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Peter Kemmether kneels during his ordainment ceremony. Photo: DPA

Married father of four ordained as Catholic priest

Published: 8 Jul 10 08:45 CET

A married man was ordained as a Catholic priest in the southern German city of Regensburg this week in a rare exception to the church’s rules of celibacy for men of the cloth, the diocese reported.

Peter Kemmether, a 62-year-old father of four children, took part in the ceremony led by Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller on Tuesday evening in the Bavarian city.

He had been a protestant pastor, but converted to Catholicism.

In similar cases the Vatican has been known to make exceptions to its insistence on clerical celibacy, and the Congregation for the Clergy there approved the decision after Kemmether completed various courses in Catholic theology, the diocese said. 

According to the German Conference of Bishops, Protestant pastors have become Catholic priests on several occasions in the past, but a spokesperson said the organisation could not provide specific numbers. 

The Church in Bavaria in particular has ordained several former Protestants into the priesthood in the last decade.

These men have papal permission to carry on with their family lives as usual, and are not required become celibate.

 

DPA/The Local (news@thelocal.de)

http://www.thelocal.de/society/20100708-28373.html



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Vatican confirms report of sexual abuse and rape of nuns by priests in 23 countries

 

By Frances Kennedy in Rome

The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns.

 

The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns.

Most of the abuse has occurred in Africa, where priests vowed to celibacy, who previously sought out prostitutes, have preyed on nuns to avoid contracting the Aids virus.

Confidential Vatican reports obtained by the National Catholic Reporter, a weekly magazine in the US, have revealed that members of the Catholic clergy have been exploiting their financial and spiritual authority to gain sexual favours from nuns, particularly those from the Third World who are more likely to be culturally conditioned to be subservient to men.

The reports, some of which are recent and some of which have been in circulation for at least seven years, said that such priests had demanded sex in exchange for favours, such as certification to work in a given diocese.

In extreme instances, the priests had made nuns pregnant and then encouraged them to have abortions.

The US article was based on five documents, which senior women from religious orders and priests have presented to the Vatican over the past decade. They describe a particularly bad situation in Africa. In a continent devastated by Aids, nuns, along with early adolescent girls, are perceived by some as safe sexual targets. The reports said that the church authorities had done little to tackle the problem.

The Vatican reports cited countless cases of nuns forced to have sex with priests. Some were obliged to take the pill, others became pregnant and were encouraged to have abortions. In one case in which an African sister was forced to have an abortion, she died during the operation and her aggressor led the funeral mass. Another case involved 29 sisters from the same congregation who all became pregnant to priests in the diocese.

The reports said that the cultures in some African countries made it almost impossible for a young woman to disobey an older man, especially one seen as spiritually superior. There were cases of novices who applied to their local priest or bishop for certificates of good Catholic practice that were required for them to pursue their vocation. In return they were made to have sex. Some incidents of sexual abuse allegedly took place almost within the Vatican walls.

Certain unscrupulous clerics took advantage of young nuns who were having trouble finding accommodation, writing their essays and funding their theological studies.

Forced to acknowledge the problem, the Vatican has tried to play down its gravity. In a statement issued yesterday the Pope's official spokesman, Joaquin Navarro Valls, said: "The problem is known and involves a restricted geographical area. Certain negative situations must not overshadow the often heroic faith of the overwhelming majority of religious, nuns and priests".

One of the most comprehensive documents was compiled by Sister Maura O'Donohue, an Aids co-ordinator for Cafod, the London-based Catholic Fund for Overseas Development.

She noted that religious sisters had been identified as "safe" targets for sexual activity. She quotes a case in 1991 of a community superior being approached by priests requesting that the nuns be made available to them for sexual favours.

"When the superior refused the priests explained they would otherwise be obliged to go to the village to find women and might thus get Aids."Sister O'Donohue said her initial reaction to what she was told by her fellow religious "was one of shock and disbelief at the magnitude of the problem".

While most of the abuse happened in African countries, Sister O'Donohue reported incidents in 23 countries including India, Ireland, Italy, the Philippines and the United States.

