Cardinal Pell has entered the current AIDS/ condoms fray, charging that "no such (HIV/AIDS) human crisis can be solved by a rubber contraption."
He's also been told of the moves to have the Catholic priest, Fr Michael Kelly, s.j., stood down from the government's HIV/AIDS advisory subcommittee because his stance against condoms conflicts with the government's prevention strategy.
The Federal Health Minister, Tony Abbott, has still to respond to a formal request by The Australian AIDS Fund for the stand-down.
Cardinal Pell took up the cudgels in his Sydney Sunday Telegraph column "Fighting against AIDS", subsequently reprinted in the (Sydney) "Catholic Weekly".
Like most who believe that abstinence is the key to HIV prevention, Cardinal Pell pointed to Uganda's efforts that dramatically drove down that country's double-figure infection rates to its existing figure of about six percent.
But as Melbourne Catholic AIDS activist, Brian Haill, points out: it's quite wrong to attribute the Ugandan infection plunge to abstinence alone.
"It's a serious myth that needs to be demolished, without at all diminishing the truth that abstinence is the ideal prevention for those who can embrace it.", Haill said.
"Uganda's stand-out performance is due to the initial concern of Cuba's Fidel Castro who alerted Uganda's President Musoveni to a mystery sickness among Ugandan soldiers and Musoveni's swift and comprehensive response which he personally led."
"It was never a contest between abstinence and condoms."
Noting that "..the church is often criticised for its opposition to the use of condoms.." Cardinal Pell said 'AIDS is transmitted in three ways; by blood, from a mother to her unborn baby, and by sexual contact." And that "Self control is the first part of the answer."
Haill says it's interesting to note how the Cardinal has the transmission picture back to front: sexual contact is the runaway front runner. But, Haill says, "with polluted bloodbanks;ignorance about both sex and HIV;polygamy; sex under the threat of violence and/or poverty; and "widow cleansing" (where a woman whose husband has died of AIDS is forced to have sex with another man); what does Cardinal Pell offer millions of women, apart from despair?
"Does he not understand that millions of married women are at risk of infection because their menfolk are bringing the infection home.What's his practical advice?"
"They need clear and simple advice on how to protect themselves in such circumstances. It's the obligation of all leaders...civic and spiritual ...to provide that!
Uganda's global example is known as "ABC"...... Abstain from non-marital sex; Be faithful if you can ( adhering to what some leaders refer to as 'zero grazing'); or use a Condom if all else fails.
"It was that combination -especially the drop in promiscuous behaviour and a 'skyrocketing' use of condoms that won the day," Haill said.
Cardinal Pell in his article tells how he once shared a plane trip with a health worker returning from Africa who told him that condoms were expensive, in short supply, often of poor quality, and with many hostile to using them.
Haill then endeavours to draw the cardinal into the environment of reality:-
* " What the cardinal fails to grasp is that any item is expensive to any poverty-stricken African earning less than one dollar a day and then there's the matter of people having no money at all.... which is why women and girls feel obliged to resort to prostitution to feed themselves or their families when they have no money;
* "That faults can be found in all goods the world over...especially when there's more an eye to profits than production standards...and that the goods are headed for the poorest places on earth;
* and that cultural mores are such that Africans do not at all willingly embrace the use of condoms....the men see them as a threat to their masculinity and fertility...or, worse, a sign that they are actually infected, or, that if the women demand their use, that the women themselves must be infected!!
Haill, the president of The Australian AIDS Fund, a Catholic AIDS charity based in Melbourne, said the Catholic Church in Australia should do much more to raise HIV/AIDS awareness in Australia." How many of its priests,bishops, and archbishops even drew attention to World AIDS Day(December 1) in their cathedrals or parishes?"
"Happily, at least my own local parish priest did.
"Years ago, the then archbishop Pell agreed to approach the Australian bishops on my behalf for their support of an annual gold coin collection to be taken up on World AIDS Day to help people living with HIV/AIDS.
He came back empty-handed: they'd said the national flock was already sufficiently financially burdened."
"Shortly after, in my own Victorian parish of Frankston, not one but ten gold coin collections were introduced....taken up each year to pay off our community centre. They're still are!
Oddly, in the past week, Haill has discovered another Fr Michael Kelly, also a Jesuit priest,but with very different views to his Australian namesake. A professor at the Zambia university, he's supportive of condom use to prevent HIV transmission. It's an article everyone should read. |
