Why does Catholic Relief Services forbid putting its logo on the “educational” materials it provides about HIV and condoms? It is time for the US bishops to investigate their charitable agency.The Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is the US Bishops' aid agency and Grisez analyses their approach to giving information about condoms.
Grisez quotes the official (and insufficient) reassurance that "CRS does not finance, promote or distribute condoms."
Now where have we heard that before?
4 comments:
Fr Tim - Lifesite News has this article today which I think makes a good 'comment' although a little on the long side. Perhaps here in the UK we should take a more 'Catholic Fundamentalist' (LOL!) approach to this constant government sexual health rhetoric about the so-called benefits of condoms - especially as (and think about this very carefully) ALL OF IT IS FOCUSED DIRECTLY AT OUR CHILDREN!!!
Condom-Promoters "Going Ballistic" over East African Skeleton Billboard Ads
Tanzania Prime Minister's office holding meetings to discuss "urgent intervention" against billboards
By Hilary White
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, March 31, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A project promoting chastity instead of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS in Tanzania has caught the attention of authorities. Three billboard signs, bearing a photo of a grinning skeleton on a red background with the caption, "Faithful Condom User" in English and Swahili, were erected by an African affiliate of Human Life International (HLI) and local authorities are "going ballistic".
The caption is a send-up of the so-called "ABC" slogan commonly applied by the international aid organisations: "Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms". With the minimum of ten percent failure rate for latex condoms, even when "correctly" used, and the 100 per cent fatality rate of AIDS, many experts have denounced the condom doctrine as a death trap.
Nevertheless, critics have called the ABC slogan, devised to appease the critics of condom promotion, disingenuous and racist, saying it implies that the goals of chastity are unrealistic for Africans.
HLI says that one large billboard was placed near a main road in the capital city of Dar es Salaam while two smaller versions were put up elsewhere in the city. Fr. Tom Euteneuer writes, "While we presumed that this message and graphic would be controversial, we didn't expect the international condom lobby to go utterly ballistic over it!"
Tanzania is one of the countries especially targeted by the international population control movement that has been active in promoting condom use for AIDS prevention.
On Tuesday, the main newspaper in Tanzania, The Citizen, ran a story that described the response from "high-profile" international condom-promoting organizations like the United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, Family Health International, Population Services International and others as "up in arms" and government officials as "jolted."
The paper reports that the chairman of the Tanzania Commission for AIDS was "furious" at the billboards and that members of the Prime Minister's office are holding meetings to discuss an "urgent intervention" to suppress and censor the signs.
Fr. Euteneuer said, "When the power structure of an entire country is rallied against us, that's a sure sign that we're right!"
Given the response, Human Life International is appealing for funds to expand the project. $24,000 will enable the group to fund billboards in Kenya and Cameroon but Fr. Euteneuer says they want to expand the project to 55 countries in total.
Jesse (Fast Show fame) comes out of garden shed and says....
'This week I 'ave been mostly not promoting condoms'....
.... goes back into garden shed!
Well Fr., you will have heard I'm sure, similar protestations from CAFOD, which advocates the ABC approach i.e. abstain, be faithful, or if you cannot do either of these, use a condom.CAFOD also, I believe, supports giving what it describes as factual information on the efficacy of a number of different methods of reducing HIV/AIDS infection rates.The failure of our good Bishops to rein in CAFOD, and insist that it adheres more fully to Catholic teaching is being perceived as serious weakness within the Bishop's Conference.I am sorry to make these comments, but you did pose the question!
Yes, CAFOD did spring to mind. Apparently Trocaire makes a similar (and similarly inadequate) protestation. I am waiting for permission to post an article about this from an Irish newspaper.
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