Pope Benedict and AIDS

Hello, this is Anthony the Oklapologist, quite glad to be aboard here at Oklahomily, the blog. As the name shows, my posts will be primarily focused on a Catholic perspective in the local, national, and worldwide level. Hopefully they will elicit some discussions, as Dave’s posts always do.

For my inaugural, I want to focus on the wisdom of Pope Benedict XVI, and how I thank God every day that I am not, nor will I ever be the Pope. From time to time, I am asked to give chastity talks to high school students, and when the topic of birth control comes up, there is almost always a question sort of like this:

“Yeah, I get that we should not have sex before (I would prefer the language ‘we should be chaste before and throughout’ but I’ll bite) marriage, but what about a husband and wife where one of them has AIDS?”

There are a number of responses I have for this-usually citing a June 8, 2008 statement by the World Health Organization that says what many folks have been saying since the AIDS scare of the 80's-that the spread of AIDS through heterosexuals is really not a global threat.

That being said, AIDS can be spread in the family, and it does happen, unfortunately (just not to the scale paraded by the hysterical left). Really, there are only two options for the couple, and both are always deemed unacceptable by many of the high school kids that I have spoken to:
1. Get AIDS and suffer
2. Be a continent husband and wife (for those that think I am asking the couple to turn into a large, named, mass of land that encompasses a bunch of countries, being “continent” means living as brother and sister … no relations).

“WAIT A MINUTE!” those at a Catholic school will say to me, “Sister Mary Holiness told us that a husband and wife HAVE to consummate the marriage!”

Right. Sister Mary Holiness is not wrong there, in that consent is a big part of the marriage vows, and if a man and woman were to get married, and one of them afterward decided, for whatever reason, he/she did not want to consummate the marriage, that would be a legitimate impediment to marriage. However, if husband and wife both agree prior to marriage, with dispensation, to live in continence, then it is completely okay for them to do so (St. Cecilia, for example). Sex is a gift, not a right.

Last Thursday, the Holy Father stressed what really fights AIDS - chastity and population growth. Echoing Mother Theresa, who thought that strong Catholics having more children was the best way to change the world for the better, Pope Benedict stressed the importance of education, citing a piece of information that critics of the Pope are silent about: “Initiatives of this kind have already borne important fruits, causing a reduction in the spread of AIDS.” Case in point: Uganda.

But of course, he will be criticized as a Pope who forbids AIDS, and his positive message will be ignored altogether. When AIDS is finally eradicated, though, it will be because people recognize what Benedict said Thursday and what Paul VI wrote forty years ago-that sex is a gift and not a right.