She heard cases of priests encouraging the nuns to take the pill telling them it would prevent HIV. Others "actually encouraged abortion for the sisters" and Catholic hospitals and medical staff reported pressure from priests to carry out terminations for nuns and other young women.

O'Donohue wrote in her report how a vicar in one African diocese had talked "quite openly" about sex, saying that "celibacy in the African context means a priest does not get married, but does not mean he does not have children."

The head of the Vatican congregation for Religious Life, Cardinal Martinez Somalo, has set up a committee to look into the problem. But it seems to have done little beyond "awareness raising" among bishops.

More recently, in 1998, Sister Marie McDonald, mother superior of the Missionaries of Our Lady of Africa, put together a paper entitled The Problem of the Sexual Buse of African Religious in Africa and Rome.

She tabled the document to the Council of 16, made up of delegates of the international association of women's and men's religious communities and the Vatican office responsible for religious life. She noted that a contributing cause was the "conspiracy of silence".

When she addressed bishops on the problem, many of them felt it was disloyal of the sisters to send reports.

"However, the sisters claim they have done so time and time again. Sometimes they were not well received. In some instances they are blamed for what happened. Even when they are listened to sympathetically nothing much seems to be done" One of the most tragic elements that emerges is the fate of the victims. While the offending priests are usually moved or sent away for studies, the women are normally chased out of their religious orders, they are then either to scared to return to their families or are rejected by them. they often finished up as outcasts, or, in a cruel twist of irony, as prostitutes, making a meagre living from an act they had vowed never to do.

One of the few religious in Rome willing to talk about the report was Father Giulio Albanese, of MISNA, the missionary news agency. "Missionaries are human beings, who are often living under immense psychological pressure in situations of war and ongoing violence. On one hand it's important to condemn this horror and it's important tell the truth, but we must not emphasise this at the expense of the work done by the majority, many of whom have laid down lives for witness" said Fr Albanese "The press only talks about missionaries when they are killed, kidnapped or are involved in something scandalous" he added.

As the Vatican digests the unpalatable evidence of how their own priests are ruining the lives of their sisters, many Catholics hope a strong message may come from on high. With the American bishops, the Pope spoke in clear terms about paedophile priests, telling them this was a scourge that had to be faced. Some now hope that he may be equally courageous in denouncing an evil which has been covered by silence and shame for too long.




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RE: RC Pastors Abuse and AIDS
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The HIV-AIDS of the Catholic Church

March 18th, 2010 by blackshama

US based Catholic journalist and commentator John Allen (who is orthodox and a fan of Opus Dei) was objective enough to say on CNN that the child sex abuse scandals is no longer particular to the US, Irish or German church for that matter, but is of the Global (Universal) Catholic Church. Allen says that it is a matter of time before many of the particular national churches will be embroiled in similar scandals. If Allen is right, then the Philippine Church will soon get its taste of pedophile sex scandals.

The latest scandal involving choir boys in Papa Ratzinger’s former diocese has come so close to the Papal throne and may involve his brother. To be fair to Benedict XVI, the allegations and purported abuse were made after he had moved to Rome and had the governing of the archdiocese to less senior clerics.  But he will have to dispel notions that he did not know that the sex predator priest was not punished but rather moved from one parish to another. But some people are not convinced. They want the Pope to resign. And the uber realistic Allen says that this would happen only “if another planet” hits the earth tomorrow.

The Roman Church according to Allen has adopted a more serious policy under Pope Ratzinger. A child sex predator priest will immediately be sanctioned, defrocked and turned over to the secular authorities. But Allen sadly says that this was not the practice 30-40 years ago. The Church had a hush up policy.

Allen summarizes the problem as a problem of accountability. Bureaucratic clerics were not that accountable to the bishop and the bishop was not that accountable to the Pope and the whole hierarchy was not accountable to the laity. If Allen read it right, then there must be a radical reformation of the Church bureaucracy and the laity must be involved. The Pope is at the apex of the whole shebang. The Catholic Church in fact invented subsidiarity that now makes secular bureaucracies work. Lower executives have latitude to make decisions based on their competence. It is expected that the decisions should inform the higher ups and in some cases the highest up does make a ministerial decision. In secular bureaucracies, there is a strict code of accountability and thus we hear of bureaucrats being asked to face the ombudsman. The Roman Church has none of that. The Pope could be the ombudsman but he has sacramental duties too and one of these is to hear confessions! (and confessions cannot be made public without the Father confessor going to Hell!)

