Sunday, 26th April 2009
Condom use in Africa and elsewhere
During 2006, in Europe alone almost a quarter of a million new cases of chlamydia were registered.
This is an asymptomatic pathology in 70 per cent of the cases, but it's associated with sterility in men and women and ectopic pregnancies, and it may increase the risk of contracting aids or Lymphogranuloma venereum. These are enough reasons to be worried.
But it is unbelievable that sanitary authorities ignore the warnings of the World Health Organisation, which points to a 14 per cent possibility of failure in condom use while fighting Aids. One example is Africa, where NGOs and governments distribute condoms without tackling the problem of sexual promiscuity.
The Pope warned Africa against this, recommending chastity and loyalty inside marriages. It's proved to be cheap and effective in avoiding the rise in the number of people who are HIV-positive, which in Africa alone is 22.5 million. A significant part of that number believed in the false promises of safe sex while using condoms.
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However in the US, 29th March 2009, the United Church of Christ announced that it is planning to distribute condoms from its churches as sited from its own website.
http://www.ucc.org/ucan/statement-condoms03-20-09.html
This denomination,found mainly in the US, came into being in 1957 with the union of two Protestant denominations: the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Churches. According to their 2007 yearbook, the United Church of Christ has approximately 1.2 million members and is composed of approximately 5,518 local congregations.
But I doubt very much, if this news item about the distribution of condoms would have been reported in Malta. Most probably, although only a presumption, it would be either considered blasphemous or deemed ridiculous coloured with some condescending sermon.
You accuse me of being a "catholic apologist" because of my fight to raise the importance of human life from conception to natural death.
As a self confessed secularist apologist, you offer the usual diatribe against the Church.
You, sir, have made a career out of attempting to justify the unjustifiable!
You are so desperate to silence me that you have once publically called for me to be shut up and you have publically called for me to "butt out" of the abortion debate.
Your attempts to ridicule me fall rather flat!
The people of Malta have a greater respect for human life than you wish.
I am not sure what your agenda is!
What you failed to do, before making your petty attack, was to see I encouraged the original writer to prove her sources, precisely because it is important to do so.
Have you never thought of doing likewise?
@ Robert Callus - What sweeping statements exactly?
So, sweeping accusations of murder are OK in your book?
He would have had first hand experience of scores of priests who broke the biggest sexual taboo of all - child sexual molestation. No other sacrilege was so damned as to cause Jesus to compare its perpetrators to tying a millstone round their own necks.
Ratzinger would have wondered about how these evil priests were sexually driven even in the face of certain eternal damnation. One would think the unseen power of natural (and unnatural) sexual drive should have given him pause.
But no. Ratzinger demands the impossible; and not from holy men either; but from all Africans. His absolutist and dogmatic banning of all contraceptives is a ridiculous and tragic faux pas; with deadly consequences.
It takes religion to do that.
Catholic apologists like GerryCowie are always waiting in the wings ready to justify the unjustifiable....diving into their legendary miscues ...like canned laughter in a tragedy.
The rest of the pope's flock is restive.
You mentioned a very imporant issue - interpretation of statisics. Getting snippets from a statistic or writing a vague statement such as 'research shows....' are far from the truth. What's written in this article and your link show a classic case of this.
@Gerrie Cowie
What the pope said will very probably account for deaths, a direct relationship could never be found for obvious reasons. 'Why didn't they take him to court?' What kind of question is this?
Not even Iran's Ahmadinajed, Libya's Gaddafi or Zimbabwe's Mugabe were not tried in a court. Does that mean they are not guilty for causing numerous murders?
And please stop making sweeping statements. I'm against abortion, and considering the pope's comments, to say the least 'unethical' changes nothing
"Condoms are the only contraceptive method proven to reduce the risk of all sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV. They can be used as a dual-purpose method, both for prevention of pregnancy and protection against STIs."
An the 14% you're mentioning is " is due primarily to inconsistent and incorrect use, not to condom failure. Condom failure – the device breaking or slipping off completely during intercourse – is uncommon."
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs243/en/
And it took you a while to find this report, considering it was published in June 2000 !
When are you planning to give up on this witch hunt re condom failure and admit that the basis for your (chastity advocates and promoters) saga lies only within the utopic Vatican walls and not the world out there!!?? With or without your sermons based on fear, the society would still resort to sex because it's a human need and not a dark deadly sin !
A 14% failure means a 86% success.
I only hope you have relevant links to your sources on this issue to prove what you have said.
There are secularists who will deny your claims.
Mind you some of them have openly accused the Pope of murder! If this is the case then why don't they take him to court? I want proof of this accusation before I can be expected even to consider it.
Yet the same people claim that abortion is not murder!
Funny old world!
I dont know about you, but I'll take something that works 86% of the times rather than something that does not work at all.