THE NEWS, THE CHURCH, AND THE POROUS CONDOMS

I tell ya, it's pretty hard these days not to sound Anti-Catholic. There's plenty to codemn the church hierarchy for, and for which I feel no hesitation or guilt, but heretofore I didn't want to condemn the followers of the church. It's too creepy to do that, given the rise of anti-Semitism in the world today.

But one has to take a stand. There is no longer any option. Passively following ignorant leadership of any faith or religious group is--well, its time is up. You're either part of the solution or part of the problem. If Jews with brains (a subset I aspire to belong to) don't roundly condemn Ariel Sharon and all his sycophantic morons, and the idiot Orthodox fundamentalists in the settlements, then they are culpable. If Protestants with brains (hey, don't they run the country?) don't condemn the Anglican-Episcopal bigots, the Falwells, the Robertsons, the rest of the scum that hides behind religion the same way the Taliban and Bin Laden do, then they are culpable. And finally, if Catholics with brains don't condemn the Pope and his minions for the recent insanely ignorant and dangerous comments regarding condoms and AIDS (let alone their obsessive reactionary attacks on gays, even if obviously designed to distract us from the priestly scandals), then they too are culpable.

So for all the culpable and the few who aren't, here's a letter I wrote to the Boston Globe today. The Globe did well in investigating and reporting the pedophilia and coverups, but lately seems to have become a PR mouthpiece for the Church in its crusade against diversity.


Dear Editor,

There are some things that are irrefutable and unambiguous.

Global warming is one such fact. The Bush administration’s refusal to acknowledge it is not surprising, but no less unacceptable. Great harm will ensue, but mostly in the future, invisible to us now and thus easier to dismiss.

Another fact is that condoms prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. No one with any shred of credibility or conscience disputes this fact. No one, apparently, except the Catholic Church. The Church claims that the latex is porous to HIV, rendering them useless, and further that condoms lead to promiscuity—therefore no one should use them, and good Catholics, especially those with influence must openly fight against their use, to the point of changing public policy.

To what end? This may support their long-standing doctrine against contraception, but great harm also ensues. In this case the harm is death and suffering—not just to Catholics but to whole societies devastated by AIDS, and not in the future, but today, and extremely visible.

So it should be inconceivable that a major religious institution would advocate a policy that, given the facts, is tantamount to manslaughter.

Clearly it isn’t. Instead of filling the front page of this newspaper with every wag-the-dog utterance of the Church self-righteously condemning same-sex marriage or homosexuality, thus granting authority and legitimacy in a secular forum where none should exist, this paper and others ought to be shouting in 30-point type about a much more egregious aspect of this institution’s advocacy—one that, if successful, will lead to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. One that many consider to be as criminal, if not more so, than the centuries of tacitly sanctioned priestly malfeasance from which the Church is trying its best to distract us.

We are sacrificing the lives of our soldiers in Afghanistan fighting “foreign” religious primitivism that inflicts the most horrible fates on the innocent, especially women, while we shrug at the policies of one of our own religious institutions that would do the same.

That’s what’s inconceivable.

Sincerely,
Arthur Cohen