![\"\"](\"http:\/\/aomoi.net\/blogg\/bilder\/light_of_the_world.jpg\" "\\"light_of_the_world\\"")
<\/p>\nS\u00f8ndag morgen leser jeg mange reaksjoner p\u00e5 g\u00e5rsdagens nyhet, der pave Benedikt omtaler bruk av kondomer. Det ser ut til at noen kommentarer bygger p\u00e5 en oversettelse av den italienske utgaven, som ser ut til \u00e5 v\u00e6re lite presis (det er snakk om en mannlig prostituert som er HIV-smittet, og ordet rettferdiggjort brukes ikke). Les gjerne hele det aktuelle avsnittet fra den offisielle engelske utgaven (p\u00e5 Ignatius Press) under. <\/p>\n
Sekul\u00e6re aviser etc. misforst\u00e5r i stor grad det paven sier (at han n\u00e5 har forandret syn og \u00e5pner for bruk av kondom for katolikker!), og noen konservative katolikker hisser seg ogs\u00e5 opp – uten god grunn syns jeg nok. Pave Benedikt sier at seksualiteten m\u00e5 gj\u00f8res menneskelig og moralsk, da l\u00f8ser vi ogs\u00e5 HIV-problemet, mens kondomer er med og banaliserer sekesuelle handlinger.<\/p>\n
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«On the occasion of your trip to Africa in March 2009, the Vatican\u2019s policy on AIDs once again became the target of media criticism.Twenty-five percent of all AIDs victims around the world today are treated in Catholic facilities. In some countries, such as Lesotho, for example, the statistic is 40 percent. In Africa you stated that the Church\u2019s traditional teaching has proven to be the only sure way to stop the spread of HIV. Critics, including critics from the Church\u2019s own ranks, object that it is madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms.»<\/em><\/p>\n
The media coverage completely ignored the rest of the trip to Africa on account of a single statement. Someone had asked me why the Catholic Church adopts an unrealistic and ineffective position on AIDs. At that point, I really felt that I was being provoked, because the Church does more than anyone else. And I stand by that claim. Because she is the only institution that assists people up close and concretely, with prevention, education, help, counsel, and accompaniment. And because she is second to none in treating so many AIDs victims, especially children with AIDs.<\/p>\n
I had the chance to visit one of these wards and to speak with the patients. That was the real answer: The Church does more than anyone else, because she does not speak from the tribunal of the newspapers, but helps her brothers and sisters where they are actually suffering. In my remarks I was not making a general statement about the condom issue, but merely said, and this is what caused such great offense, that we cannot solve the problem by distributing condoms. Much more needs to be done. We must stand close to the people, we must guide and help them; and we must do this both before and after they contract the disease.<\/p>\n
As a matter of fact, you know, people can get condoms when they want them anyway. But this just goes to show that condoms alone do not resolve the question itself. More needs to happen. Meanwhile, the secular realm itself has developed the so-called ABC Theory: Abstinence-Be Faithful-Condom, where the condom is understood only as a last resort, when the other two points fail to work. This means that the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality, which, after all, is precisely the dangerous source of the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves. This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also a part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man\u2019s being.<\/p>\n
There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.<\/strong><\/p>\n