The Hermeneutic of Continuity

First Things has today published an article by Matt Hanley: Reducing Risk, Increasing AIDS . Here are the first two paragraphs: The predominant Western approach to preventing the spread of AIDS in Africa has failed. Though in theory the risk reduction strategies favored by Western governments and aid agencies—handing out condoms, promoting counseling and testing, and treating other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) to block HIV transmission—can “work” in theory, they have not done so in practice. In Africa, despite years of promised improvements, they have not brought any downturn at all. But a handful of African countries have actually forced down the AIDS rates, each of them by changing behavior—particularly reducing sexual partnerships—not through the heavily promoted risk reduction measures. This point will be familiar to many of you but the approach of Western governments and commercial interests has continued to mask the real picture and indeed convince the public that t...

One thing about blogging is that after you have been in the bear pit of a heavily biased television show, you can later write at length on any of the questions raised and dealt with in a few seconds of live TV. James Preece has done this in an excellent article: The Pope and Condoms in Africa

Recently, I mentioned an article by Kathryn Jean Lopez, referring to Edward C. Green, the Director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, who said that the Pope was right and that the best evidence that we have supports his comments. (See: Support for the Holy Father from Harvard .) The Italian journal Il Sussidiario has interviewed Edward Green . Green says that as a social liberal it is hard for him to admit it, but the Pope is right. At one point, he says: People began noticing years ago that the countries in Africa with the highest condom availability and highest condom user rates, also had the highest HIV infection rates. This does not prove a causal relation, but it should have made us look critically at our condom programs years ago. His comments on "risk compensation" are important in understanding why it is that condom programmes have not reduced HIV infection rates.

Have a look at this inspiring production "The Change Is On", an educational video produced in Africa and posted in several parts on YouTube. The video is in support of the programme "Education for Life. A Behaviour Change Process." It documents the response to HIV/AIDS in the diocese of Tzaneen, which has implemented a multi faceted and authentically Catholic response, rooted in the Gospel of Life. Here is part 6 as a sample: I will give a couple of quotations that particularly struck me, the first one from Joanna Thabathi. Here we have a Director of Social Services (Mopani District, Limpopo Province) who encourages parents to take responsibility for educating their own children in intimate matters rather than leaving the task to others: "Let us talk to our children. Let us not be afraid of our own children. Let us give them the respect and the guidance that they want; because they need to be guided, they need to be shown the way. Let us not wait for our neighb...

From Human Life International Dear Holy Father, Please accept our heartfelt love and admiration for your prophetic and courageous proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in season and out of season. We are in deep solidarity with you against the terrible distortions and attacks by condom-promoters in the press and, even more shamefully, in governments. The Vicar of Christ will always be a sign of contradiction to those blinded by ideology. Your words of compassion and common sense are to be praised highly. Thank you for your witness of hope and love to a world that is increasingly hostile to the truth, especially if it calls into question the foundations of the "Sexual Revolution." With gratitude, Sign the petition here .

The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia has a good piece on The Pope and Condoms by Matthew Hanley. An exhaustive review of the impact of condom promotion on actual HIV transmission in the developing world concluded that condoms have not been responsible for turning around any of the severe African epidemics. This rigorous study was originally commissioned by UNAIDS, and conducted by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco. Instead of welcoming the findings, and adapting HIV prevention strategies accordingly, UNAIDS first tried to alter the findings, and ultimately refused to publish them. The findings were so threatening to UNAIDS that the researchers were finally forced to publish them on their own in another, peer-reviewed journal. The report referred to was published by Norman Hearst and Sanny Chen in "Studies in Family Planning" for March 2004. The website of the journal has an abstract of the article . For further discussion, see UN...

National Review Online carries and article by Kathryn Jean Lopez: From Saint Peter’s Square to Harvard Square which has the subtitle "Media coverage of papal comments on AIDS in Africa is March madness." Lopez quotes Edward C. Green, the Director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. Green said that the Pope was right and that the best evidence that we have supports his comments because condoms have not proved effective. Greater availability and use of condoms leads to higher, not lower HIV-infection rates. He explains: This may be due in part to a phenomenon known as risk compensation, meaning that when one uses a risk-reduction ‘technology’ such as condoms, one often loses the benefit (reduction in risk) by ‘compensating’ or taking greater chances than one would take without the risk-reduction technology.” Or, as we might put it simply, the promotion of condoms leads to promiscuity. Green also said, I also not...