The child sex predator priests first became an issue in the American church and Cardinal Bernard Law resigned his Boston diocese but instead of being punished was given a Roman sinecure during John Paul II’s papacy. This had Americans rightfully outraged. Benedict to his credit is unlikely to do something similar and has privately apologized to victims in person in most candid terms, something that John Paul never did.

Pope Benedict may be the right man for the massive clean up (not cover up) of the Church hierarchy. But will his bishops follow? The Pope cannot govern without the bishops and will he axe the bishops? The Vatican can easily axe priests, but bishops?

The child sex abuse by priests is the HIV-AIDS of the Catholic Church and if Allen is right, it is systemic. The Pope is the only physician that can prescribe the cure but he cannot do the healing. It is up to the Body of Christ which is composed by an overwhelming majority of laypeople. Too bad we don’t have a condom to prevent this kind of hideous infection. I write this to accuse some Philippine Catholic bishops for their myopia on  condoms while the immunodeficiency is eating the Body of Christ.

I will pray for the Holy Father Benedict  each day as I am a Catholic. May God grant him the grace to overcome this crisis in the Church.



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Sodomites force the closure of 65 Catholic parishes in Boston

by
Ernesto Cienfuegos
La Voz de Aztlan

vatican_and_little_boys.jpgLos Angeles, Alta California - May 26, 2004 - (ACN) It certainly looks like Satan is winning the war for souls in the USA. Archbishop Sean O'Malley announced yesterday that 65 parishes in the Boston Archdiocese will be closing in order to raise the money necessary to pay court settlements resulting from the homosexual abuse of children by scores of perverted gay Catholic priests. One case alone involved more than 500 child victims and a mandated court settlement of over $85 million dollars. The problem was compounded when many parishioners stopped donating money to the church and attendance at masses dropped off considerably. The same situation threatens other large archdioceses including the one here in Los Angeles.

For many decades now, certain nefarious and powerful global forces have sought to infiltrate and destroy the Roman Catholic Church from within. The efforts of these infiltrators, more aptly described as disciples of Lucifer, bore rotten fruit when they doomed the church by implementing the sinister reforms of the Second Vatican Council that was opened under Pope John XXIII in 1962 and closed by Pope Paul VI in 1965. From this time on the Roman Catholic Church has been in a downward spiral into the sewer. A host of pedophilic sodomites took over high offices in the Vatican, the seminaries and many of the local perishes in the USA. Their ultimate goal was to turn the churches into altars for Lucifer where they could participate in vile orgies and the rape of innocent altar boys.

One Jesuit priest alone, foresaw what would become of the Roman Catholic Church. This was the renown theologian, author and Vatican insider Malachi Martin. Fr. Martin wrote in 1990, " The cultic acts of Satanic pedophilia in the Catholic Church are considered by professionals to be the culmination of the rites of 'The Enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer' in the Vatican". In his 1996 book "Windswept House: A Vatican Novel", Fr. Martin writes, "Suddenly it became unarguable that now during this papacy, the Roman Catholic organization carried a permanent presence of clerics who worshipped Satan and liked it; of bishops and priests who sodomized boys and each other; of nuns who performed the “Black Rites” of Wicca, and who lived in lesbian relationships . . . every day, including Sundays and Holy Days, acts of heresy and blasphemy and outrage and indifference were committed and permitted at holy Altars by men who had been called to be priests. Sacrilegious actions and rites were not only performed on Christ’s Altars, but had the connivance or at least the tacit permission of certain Cardinals, archbishops, and bishops. . . "

Fr. Malachi Martin's books were nothing less than prophetic. Today, in Boston we are witnessing the consequences of what Fr. Martin wrote 8 years ago. Unfortunately, Fr. Martin paid the ultimate price for exposing the Luciferians in the Vatican. He was bludgeoned to death at his home in New York City in 1999.

