Non-Catholic groups are doing it already-in fact some groups claiming to be Catholic are doing it as well. The UN sends billions of condoms to Africa, and so do many industrialized nations, including the US.
As to what they would say about why it hasn’t worked? It is called “liberal orthodoxy” - the premise that those who disagree with them are the very reason why their ideas don’t work. That way, when their solutions turn out to be wrong, they can just throw up their hands, claim that the Church’s refusal to condone condoms is sabotaging their otherwise perfect plan, and make appeals for more money from their supporters to counteract the “catastrophic” damage being done by those who dare to disagree with them.
The brilliant thing about liberal orthodoxy is that it takes credit for success no matter what, and it absolutely thrives on failure!
AIDS decreasing in Africa? Must be because the condoms are working- time to get the UN to agree to spend 20% more to buy more condoms…
AIDS rising in Africa? Shout that the opposition is sabotaging our efforts!!! Declare a state of emergency!!! Get the UN to spend 50% more on condoms!!!
Perhaps we could save the politics of divisiveness and hate for a seperate discussion. Certainly, this one would be more useful if you had some mastery of the facts.
The core problem is poverty and practices. How many condoms one sends or doesn’t send is irrelevant if the condoms don’t get used. And, in the hardest hit parts of Africa, they don’t. There are cultural obstacles, logistical obstacles, and huge amounts of ignorance.
There is no doubt that condoms help prevent the spread of STD’s, including AIDS. We have plenty of reserach and evidence in public health from all over the world, including the US. But again, when condom use is 35-40 times higher among US Catholics than working prostitutes in parts of Africa, even the dimmest of bulbs should see that there is a problem.
Remember, we are talking about a part of the world where infant and child mortality for things like small pox, influenza, etc. is still staggering. So there is a huge culture stigma against inhibiting fertility. There also isn’t much of a information infrastructure, so there is a lot of fear, mistrust, and rumor. When you are poor and your nation’s president tells you that there is no AIDs problem, it is a homosexual disease, the the condoms that foreigners give you are coated with drugs to make you sterile, what would you believe? (If you are shaking your head, think of some of the nonsense that gets spouted on talk radio as ‘fact’ and readily repeated here - and that is a population that could spend 10 seconds on Google weeding out the bulk of the nonsense.)
No aid worker that I know in Africa, Catholic, non-Catholic, or even wholly secular, thinks that condoms are the ‘answer’. But virtually everyone who has seen the misery and suffering first hand will (at least privately) acknowledge that safer sex practices must be part of the approach. Consider the turnaround in Zimbabwe. There is a shift toward monagomy which, combined with safer sex practices for those in the traditional practice of multiple relationships, has helped make a huge dent in the HIV rate. Rwanda, which has the highest condom usage rate, also has the lowest HIV rate in the region (still a staggering 3%).
What I find interesting, with all the moral grandstanding, is that few here seem to realize that there are other approaches. Antiretroviral drugs can seriously cut into the spread of HIV to women whose male partner’s are infected. They also significantly descrease the incidents of HIV infected children. This is a licid intervention. My wife and I spend a lot of money in this area for several reasons. One, to help stop a horible epidemic. Two, it is an expensive approach (both the drugs, and the training and medical infrastructure to get them into use), so people offering it needs the money. And, three, because the infrastructure needed, things like clinics, local access to some modern technology, potable water supplies, etc.also help address some of the root causes.
Think about it. AIDshas fundementally changed the way we live here. Think of all the rubber gloves we now see. Think of how we teach CPR. Think of rules in youth sports about open cuts! And our infection rate is nothing compared to what is occuring in parts of Africa. Still, as horrible as AIDs is, it still claims fewer lives each year in the region than malaria, malnutrition, and contaminated water.
Imagine, the epidemic that swallowed $15B US dollars without much of a dent, still pales compared to the death and suffering for lack of basic Christian obligations we can find in Luke and Matthew.
So perhaps we need to think more about the Gospels (from the Greek for “Good News”, as in spreading the Good News to the poor), and a little less of US political conservatism, which generally teaches that the poor and sick are poor and sick because they are lazy, instead of being hard working ‘good people’…
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