Hi jar,
I made a number of accusations against JPII in my last post, and you said that they were "silly". here's my considered response. I've tried to provide documentary evidence where possible, and I've tried to use some Catholic sources of evidence to back up my points in a way that I hope is not too partisan. I'm taking a lot of time and effort in making this response comprehensive, because I know you usually make sensible comments and I know you are not just trying to rubbish me here.
first, i want to talk about the "legal" (or ethical) responsibility of the pope for the behaviour of his church.
According to the vatican website,
quote:
In exercising supreme, full, and immediate power in the universal Church, the Roman pontiff makes use of the departments of the Roman Curia which, therefore, perform their duties in his name and with his authority for the good of the churches and in the service of the sacred pastors.
CHRISTUS DOMINUS, 9
This means that the activities of the Catholic church at a lower level of organizational hierarchy are carried out by virtue of the authority of the pontiff. In other words, the activities of the church at all levels of its hierarchy are valid when they are carried out in accordance with the authority vested in the pope. So the pope is responsible (in an organizational/policy sense) for the behaviour of his underlings.
In the civic world, this is laid out quite straightforwardly in law. For example, Donald Rumsfeld is legally responsible, through his promotion of policies or inaction in preventing policies which he knew were being enacted, for the action of every single soldier in the US army. The legal basis of his responsibility (and that of a number of generals in the US army) is laid out in detail at the ACLU website (
National Security | American Civil Liberties Union). The ACLU aren't saying that Rumsfeld personally terrifyied prisoners of war with attack dogs, but that he has organizational responsibility for permitting policies, or
failing to prevent policies, that broke the Geneva conventions.
In the case of the Catholic hierarchy, the laws are rather more fluid (in that the Catholic Church isn't a "state actor" and hasn't signed up to international conventions such as the rights of women, the geneva conventions, etc.). But I take it for granted that the Pope is directly responsible for the organization that he heads, insofar as he has knowledge of policies being enacted by lower levels of the hierarchy, that his action or inaction could change policies being enacted by lower levels of the hierarchy, and that actions at lower levels of the hierarchy are enacted in his authority. This interpretation of the pope's responsibility is enshrined in the vatican's own website quote that I provided earlier.
The defence of my previous post will rest on this legal/ethical basis. I know that the legal basis doesn't strictly apply to the Catholic church in that the Catholic church isn't a state, but I see no reason why the legal principle of organization responsbility is not applicable. I quote extensively but I consciously try to avoid "quote mining".
Accusation 1:
He purposefully set out not to just discourage use of contraception in Africa, but to ensure that rural Africans should not be educated about the availability of contraception. That is, his specific goal was to ensure rural Africans did not know about the contraception that was available to them.
The World Health Organization considers the condom to be the most effective preventative of HIV/AIDS. At their website (
404) they state:
quote:
Condoms are the only contraceptive method proven to reduce the risk of all sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV. They can be used as a dual-purpose method, both for prevention of pregnancy and protection against STIs....Laboratory studies have found that viruses (including HIV) do not pass through intact latex condoms even when devices are stretched or stressed...The most convincing data on the effectiveness of condoms in preventing HIV infection has been generated by prospective studies undertaken on serodiscordant couples, when one partner is infected with HIV and the other is not. These studies show that, with consistent condom use, the HIV infection rate among uninfected partners was less than 1 percent per year.
This webpage was written in June, 2000, and is presumably available to the Pope within Vatican city.
The views of condom use by Catholic Bishops (who are under the direct authority of the pope) are quite different from the scientifically accepted view.
According to Catholic News (cathnews.com, a catholic website) the Bishop of Port Luis, Mauritius, said in 2003 that "The condom is a stopgap, a lesser evil, but not the solution." In October, 2003, the president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, told a BBC TV programme: "The Aids virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon. The spermatozoon can easily pass through the 'net' that is formed by the condom. " (
Vatican: condoms don't stop Aids | World news | The Guardian). He was claiming that the condom does not provide protection from HIV. According the Guardian newspaper:
quote:
The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which HIV can pass - potentially exposing thousands of people to risk. The church is making the claims across four continents despite a widespread scientific consensus that condoms are impermeable to HIV. A senior Vatican spokesman backs the claims about permeable condoms, despite assurances by the World Health Organisation that they are untrue...The WHO has condemned the Vatican's views, saying: "These incorrect statements about condoms and HIV are dangerous when we are facing a global pandemic which has already killed more than 20 million people, and currently affects at least 42 million." ...Scientific research by a group including the US National Institutes of Health and the WHO found "intact condoms... are essentially impermeable to particles the size of STD pathogens including the smallest sexually transmitted virus... condoms provide a highly effective barrier to transmission of particles of similar size to those of the smallest STD viruses". The Vatican's Cardinal Trujillo said: "They are wrong about that... this is an easily recognisable fact." The church opposes any kind of contraception because it claims it breaks the link between sex and procreation - a position Pope John Paul II has fought to defend.
The Archbishop of Nairobi, Raphael Ndigni Nzeki, is on record as saying that "Aids... has grown so fast
because of the availability of condoms." [emphasis added]
the BBC documentary described above includes film of a Catholic nun advising her HIV-infected choirmaster against using condoms with his wife because "the virus can pass through". (
BBC NEWS | Health | Vatican in HIV condom row
)
The website of the charity Catholic Relief harps on about the devastation caused by AIDS in Africa but makes no mention of the only reliable solution - condom use (
| CRS)
John Paul II personally endorsed Catholic aid programmes that lied about condom use (
0 - Call to a member function get() on null) to rural Africans.