It is now known that hundreds of thousands of young Catholic boys have been sodomized by Satanic Catholic priests nationwide since the Second Vatican Council. Many of these have been young Mexican-American boys in the southwest and especially in the Los Angeles Archdiocese. It is difficult to find one family that has not suffered sexual victimization by the Catholic Church or that does not know of one family that has. Most of these cases never surface into the open because in most cases the boys are children of immigrant families.

There is no question that Satan is winning the war for the souls of the USA. The US Supreme Court's legalization of sodomy; San Francisco City Hall's breaking of the state law concerning same sex marriages; the consecration of a sodomite bishop in the Episcopalian Church; the billions of dollars yearly that Americans are now paying for incest, bestiality, necrophilia and pedophilia related pornography ; the effort to take "One Nation Under God" from the pledge of allegiance and most revealing, the demonic sexual abuses by US soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq shows clearly the degree that Satan has been successful. The eminent closure of 65 Catholic parishes in Boston is just another feather on the cap of the Fallen Angel.


 



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Children of the Great Satan

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Abused altar boys sue Church for millions

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The Catholic Church in the United States has been ordered to pay $120 million in damages to 10 former altar boys, and the parents of another, who were sexually assaulted by a priest.

Father Rudolph Kos abused boys over an eleven year period. When they complained, the church covered it up. Kos allegedly abused the boys on hundreds of occasions at three different churches in Dallas.

A jury in Dallas decided that the diocese was guilty of gross negligence, malice, conspiracy and fraud in failing to stop the the priest abusing the boys.

They claimed Kos was like a father who drew them into sexual relationships that began with foot massages before becoming more intimate.

His eleven victims included Jay Lemberger, a one-time altar boy who committed suicide at the age of 20.

"My son was murdered by the Dallas diocese because they let Rudy Kos into their regime and they let him get away with this abuse," said Pat Lemberger, the boys father.

The Catholic church argued that Kos had deceived everybody, including the boys' families, and that he was suspended in 1992, as soon as the first youth complained about sexual abuse. Bishop Charles Grahmann said the church would likely appeal the damages in the hope of finding a verdict that was "just and appropriate to the facts of the case."

Meanwhile the boys' attorney, Sylvia Demarest said: "I hope they wake up the Pope tonight with this. This verdict sends a clear message to the Catholic hierarchy of the world that this abuse must stop."

Its by far the largest cash penalty ever imposed against the Catholic Church in a sexual abuse case. For his part, Kos chose not to defend himself in the case. He is in San Diego where he is facing criminal charges of sexual abuse of a child.



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Married Catholic Priests

posted by DAN SAVAGE on MON, MAY 11, 2009 at 1:02 PM

So a popular Miami priest—"Padre Oprah"—was photographed making out with a woman on a beach. It turns out that he's been seeing this woman, and violating his vow of celibacy, for more than two years. He's been suspended from his priestly duties while he contemplates the choice he faces: dump the woman and remain in the priesthood or dump the priesthood and remain in the woman. According to a poll just cited on MSNBC—can't get away from the TV—72% of American Catholics support allowing priests to marry. And parishioners are rallying behind their blatantly heterosexual priest:

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Now here's the interesting thing: there are already married, sexually-active priests in the Catholic church. The reporter on MSNBC said that there are only formerly married priests in the Catholic church: "If you were previously married and your wife became deceased, you could become a priest..." While the church no doubt prefers wives who've become deceased, it's not accurate to say that only men with dead wives get to be priests. From Time:

 

...in 1980 [the pope] approved an experiment in which 43 married men have become Roman Catholic priests in the U.S. The most recent was ordained in New York just last week. (Some 20 married converts have become priests elsewhere in the West since Pope Pius XII allowed the first such dispensation in 1951.) Although church officials have sought to avoid publicity about the unusual American program, it has been chronicled in a new book, The Pastoral Provisions: Married Catholic Priests (Sheed & Ward; 152 pages; $13.95), by priest-sociologist Joseph H. Fichter of Loyola University in New Orleans.

 

The Christian Science Monitor:

 

...over the past 20 years, the pope has allowed more than 100 former Episcopal priests and other Protestant clergy to convert and serve in the priesthood while married.

