Condom use in Africa and elsewhere

David Micallef

Apr 27th 2009, 23:22

@Joe Xuereb. I don't believe I came across any such news that reported this week on any local media re any such statements made by the Roman Catholic Church.

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.

gerry cowie

Apr 27th 2009, 21:08

@William P Flynn - My! You are getting desperate!
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?

Joe Xuereb

Apr 26th 2009, 21:49

A healthy sexual drive and act, heterosexual or homosexual, is natural and normal. And has nothing to do with religion. However, like all living matter, bodies carry millions of 'microbes' on their surface and elsewhere. And when two surfaces are in contact, one surface acts as host to the other's microbes. Rocket science ths is not. It is the nature of the beast. One can opt to wrap oneself in sterilised cotton-wool, or a tight bubble and expire asphyxiated. Or do what is natural, seek information, and take precautions. It has been proven that for particular sexual activities, the condom is as effective as any available. I few days ago in this very papers, I read a Church(?) Vatican (?) report which stated that an HIV infected person had a duty to wear a condom so as not to pass the HIV virus on. Strangely, it went on to say that a person, no man or woman, and certainly neither of two men, together by implication, could use a condom to prevent catching the virus from their partner. I find this so confusing that still can not get my head round it. Someone please unravel for me.

William P Flynn

Apr 26th 2009, 15:01

One should be entitled to think that Ratzinger, being the architect of Crimen Sollicitationis - whereby every vagabond paedophile priest HAD to be reported to Ratzinger's department at the Vatican - he would have learned something about the unstoppable power of sex,sexual drive and abstinence.

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.

adrian aquilina

Apr 26th 2009, 13:31

another letter based on religious crap..the percentage of failure of condoms is due to not using it properly..Condoms have and do save countless lives and telling people to not have sex is ridiculously naive. What is dangerous is all the false information given by the church about important things that can go along way in saving and helping to protect lives.live in the real world

Robert Callus

Apr 26th 2009, 13:27

@David Micallef
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

David Micallef

Apr 26th 2009, 12:37

big yawn & sigh...the same report you're quoting starts with the following statement:

"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 !

Nathan Young

Apr 26th 2009, 12:23

A 14













A 14% failure means a 86% success.

Gerry Cowie

Apr 26th 2009, 12:14

Maria,

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!

Aleksandar Dimitrijevic

Apr 26th 2009, 10:57

Could you please let us know what is the failure rate when NOT using a condom?

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.