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Culture & Cosmos/Vatican Cardinal Defends Catholic Church Against BBC Attacks
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, recently issued a defense of Church teachings against the charges presented in the BBC documentary "Sex and the Holy City," which aired on the eve of Pope John Paul's 25th anniversary in October of 2003. Widely criticized in Catholic circles, the film held the Church responsible for thousands of deaths due to her doctrinal position against the use of condoms. Cardinal Lopez Trujillo was extensively interviewed for the documentary; however, Lopez Trujillo says the final version included "merely three questions of less than half a minute each, the answers to which were certainly much more complete. The program apparently tried to deliberately and systematically criticize the Catholic Church for supposedly contributing to the death of people by not allowing the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS." In a recently released statement, the Cardinal responded at length, citing multiple secular studies and reports in defense of the Church's belief that condoms do not provide sufficient protection against HIV/AIDS and other STDS. He argues that the "safe-sex" message is insufficient, even dangerous that abstinence is the only method that guarantees complete protection against the deadly disease. He said, "There is no such thing…as a 100% protection from HIV/AIDS or other STD's through condom use today." Lopez Trujillo referred to several studies supporting his argument, including one from the International Planned Parenthood Federation, one of the strongest proponents of the "safe-sex" message, which admitted that the "use of condoms reduces by approximately 70% the total risk between unprotected sex and complete sexual abstinence." The Cardinal said that the "remaining 10-30% from these figures…is relatively high when one deals with a potentially mortal disease such as AIDs, especially if there is an alternative that provides absolute protection of the same: namely, abstinence before marriage, and fidelity to one's spouse." Lopez Trujillo said the Catholic Church is promoting "not mere risk reduction…but rather risk elimination; not partial protection, but total protection…It is truly misleading to say that one promotes 'safe sex', when in fact one is actually promoting 'safer sex,' that is, sex that is safer than not using a condom at all; but it is still farm from being total protection…to emphasize that the condom 'reduces risks', but hiding the fact that it 'does not eliminate risks', leads to confusion." Lopez Trujillo insists that the Catholic assertion of the intrinsic dignity of human sexuality must be realized in order to stem the tide of the AIDS epidemic. Increasing condom availability leads to more promiscuous behavior, which combined with their questionable dependability leads to certain contamination over the course of a lifetime, and "in order to control the pandemic, it is necessary to promote responsible sexual behavior…that respects the dignity of man and woman, and that does not consider others as mere instruments of pleasure and thus objects 'to be used'. I also said that such responsible behavior takes place only in conjugal love." Some in Britain are calling for a boycott of the BBC for what they consider to be its persistent “aggressive and antagonistic” attitude toward the Church. E-mail: clf@culture-of-life.org Website: http://www.culture-of-life.org Affordable press release writing and distribution http://ThatPRGuy.com
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