 

If Padre Oprah had been an ordained Episcopalian priest, married that woman, had kids by her, and then sought to convert to Catholicism... all would be well with Rome. And if he'd been raping altar boys, of course, he wouldn't have been suspended, just transfered.



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Catholic priests abusing nuns for sex

Roman Catholic priests and bishops in several parts of the world have been exploiting their religious authority to obtain sexual favours from nuns, in some cases resorting to rape and subsequently obliging the victims to seek an abortion, it was claimed yesterday.

Report of widespread sexual abuses were compiled by two senior nuns between 1994 and 1998 and passed to the Vatican, the Rome daily La Repubblica and the Italian Roman Catholic news agency Adista said.

Abuses were documented in 23 countries, many of them in Africa, but also in Ireland, Italy, the US, the Philippines and Brazil, they said.

The Vatican acknowledged the existence of the problem yesterday and said it was working with bishops and the heads of religious orders to try to resolve it.

"The problem is known and is restricted to a limited geographic area," its spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said.

"A few negative situations must not make us forget the often heroic faithfulness of the vast majority of monks, nuns and priests."

The Aids epidemic in Africa has led to nuns being seen as a potential source of safe sex, according to Sister Maura O'Donohue, of the Medical Missionaries of Mary, who visited numerous African countries to conduct an Aids study on behalf of the Catholic development agency Cafod.

"The superior of a religious community in one country was contacted by priests who asked her to make the nuns available for sexual services," she wrote.

On the superior's refusal, the priests said they would otherwise have to go to the village to look for women, exposing themselves to the risk of Aids."

The reports, one of which is said to have been delivered three years ago to Cardinal Eduardo Martinez Somalo, head of the Vatican department responsible for religious orders, say young female candidates for religious life are sometimes obliged to have sex with a priest to obtain the necessary certificates.

Nuns who became pregnant were forced to leave their religious congregation, the reports say, while the priests responsible were simply sent away for a brief period.

In one community 29 nuns are reported to have become pregnant after sexual relations with priests, but when the mother superior raised the problem with her archbishop she was removed from her post. One priest is said to have induced a nun he had impregnated to have an abortion and when she died during the operation he celebrated her funeral mass.

Another priest is reported to have been driven from his village by gunfire when the local men got fed up with the way he abused his power with their women.

Many African women have been raised to consider themselves inferior to men, and so find it difficult to say no to requests for sexual favours by priests, who are seen as authority figures, according to a report by Sister Marie McDonald, superior general of the Missionaries of Our Lady of Africa, quoted by Adista.

The priests are better educated than the nuns and sometimes use false theological arguments to persuade them, suggesting, for example, that sex between two celibate religious does not violate their vows of celibacy, she said.

Father Bernardo Cervellera, editor of the missionary news agency Fides, said the problem was largely confined to Africa, where the ideal of celibacy met resistance from cultural beliefs that set great store on fatherhood.

"In 25 years as a missionary priest I have never encountered this situation. I have come across the opposite, where priests have defended nuns from assault," he said.

"We shouldn't confuse a few individual errors with a tendency. I admire many African priests, who live their vocation with great heroism."



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Pope's condom message resonates with many

Mar. 18, 2009
20090317popecondoms.jpg
Benedict talks to journalists during his flight from Rome to Africa March 17. (CNS/ Reuters)
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Yaoundè, Cameroon
Pope Benedict XVI’s claim yesterday that condoms actually aggravate the problem of AIDS may seem an explosive claim internationally, but it’s barely made a ripple here -- in part, because it simply repeats an argument made so often by Africa’s Catholic bishops that it long ago lost any shock value.

In a nutshell, the bishops’ position -- expressed both by individual prelates and by whole conferences -- is that wide availability of condoms encourages a sense of invulnerability among Africans, especially the young, that leads to riskier sexual behavior and increases the possibility of infection.

While the bishops may be nearly unanimous in that judgment, other Africans who spoke to NCR today didn’t seem quite so sure.

(One point virtually everyone here concedes is that condoms are easy to come by. In Yaoundè, a condom can be purchased from street vendors for 100 Central African Francs, roughly twenty cents. Today, it was actually easier to find condoms than water, as Yaoundè’s public water system broke down for several hours.)

