Archives

The audacity of Pope

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Mar 29, 2009

One of my finest students, Kate Otto, in Africa

I admit it: I’m one proud professor right now.

That’s because you’re about to read a star student of mine named Kate Otto. She’s a Christian, an HIV/AIDS activist and a soon-to-be graduate of NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service.

Kate’s mighty outraged by Pope Benedict’s latest comments about condoms. And she’s saying so. Publicly. On a blog that she knows is read by people in America, Africa, India, even Indonesia — where she’ll be working for a year upon graduation.

Ladies and gentlemen, a young voice of moral courage…

Mahatma Gandhi once commented, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

I imagine he would have considered Pope Benedict XVI just such a Christian based on his remarks en route to Cameroon last week. HIV, the Pope opined, is a tragedy “that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems.”

As both a Christian and a student of health policy, I understand the Pope’s comments to reflect the frustrating dynamic of religious interpretation intervening in public health solutions. The ironic bit is, religious leadership and ‘Christlike’ behavior could help slow the pandemic.

Countless Biblical passages call Christians to attend to those in most dire need; in our world, they are indisputably people at highest risk of contracting HIV. The same passage used to condemn sexual ‘immorality’ (1 Corinthians 6:20 — “honor God with your body”) could easily be used instead to promote healthy physical behavior, including safe sex.
Religion is interpretation, and always has been. In the disappointing case of the Pope, religious interpretation continues to exacerbate the AIDS pandemic. This Pope needs to wake up to the twenty-first century: Condoms decrease the spread of HIV.

However, let me confess that he makes an important point: Condoms alone will not resolve AIDS. Condoms cannot simply be shipped out and distributed haphazardly. People must learn how to use them, and how to talk about using them. Until cultures (including American culture) shift towards seeing condom use as normal sexual behavior, HIV will persist. Condoms are effective only when used correctly and consistently, and this requires comprehensive sex education, which the Pope should endorse.

My faith and my intellect are stunned by the Pope, who is audacious enough to encourage abstinence in the face of serious sexual issues that he is too cowardly to address. He ignores the women who remain faithful but are infected by promiscuous partners. He ignores that they are often domestically abused if they ask to use a condom. He ignores the economic conditions and cultural biases that mean, for millions, that sex is never a pleasure. Sex workers sell their bodies as the sole means of keeping themselves and their family alive. Children are raped, every single day, worldwide. Instead of avoiding these disenfranchised victims, I believe the Pope’s job description calls him to mimic Christ, and attend to them.

Ultimately, this is not an issue of religion; it is an issue of morality. The Pope is missing an incredible opportunity to turn the tide on this disease. Recently, former South African President Thabo Mbeki was charged with causing 365,000 AIDS deaths for his failure to ensure provision of lifesaving AIDS medications.

I similarly hold the Pope accountable for AIDS deaths (certainly the 50,000 that will happen this week alone) for failing to use his immense influence to change culture and promote evidence-based, effective prevention mechanisms.

Christians should be protesting the Pope in the name of Christ. As a Christian, I am speaking out against the Pope’s abysmal leadership. May he learn to live like the Christ who said, “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”