It Must Be A Bitch Being So Damned Infallible

I think the Pope might want to think about staying home more. It seems like every time he goes anywhere and opens his mouth, disaster follows. This usually amounts to PR problems and doesn't involve death, but this time, during his visit to Angola, he managed to inspire a riot which left several people dead and injured, two of them teenage girls.

In the meantime, he managed to undermine those, including many in his own church, who are promoting condom use in Africa as a means of combating AIDS, by proclaiming that condoms might actually be a contributing factor to AIDS. In doing so he discouraged their use. He capped this off with a warning about the dangers of animism, witchcraft, and other forms of superstition.

Look, no one should be surprised by this, as the Catholic Church is by rights a two-thousand year old incarnation of one or more much older Roman fertility cults it basically supplanted, albeit with more spiritual trappings. What was the purpose of these ancient fertility cults? Of course, they encouraged population growth at a time when this was vital. Yes, it has evolved over time into more outwardly civil and modern trappings, but it is still obvious that the Pope isn't going to encourage the practice of sex without an emphasis on procreation, and he certainly isn't going to encourage birth control, AIDS be damned. Nor is he going to preside over such a profound change in Church policy as to turn it into something that is diametrically opposed to such an important part of its historical existence and spiritual meaning.

The witchcraft thing is a little trickier. In Angola, and other parts of Africa, thousands of people, including children, have been beaten, tortured, dispossessed, and even murdered, due to accusations of witchcraft. It is a big problem there, and the Pope with his words may have unintentionally contributed to it. He of course considers all kinds of witchcraft and paganism hedonistic at best, and malign superstition at worse, so when he specifies malign witchcraft, you can be pretty sure he is meaning all of its forms as it might exist in Africa, where the practice and belief is widespread and so inculcated in the popular mind and culture.

Recently, a robbery was foiled in Nigeria in which the driver of the getaway car attempted to evade the police by supposedly transforming himself into a goat-this according to the official Lagos police report. See what I mean?

The Pope means well, and to a great extent is a positive influence on people's lives, but the Catholic Church is not some infallible spiritually based organization that can do no wrong, nor is the Pope infallible. If this was the case, what does he need with advisers and PR people to begin with? No, the Church is just another powerful organization made up of people who are by no means, by the way, united in all matters, and which can and has been sadly wrong on many occasion. That is just as true today as at any time.

The irony is, in a way the Pope was right. We would be much better off if we limited sexual activity to the confines of marriage. If everyone did that, AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases would not be an issue, nor would out-of-wedlock births. People shouldn't get too outraged that the Pope is promoting his beliefs and those of the religion of which he is the head. It's really quite simple. If you don't believe in the Pope or what he says or his church, then use the damned condoms. His opinion shouldn't matter to you anyway. If you do believe in him, and follow his teachings, then do so in all regards, because if you pick and choose what sounds palatable and discard the rest because its inconvenient or distasteful, then you are playing Russian roulette.

Granted, somebody does need to talk to the Pope about choosing his words more carefully and making sure the full meaning of what he says is clear. If only he wasn't so damned infallible.