It might seem that when ambushed, you should run for cover, conceal yourself, get out of danger. McAleese's "Fighting Manual" realistically points out that when the enemy has put out a deliberate ambush, he has chosen the ground and set up his weapons. You don't have the luxury of choosing cover. As he says, the only realistic response is to come out fighting with aggression and determination: "It's got to be "enemy left!" and straight in - as quick as that. If you start thinking 'Well, they could have a machine gun here ... should I, shouldn't I, could I, couldn't I, you're dead." Mutatis mutandis , this applies to an ambush by the presenter on live TV. Joanna Bogle was ambushed by Jon Snow on Channel 4 the other day and came out fighting. She didn't equivocate, apologise, wonder whether it might be right to use a condom to save a life, or try to hide under cover of "possible theological opinions." From the luxur...

Yet again, the Holy Father has become the object of worldwide media outrage. Replying to questions from journalists during his flight to Cameroon, the Holy Father's answer was asked about the Catholic Church's approach to HIV/AIDS, "considered by some as unrealistic and ineffective." The Vatican Information Service gives his reply as follows: "It is my belief believe that the most effective presence on the front in the battle against HIV/AIDS is in fact the Catholic Church and her institutions. ... The problem of HIV/AIDS cannot be overcome with mere slogans. If the soul is lacking, if Africans do not help one another, the scourge cannot be resolved by distributing condoms; quite the contrary, we risk worsening the problem. The solution can only come through a twofold commitment: firstly, the humanisation of sexuality, in other words a spiritual and human renewal bringing a new way of behaving towards one another; and secondly, true friendship, above all with the...

Many thanks to a correspondent for links to these two godo articles on AIDS and public policy from the National Catholic Bioethics Center : AIDS and “Technical Solutions.” First Change Sexual Behavior by Matthew Hanley AIDS and the Ideological Barrier. The Threat to “Sexual Liberation” by Douglas A. Sylva, Ph.D. A quote from the article by Sylva: AIDS is unique because, as a deadly pandemic spread mainly through promiscuous sexual activity, it threatens some of the most cherished modern norms concerning sexual liberation. So to promote the most obvious response to such a pandemic—do not engage in promiscuous sexual activity—would in essence be a capitulation, an admission that the dream of consequence-free sexual activity was not only impossible, but perhaps at least partly responsible for the scourge. Hanley points out that the secondary risk-reduction strategies: use of condoms, voluntary counseling and testing, and treatment of other sexually transmitted infections, have had far les...

LifeSite has a review of a "Miss HIV", a new film about AIDS: Miss HIV: A Film to Change How the World Sees HIV/AIDS . Here is the summary from the film makers: Miss HIV explores the international collision of HIV/AIDS policies while following the journey of two HIV-positive women who enter the contest in Botswana. Filmed across Africa and the international AIDS conference in Toronto this explosive ethnographic film shares both sides of an ideology struggle. What is happening in Botswana, where half of all pregnant women have HIV, is set against Uganda who has experienced the largest reductions of new infections ever recorded. Unlike any film you've ever seen on AIDS, the story takes you backstage to the Miss HIV pageant and behind the curtain on what is really happening in the war against a virus that is now the leading killer of people under 60 in the world. John Jalsevac of LifeSite comments: What is gradually revealed is, in part, the absurdity and hypocrisy of an id...

Germain Grisez has written an article for Catholic World Report titled The Church Betrayed? with the strapline 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?

Yesterday, Zenit carried an interview with Matthew Hanley headed AIDS in Africa: abstinence works . Matthew Hanley is the technical advisor for Catholic Relief Services, the international relief and development agency of the Catholic Church in the US. He says: When we conducted training recently with five dioceses in Ethiopia, one of the participants, a wife and a mother, spoke for the group by saying how much she appreciated the emphasis on fidelity and related human values such as respect and communication. She was puzzled as to why such basic themes are not more routinely promoted in the context of HIV prevention, adding: "Why hasn't anyone explained it like this before?" He has some interesting figures: [...] researchers have noted that in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, HIV transmission rates have remained high despite a considerable increase in condom use. For example, condom sales in Botswana increased from 1 million in 1993 to 3 million in 2001, while HIV pr...

The other day, courtesy of a kind reader, I received a copy of the book "Culture of Life - Culture of Death", edited by Luke Gormally and published by the Linacre Centre. The book is a collection of 22 articles on various aspects of the subject. In the page about the book from the Linacre Centre you can see a list of the articles and some quotations from reviews of the book. My correspondent particularly wanted me to read Sr Miram Duggan's article "Combating the spread of AIDS". Sr Miriam is a gynaecologist and was (at least at the time of publication in 2002) Superior General of the Franciscan Missionary Sisters for Africa . She has worked as a missionary doctor in Africa for 30 years. She describes a practical and down-to-earth approach to behaviour change, working especially through the "Youth Alive" workshops which promote sound spiritual, moral and cultural values among the young and offer character-building to help them to live these values. She...