Catholic Bishops Help Spread HIV/AIDS

Accolades go out to the 9,000-member Catholics for Free Choice for the poster campaign in the District of Columbia that exposes murder as the official policy of the bishops and the Catholic Church. To deny people condoms is to sentence people to death. The CFC has spent more than a quarter of a million dollars on Metro Subway poster ads:

Catholic people care. Do our bishops?

Because the bishops ban condoms, innocent people die.

Catholic people care. Do our bishops?

Banning condoms kills.

Who knows how many thousands or even millions of lives have been destroyed and people murdered by the irrational fear of a latex rubber. The Pointy Hats have blood on their hands and may be more culpable than the worst terrorists or serial killers. Their offer of death masquerades as compassion.

Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for Free Choice, said, "We wanted to shame the bishops into some public exposure because of the way in which their policy has not helped the AIDS crisis."

You tell on them, Frances! We also want to applaud Metro spokesperson, Ray Feldmann, for not caving in to charges of bigotry from the homophobic bishops and their flunkies. Ray insisted that the ads were accepted "because they were not deemed to be pornographic or visually offensive to the general public. We are not referees of who is telling the truth." The bishops not only want to squelch reproductive and lifestyle choice, but also the FREEDOM OF SPEECH!

We are confident that Ray knows the truth when he sees it and would ask him to go one step further. Given the public access of the Metro system, we would urge him and other officials to install Condom Dispensers on all their trains. People are "on the go" these days and never know when they will meet that special someone. Given the amount of money Frances spent on ads, I am sure that the money could be found to support the program. Remember, not everyone is a kid who can get a supply from the school counselor. Further, maybe discrete visual aids (brochures?) could be supplied to help neophytes in the proper installation and use of condoms? The recorded voice that accompanies the opening and closing of the train doors could be modified as follows: "Door opening, have a nice day and have a condom on us."

Here is a wonderful letter to the editor of THE WASHINGTON TIMES from Frances:

Catholic bishops share responsibility for spread of HIV/AIDS
Dec. 29, 2001 (p. A10)

The response of several Roman Catholic officials to a Catholics for a Free Choice ad campaign about the dangers posed by the Catholic Church's ban on condoms is somewhat surprising ("Pro-choice poster campaign targets bishops," Dec. 24)

One anti-choice leader, the Rev. Thomas Euteneuer of Human Life International, states that the "bishops do not ban" condoms — but they do. All 100,000 Catholic hospitals worldwide and all 200,000 Catholic schools and social service agencies are prohibited by local bishops as well as Vatican policy from teaching about or providing condoms to HIV/AIDS patients, clients or students.

The Catholic Church claims that it shows its love and compassion for those with HIV/AIDS by treating 25 percent of those infected worldwide. That means that the nearly 10 million people with HIV/AIDS who are "treated" by the Catholic Church have no direct access to condom education or condoms from their caregiver. Imagine the number of newly infected wives and children who are a result of the ban.

Another Catholic official quoted in the article, a pastoral minister for the Archdiocese of Washington, where AIDS is a major public health problem, is saddened by the ad campaign. He should instead be saddened by the unnecessary transmission of HIV/AIDS caused by a church that neither educates HIV/AIDS patients about how to save lives nor provides them with the means to do so when abstinence is not a course they choose to follow or are able to follow.

We are all human — even our priests and bishops have difficulty following church teaching on abstinence. For such people to tell ordinary people in desperate circumstances that they cannot use condoms to prevent the spread of a deadly disease is to preach a culture of death.

Catholics expect more from their bishops, and our ad campaign is one way of calling them to accountability.

FRANCES KISSLING
President
Catholics for a Free Choice
Washington