When in Doubt, Blame the Pope

by Michael Schnibben

Throughout course of history, mankind has periodically suffered at the hands of sudden, devastating epidemics that not only threaten the continuance of civilization, but the very survival of our species. The outbreak of the Bubonic Plague in Europe between 1347 and 1351 carried an estimated one-third to one-half of the continent’s population to a painful, premature death. The smallpox epidemic brought to the New World by European explorers in the Age of Exploration all but annihilated the indigenous population, who lacked biological immunities to Old World diseases; historians estimate there were roughly fifty million people in the Americas in 1492, less than five million remained just one century later. Many people would like to believe the modern, technologically advanced world in which we now live is free from the threat of such terrible, abrupt maladies; however, a simple look at the rapid advance of the AIDS/HIV virus from Africa in the past several decades readily debunks that blithe fantasy.

Then, as now, people turned to their religious leaders for answers. In the middle of the fourteenth century it was a commonplace to see long lines of hooded men wandering the countryside of Catholic Europe. These mendicant orders, earning the moniker of “flagellants,” mortified their own flesh in expiation for the transgressions of sinners, for surely their crimes had caused God to visit this terrible pestilence upon them. Several centuries later and a world away, the pagan Aztecs increased the tempo of human sacrifice as their people fell in droves to European diseases; they offered the bleeding hearts of their victims to cruel, bloodthirsty deities in hopes of stopping the dreadful epidemic, even as conquistador armies camped on the shores of Lake Texcoco. While a majority of people in the modern world are no longer inclined to believe that outbreaks of disease represent a form of divine retribution, this has not stopped a religious element from developing around the continuing AIDS crisis.

Instead of turning to God and his representatives on Earth to stop the growing menace of AIDS/HIV, it has become quite vogue among liberals and their lemmings to blame the escalation of the crisis not on religion in general but on one in particular: Roman Catholicism and its leader, the pope. They assert that the rapid spread of the withering virus is aided by the Church’s opposition to all forms of artificial birth control, especially condoms, which are commonly distributed in Sub-Saharan Africa as a method to prevent infection between sexually active couples. While this opinion may seem valid to many a casual observer, a quick examination of the facts concerning the AIDS epidemic and subsequent efforts to treat it reveals a more sinister agenda from the same liberals who claim to be acting in the best interests of the victims. The Church’s opposition to contraception, which dates from Apostolic Times, is a teaching that has been courageously upheld by recent popes in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council. As many people were experimenting with the idea of free love and the newly-available birth control pill in the turbulent decade of the 1960’s, the Catholic Church clung to its historic teachings, outlined in Humanae Vitae, a papal encyclical promulgated by Paul VI in 1968.

The flower children of the 1960’s never forgave the Catholic Church for daring to oppose their “sexual revolution” and the widespread perversion and immorality it unleashed on society. Now adults fast approaching their senescence, these aging hippies seized on the AIDS epidemic as a way to claim the moral high ground in their battle against the procreative teachings of the Catholic Church. Because condoms, though opposed by the Church, are a proven method of preventing HIV infection [according to a report released in July of 2001 by the National Institutes of Health under then-president Bill Clinton, CORRECT use of condoms prevents 85% of possible HIV infections], they sought to obtain Church approval of condom use in the event that HIV-positive persons opt to continue to be sexually active, arguing that it would be a greater evil to expose one’s partner to the deadly virus than violate the ban on birth control. The Church, however, recognized this stunt for what it was: an endeavor to undermine Church teaching on extra-marital sex and birth control by attempting to blackmail it into compromise.

Holding fast to its apostolic doctrines, the Church argued that HIV-positive individuals have a moral responsibility to remain celibate for the simple reason that all birth control has the potential to fail; in the instance of intercourse between an HIV-positive individual and another who has not contracted the virus, the result of such an encounter could not only yield an unplanned pregnancy, but transmission of the deadly virus. Thus, for the Church to give its tacit assent to fornication so long as it was “protected” would have simply been irresponsible. The Church’s plea for self-restraint was met with a mixture of outrage and bemusement in liberal circles, who could not comprehend the idea of asking people to control their base instincts. Seizing the chance to undermine traditional morality and embarrass their conservative opponents, the internationalist liberal movement, with the help of the United Nations, attempted to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa by blanketing the continent with millions of cheap condoms, essentially inviting people to partake in the delights of promiscuous sex by offering them hollow promises of freedom from both parenthood and disease.

Though initially hailed as a visionary action, the mass importation of prophylactics to Africa only accelerated the already rapid spread of the disease. Rather than admit that their “treatment” only encouraged promiscuity and engendered higher infection rates, the liberals sought to deflect responsibility for the crisis onto their favorite punching-bag, the Catholic Church, by claiming that its superstition, backwardness and misogyny retarded their noble efforts. Such an accusation could not be more unfounded; not only do one in every four AIDS victims receive treatment and care from Catholic organizations, but to date the Church can claim the proud distinction of proposing the only 100% effective AIDS prevention tactic: abstinence and fidelity. Though the idea was scoffed at by liberals, it was implemented on a large scale for the first time in Uganda in 1991 with the support of the country’s powerful Catholic Church. After nearly a decade of adhering to the proposals of UN liberals Uganda’s rate of HIV infection stood at 20% of the population, desperate to rein in the epidemic the government wisely turned to the only other solution, abstinence, the same proposal offered by the Catholic Church since the beginning. By 2001 Uganda’s rate of infection had fallen to 6% as a result of the emphasis placed on chastity and responsibility by new government programs; the successful archetype of Uganda has been followed by several other Africa nations, much to the consternation of liberal elites.

In their zeal to throw off what were perceived as the antiquated social mores of their society, Baby-Boomer liberals paved the way for the rapid advance of the AIDS epidemic in our own time. As such, their ideology was utterly unprepared to cope with the existence of a disease that thrived on the very “values,” to which they so desperately cling. Their stubborn insistence that people possess an inherent “right” to engage in random, precarious sex acts without censure from society is an idea which clearly expounds the commonly-held liberal belief in the non-existence of objective standards of right and wrong. Their reluctance to condemn lifestyle choices as dangerous or potentially self-destructive is only matched by their determination not to present one lifestyle choice as “superior” to another. Thus, liberals could not encourage abstinence and fidelity as methods to prevent the spread of AIDS without appearing to imply that the spread of the disease is aided by promiscuity; the only option left to them was to give out condoms in the hope that they would be used properly and frequently.

Fortunately this flaw was not shared by members of the Catholic clergy, who had no qualms about identifying the real source of the disease’s rapid spread. Led by Pope John Paul II this group of courageous men and women dared to point out the critical flaw in the plan of action that liberals put forward to combat the virus: that no method of birth control is entirely effective. Even amid vicious attacks from their foes, the servants of God continued to preach their message to uninfected people and provide comfort to those for whom it was already too late. The radical reversal of the situation in Uganda in the span of a mere ten years should serve as vindication of the value of abstinence and fidelity in combating the spread of AIDS in our world. In spite of this great achievement, many liberals continue to denounce the Catholic Church and its ministry as the root cause for the continued suffering of the estimated forty million people living with the AIDS virus today. The fact that they are willing to sacrifice the lives of these people and endanger those of millions more for the sake of political capital should serve as damning evidence to anyone of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of modern liberalism. Instead of continuing to advocate failed ideas, perhaps they should adhere to their own credo and listen to others… especially the pope.