Sir, - You reported (September 21st) that the Archbishop of Cape Town has accused his own government of a crime against humanity on the same scale as apartheid for doing nothing to alleviate the AIDS crisis. In South Africa, 4.2 million people have contracted the AIDS virus. There are 1,500 new victims each day, over 10,000 a week, over half-a-million a year. In some African countries, 30 per cent are affected. In the world at large there are now 38 million HIV sufferers.
The Pope's record is incomparably worse than President Mbeki's. His teaching has virtually annulled all the good that Catholic missioners are doing in the developing world. As one instance of many, in 1993, Rome told Zimbabwe's Catholic schools not to use a government text book on alleviating AIDS at a time when already 800,000, nearly 10 per cent of the people, were affected.In 1996, The Pope ordered the French bishops to withdraw the suggestion that condoms might be useful to prevent the spread of AIDS. The order was repeated this June when Brazilian bishops were "reflecting whether the use of condoms is less serious morally speaking than getting infected or infecting other people with the AIDS virus". In each case, Rome said artificial birth control is unacceptable "for any reason". In a world of AIDS, this means that every act of sex must be open to the transmission of death.
I am waiting for some brave Catholic bishop to express the belief of most Catholics who reflect on these matters that the Pope's absolutist view on contraception is not merely wrong, but today lethally so. In time to come, the imposition of that view on the Church may well be looked on as one of the worst ever crimes against humanity. - Yours, etc.,
Peter De Rosa, Ashford, Co Wicklow.