Nowhere in my post did I say that the Catholic Church's view on contraception was different for Africa than for elsewhere. I did not say that it "targets one group". I would, however, say that the lies of the Catholic hierarchy are particularly egregious when they are applied to Africa, which is being well and truly fucked by the virus and by the Catholic religious hierarchy.
I said in my post that
He purposefully set out not to just discourage use of contraception in Africa, but to ensure that rural Africans should not be educated about the availability of contraception. That is, his specific goal was to ensure rural Africans did not know about the contraception that was available to them.
You replied,
Nonsense. Sorry but that is simply silly.
I believe that I have proven my point regarding the first accusation so please retract your statement that I am being "simply silly". I have shown that Bishops, nuns, and the pope himself are claiming that condoms don't protect from HIV, and they are talking to uneducated people who are likely to die from the disease and leave orphans who will starve to death or get involved in child prostitution. this is promoting ignorance and obedience to the church, rather than doing what is best for the sufferer, as I rightly said in my original post.
Accusation 2
The church for which he is responsible has a fully documented history of covering up its own crimes (i.e. child abuse) and promoting anti-gay and anti-woman policies.
Your statement that JPII is "far more moderate than many christian fundamentalists" doesn't say much. It's like saying that Stalin was less anti-semitic than Hitler.
I don't know where to start in describing the Catholic cover-up of child abuse. It's been going on for a long time. An internal church document dated 1962, and written in Latin(!) obtained recently, showed that orders to cover up child abuse cases came directly from the top of the Church hierarchy. JPII was not pope at the time, but I think it gives a good idea of the Church's view on sin. Read about it at
Vatican told bishops to cover up sex abuse | World news | The Guardian. The document informed whistleblowers that they would face excommunication. A British lawyer acting for UK abused children said:
quote:
We always suspected that the Catholic Church systematically covered up abuse and tried to silence victims. This document appears to prove it. Threatening excommunication to anybody who speaks out shows the lengths the most senior figures in the Vatican were prepared to go to prevent the information getting out to the public domain
Part of the problem is that the Catholic church is so intertwined with the political hierarchy that justice is sidelined. according to the FindLaw legal commentary website, regarding the boston trials,
quote:
The report [of the attorney general] deems the Church's conduct "wrong." But what it really is, is criminal. Nevertheless, Massachusetts' brave Attorney General Thomas Reilly could not find a single criminal charge to bring against the Church. He found just enough facts to concede that there was a problem. (Even he could not pretend the problem did not exist). But he conveniently concluded that any charges that might have been made against the Church were too stale to bring...the Attorney General's failure to prosecute is outrageous. So many children--likely over 1,000--were so grievously injured, as the report itself admits. And the Attorney General's finding that the statute of limitations has run, only rewards the Church's cover-up of these injuries - and encourages other, similar cover-ups in the future. ..the Attorney General's failure to prosecute is outrageous. So many children--likely over 1,000--were so grievously injured, as the report itself admits. And the Attorney General's finding that the statute of limitations has run, only rewards the Church's cover-up of these injuries - and encourages other, similar cover-ups in the future... The discovery of thousands of instances of child sexual abuse - all within a single institution that knew of such abuse for decades and let it go forward - should have led to dozens, even hundreds, of indictments. To date, though, all we have is talk, with no action.
Please note that these abuses took place during the tenure of JPII. Also note that the article quoted above was by an "establishment" lawyer who has advised Congress and state legislatures and has worked at Princeton Theological Seminary (
FindLaw Legal Blogs - FindLaw) - in other words, not a liberal atheist with a grudge.
furthermore, we should bear in mind that the church's apparent opening-up to the possibility that it has sinned was only forced upon it by the courts. If court action had not taken place, I have no reason to suspect that JPII would have done anything to curtail the abuse. After all, he had done nothing for the previous 20 years or so. read about the treatment of John Geoghan by the church hierarchy during the tenure of JPII. when his crimes came to light to the Catholic church, all they did was move him from parish to parish. It was systematic covering-up that was forced into the open by legal action. The underlings of the pope knew about it for years (possible decades) but they did nothing. The Boston Globe has described the role of the Church hierarchy as a " culture of secrecy, decepetion, and intimidation" (
The Boston Globe). A priest who complained to his superiors about one of his child-abusing colleagues received no reply, so he went to the police. This resulted in him being reprimanded by his superiors (
Boston Globe / Spotlight / Abuse in the Catholic Church / The clergy
). The families of abused children were paid off (
The Boston Globe) and the Catholic hierarchy refused public access to their documents (
Boston Globe / Spotlight / Abuse in the Catholic Church / Investigations and lawsuits
).
all of these activities carried out by official members of the church acting on the authority of the pope.
Accusation 3:
he stands for the most elitist form of politics in which his views, and the views of his church, are handed down to some of the most downtrodden people on the planet with the lie that they are given by God.
According to Vatican II:
quote:
[The pope] enjoys in virtue of his office, when, as the supreme shepherd and teacher of all the faithful, who confirms his brethren in their faith (Luke 22:32), he proclaims by a definitive act some doctrine of faith or morals. Therefore his definitions, of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, are justly held irreformable, for they are pronounced with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, an assistance promised to him in blessed Peter.
(quote from
Papal Infallibility | Catholic Answers)
this is where the pope gets his authority from. don't fight it.
Jar, I'm tired now and may provide further documentary evidence when I've had a short nap.
Cheers
Mick
[edited by mick to correct a typo - the pope has been in place for "20 years or so", not "40 years or so"]
This message has been edited by mick, 04-04-2005 05:41 PM
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