0594 - Moritz&Thomas

This deals with a most serious subject. As you may have forgotten, Moritz Kaposi is the Hungarian dermatologist who in 1872 described the hideous condition of Kaposi’s Sarcoma. Thomas Robert Malthus you of course know as the author of an Essay on the Principles of Population. Our Staff Ethicist, who tends to be overworked these days, was pondering the legacy of that remarkable, charismatic, and much-loved Pope John Paul II. We have no Staff Theologian, but our Ethicist feels quite competent to discuss right and wrong, and to distinguish the two. Our subject is Condoms and Birth Control.

Before attempting this column, we intended no offense, and thus consulted all friends who are practicing Roman Catholics on Anguilla. As you know, in the U.S. the latest polls show Catholics by a huge majority of 78% do not agree with the birth control teachings of the late Pope, although they loved him dearly. In Europe, the percentage of non- followers is even higher, while here on Anguilla, we found not one Church-goer who supported the papal ban on birth control. Why is this?

Well, Readers, you know that Kaposi’s Sarcoma is often one of the terminal symptoms of AIDS. But have you ever seen the condition? The OO has, and it is an appalling black rot, terrible in all senses of the word. Now, if the distribution of condoms is disapproved, discouraged, and denounced as sinful, AIDS is transmitted. In Africa there are over 30 or 35 million people dying of AIDS. Assuming arguendo that having sex is sinful (a proposition we do not accept at all), is condemning scores of millions to the vile rot an appropriate punishment? We know not, but we assume that a practicing Catholic who confesses the sin of having sex for a purpose other than lawful procreation would receive absolution. The Father receiving the confession would not immediately inject the sinner with a deadly disease. Yet, forbidding use of condoms does just that. Is this moral, loving and forgiving?

And yet, and yet, a few scores of millions of AIDS sufferers are not all the harm caused by failure to permit – nay, to preach the virtues of – birth control. You Readers are also attentive to the news of disasters around the world. Have you not noticed that it is the over-populated countries where the bitterly poor live without sanitation by the shores of the rivers that flood? Who dies in a famine? The poor in the countries where the land does not support the over-population. Whose homes are swept away? Not New Yorkers, but the bitterly poor who ruined their islands by cutting down all trees for fuel.

The effects of constantly-growing populations are well and bitterly known. Does one not intend the known evil results of over-population when one teaches that birth control is a sin, and thus constantly overloads God’s natural bounty, killing hundreds of millions and condemning billions to lives of misery and hunger? Yes, yes, riches are not well distributed, and Charity is a duty. Yet, surely, preventing untold misery is also a moral duty, and a most urgent one.

We are told that the next Pope, and may he be wise and merciful, indeed has the power to change the teachings of his Church about birth control. When the white smoke finally ascends, and the cry “Habemus Papa!” is heard, may the man chosen be one who thinks through the known results of forbidding disease prevention and birth control, and is illuminated with a resolve to save the innocent, rather than preserve a deadly doctrine.

Next time: Crotchety [OO #595]

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