weekly Standard—Uganda reduced its HIV infection rate from 15 percent to 4 percent by means of a public information campaign called ABC. The A was for Abstinence, the B for Be Faithful and the C for condoms, only as a last resort. Green’s article goes on—shockingly—to report that international AIDS organizations actually attempted to undermine this successful program because it went against the liberal orthodoxy that condoms and testing were the best defense. To liberals, it seems that even AIDS is better than the scourge of morality.

In fact, if you carefully read the New York Times editorial attacking the Pope’s statement, you’ll find out that the Pope pretty much got it right. After first touting reports from the CDC and the Cochrane Collaboration on the effectiveness of condoms for individuals who use them “consistently and correctly,” the editors go on to confess that both groups acknowledge, “The best way to avoid transmission of the virus is to abstain from sexual intercourse or have a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with an uninfected person.”

“Condom promotion has been effective in slowing epidemics in several countries among high-risk groups, such as sex workers and their customers,” says the Times. “But less effective in slowing epidemics that have spread into the general population, as in much of sub-Saharan Africa.”
In other words, a moral approach to sex works and condoms without morality simply don’t. Or in still other words, “If the soul is lacking… the scourge cannot be resolved by distributing condoms.”

I guess this is why the Pope gets to wear the big hat.