While the claim that condoms promote promiscuity and thus increase the risk of disease may fly in the face of most sentiment among anti-AIDS activists, African bishops insist that it reflects their real-world experience.

“Condoms tend to give a sense of freedom to be sexually reckless, and obviously that is a major cause of the spread of HIV/AIDS,” said Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Abuja, Nigeria, who is in Cameroon for the papal visit.

“The Catholic church is not the only one saying this,” Onaiyekan said. “NGOs who want to promote condoms in my country run into resistance from many other organizations and movements, including the Muslim community as a whole.”

Bishop George Nkuo of the Kumbo diocese in Cameroon made a similar argument.

“I live in an area hit hard by the disease,” Nkubo said. “I have huge amounts of testimony that the display and the spread of condoms has only promoted promiscuity. … People believe that using them makes everything safe.”

Onaiyekan also argued that the condoms that are actually distributed in Africa, especially rural areas, are often unreliable.

“A condom in New York is not the same thing as a condom twenty kilometers inside the bush,” he said. “Some of them sat in a container in a port, under the sun, for maybe two or three months. By the time they bring them out on bicycles, passing them out in the bush, many are no good, but what people hear is: ‘Put this on, and you’re safe.’ ”

In contrast, prelates such as Onaiyekan and Nkuo argue, promoting more responsible sexual behavior is the most effective anti-AIDS strategy.

“The whole idea that fidelity and abstinence doesn’t work is not based on concrete evidence,” Onaiyekan said. “I thought scientific people were supposed to look at the evidence. If you do that, you find that young people can actually change their mentality.”

African prelates often point to the experience of nations such as Uganda, where abstinence has been a cornerstone of anti-AIDS efforts. Among other things, they cite a Harvard study last year concluding that in African nations where the infection rate has dropped, “reduction in the number of sexual partners was probably the single most important behavioral change” responsible for the drop-off.

Roughly 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV, according to the United Nations. In 2007, three-quarters of all AIDS deaths worldwide were in Africa, as well as two-thirds of all people living with HIV.

A decidedly unscientific survey in the streets of Cameroon’s capital city Wednesday afternoon suggests that among ordinary Africans, the anti-condoms argument is playing to mixed reviews.

“It’s not true that condoms make someone more likely to have sex,” said Donald Mepep, a 20-year-old student. Mepep predicted that if condoms were somehow to disappear, “people would still have sex -- they’d be scared, but they’d do it.”

Vanessa Balla, however, a medical doctor who treats AIDS patients, said the pope has a point.

“With condoms, people think they can do whatever they want,” she said. “It just encourages them to engage in really risky sexual behaviors. I’ve seen it myself … they take as much risk as possible.”

Balla, who said that as a physician “it’s incredibly hard to watch young people dying of AIDS,” insisted that the solution to the crisis is “not condoms, but changing behavior.”

Julienne Christelle Bekono, also a student, said that Western donors and African governments both seem to think that if they shower a country with condoms, they’ve solved the problem of AIDS, she said. Instead, Bekono called for greater investments in finding a long-term cure -- although she said that condoms should remain part of an across-the-board approach.

Mve Louis Etong, a 52-year-old teacher of linguistics at the University of Yaoundè, said he agreed with the pope that condoms aren’t the answer. He offered a logic, however, clearly distinct from that of Benedict XVI.

“You just don’t get the same pleasure from sexual intercourse [with a condom] as you do with full contact,” Etong said. “That’s why many Cameroon men won’t use them.”

Also on Wednesday, the Vatican spokesperson, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, issued a statement outlining the position of the Catholic church on fighting what he called “the terrible scourge of AIDS.” Lombardi summarized that position in three cornerstones:

  • “Education in the responsible use of sexuality … reaffirming the essential role of marriage and the family”;
  • “Research and application of effective cures, getting them to the largest number possible of sick people through many initiatives and health care institutions”;
  • “Human and spiritual assistance for AIDS sufferers, and all the sick.”

The church, Lombardi said, believes that “emphasizing the more widespread diffusion of condoms is not really the most far-reaching and effective means” for combating AIDS and defending human life.

(Allen is NCR senior correspondent. His e-mail address is jallen@ncronline.org.)



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