Sex and sensibility ~ DEFCON 3

Vatican may be infallible while talking about God. But when it comes to human issues it sucks. In fact, it’s understandable. It is like me talking about Bengali vegetarian recipes. Just in case anyone is wondering why I say that: I’m not Asiatic, I like to cook simple and I’m mostly carnivore.

Well, with the Vatican is similar. The ones that dictate how to behave to millions of people all over the world have been quite for a long time living far away from those people’s world. So they have lost contact with the real world. They are stuck, at best, 200 years ago. Also, at the light of History, Church has the weird ability to positioning itself once and once and again in the wrong side. And they never learn. And they still fall with the same mistakes. And they still are a big obstacle for scientific progress.

Get me right. There is no problem on the Church giving doctrines to their adepts about how to live, behave or die. The problem is when they try to impose that to those that aren’t Christians.

It is even bloodier when it comes to sex. I won’t discourage the Pope to talk about faith, but seriously, sex? What does a priest know about sex? Or about homosexuality? Or about abuses? Well, maybe about that they know one or two things.

Last storms came from three especially Catholic places: Latin America, Spain and Africa. The first one has the biggest Catholic population, the second one is draining Catholic faith at the biggest rate in the world and the third one is the main hope for the Church.

In Latin America a buzz was hit after a Brazilian bishop excomulgated the mother, the doctors and the sanitary personnel who helped a nine years old girl in an abortion. In Brazil, abortion is legal when the life of the mother is threatened or when there has been a rape. In this case, both were involved.

Also the abortion is the issue in Spain. After protesting for the atheist advertising campaign on public buses, the bishops have launched another campaign asking for a complete banning on abortion. Fair enough, each one looking for whatever they feel right. But putting face to face a baby and a lynx puppy, and asking for more protection to the babies to equalize the protection of the lynx, is at best, inappropriate. We have to remember that the Iberic Lynx is the only feline under the category of seriously endangered species in the world, with less than 200 animals in total worldwide.

It didn’t come unadverted for the Church in Spain the case of a child who has been saved by his newborn brother from leukemia by a genetic procedure. The baby was the embryo chosen to become viable for his genetic material, compatible with his brother blood type. But that, of course, is an indescriptible sin.

But the worst of all comes from Africa. Here, the Pope has given a marvelous lesson: “Condoms worsen the AIDS”. Well done, Mr. Ratzinger. Apart from being destroying the work of millions of volunteers and NGOs, saying that in a continent with the 12% of the world population but the 60% of world HIV infected is like writing down a death sentence for millions. At best, is unwise and careless; at worst is even criminal, like Ramón Lobo status in his blog. He also brings us a story from a nun in Africa:

I’ve seen model missionaries giving condoms in hospitals and masses in places where, if God really exists, he should appear everyday because it is not enough with just a miracle in those places. I remember the case of a nun in a hospital in Rwanda. I told her off like kidding: “Sister, don’t you know that the Vatican has banned condoms?” After looking at me as if I was an alien, she answered: “The 5th Amendment says You won’t kill, and this here, is a life matter”. When I tried to continue talking, she shut me up by handling my hand and she said: “If I have to choose between the Vatican and God, I already have done my choice”.

If a nun says that God is not in the Vatican, I believe her.