"I suppose you wish Africa reflected the same morals as Australia where condoms and the pill are readily available?"

Well Philo, I live in what you must think is an evil place, called
Western Australia. Few bother to ever go to a church, the mining
industry is booming, so there are mountains of men around, with
far more money then sense.

Brothels are common as men spend their money, condoms are virtually
compulsory. According to Paulb and his number crunching, they should
all be dying by now.

I've just looked up the HIV/Aids statistics for our State. Out of
a population of 2 million, up to the end of 2005, there had been
a total of 1800 cases, including about 200 women.

http://www.avert.org/ausstatg.htm

Perhaps you should compare those figures with Africa and then tell me what works in the real world. Or compare the figures with the US,
the most Xtian Western nation on the planet, where abstinence is preached as the only solution, but their hiv rate is 12x higher then
ours.

HIV will continue to be a problem whilst people continue to eat
chimps, continue to have blood transfusions, continue to stray
sexually. As we all well know, not even many priests are able
to keep their vows of crossing their legs for Jesus, we evolved
to be sexual beings after all.

The best preventative to that is for people to be educated as to what the options are, if they do stray. Its not compulsory,
but educates people if it should happen to them.

The other option is the Africa solution. Tell them nothing, offer
them no options, count them as they die by the millions.
It seems that the Catholic solution is a dismal failure in the
real world, as Catholics die everywhere in Africa

Yabby, it seems you are trying to avoid the numbers. Good luck!

The Catholic population of South Africa is 6.43 percent. That number consists of people who claim to be Catholic, and does not take into account that many of them may be Catholic in name only (like the Daniel Maguire that you refer to above)

Condoms are currently being distributed in Africa ... everywhere in Africa. So, any objection by 'The Vatican' regarding condoms is not the issue. The only possible influence here is influence on the people in Africa. Are you seriously suggesting that there is a massive conspiracy by the Catholic Church that, somehow, means that they are manipulating most of the population of South Africa to not use condoms (but to still have sex whenever they want) ... and they are doing this in spite of the fact that condoms are already being distributed in all parts of Africa and have been for the last couple of decades ... that, the Catholic Church has still managed to cause a massive AIDS epidemic in Africa? You know, since condoms have been introduced into Africa, the problem has, ironically enough, become much worse. But, of course, it is still the problem of the Catholic Church, right? Somehow they manipulated the other 94 percent of the country into believing half of their message - to not use condoms - but not the other half of their message, to abstain from sex before marriage.

You know, I think you have the makings of another Dan Brown conspiracy book.

I actually have the solution to your problem. If "Catholics die everywhere in Africa" as you say, and there are only 2.8 million Catholics in South Africa, and there are well over 10 times that number dying at the moment of AIDS ... well, that must mean that there are no Catholics left, and in fact, there have not been for the last couple of decades.

Maybe the real conspiracy is that there are really no more Catholics left in South Africa!

Here in Australia we can relate more easily to what happens in the US and various European countries than we can to situations in vastly different cultures.

I have asked both Philo and Paul to comment on a website I have repeatedly posted which compares different approaches to sex education for young people, but so far neither of them have been prepared to comment on it. So I'll try again:

http://www.clothesfree.com/pregnancy.html
[NB This website is nudist. I don't know what the attitude of On Line Opinion is to such things, but if you are offended by a very small amount of non-sexual nudity, then don't go to it.]
The article starts:

"Teen-agers in the United States are far more likely to get pregnant and get an abortion than their counterparts in Western European countries.

Planned Parenthood officials believe that's because Europeans talk to their teen-agers about sex differently from Americans, viewing it as a public health issue rather than a moral, religious or political matter."

The indication is that young people in various European countries are given appropriate sex education. They are certainly not denied condoms. Nor are they brainwashed with religious psuedo-morality. Also in Holland and various other European countries, clothes optional beaches are far more common than in the US or in Australia, enabling people to understand that nudity is not necessarily linked to sexuality.

Also appropriate is:

http://www.unesco.org/courier/2000_07/uk/apprend2.htm

'“parents in the Netherlands take a very pragmatic approach. They know their children are going to have sex, and they are ready to prepare them and to speak with them about their responsibility. This is the key word,” says Mischa Heeger of the Rutgers Foundation. Contraceptives are widely used. According to a NISSO study, 85 per cent of sexually active young people use a contraceptive, and the pill is freely available. The average age of a youth’s first sexual intercourse is 17.7 years.'

We should be using the European approach in Australia and the reason we're not is because of extremist religious interference.

Paulb, I never avoid numbers, if they are meaningful. If they are used to compare apples with oranges however, just to make a point which has no validity, due to many other variables, then I note the agenda of the person trying to make the data fit their case somehow.

No Dan Brown conspiracies either. What we do know is that a worried
pope, concerned with Catholic numbers due to modern contraception,
released his Humanea Vitae and claimed its so called infallibility.
The church is now in a corner. If they change tack they will lose
all credibility, so they plod on relentlessly with their contraception story.

What we've seen is a relentless campaign at all levels, to try to
deny Catholics and non Catholics alike, particularly in Africa,
easy access to cheap and affordable contraception. From burning
condoms in Rwanda, to Catholic bishops telling people that the hiv
virus could penetrate latex, to attempts to deny funding to various
African countries for contraception, the Catholic Chutch has done
the lot. The church seems obsessed with contraception at every level.

Condoms are certainly not as freely and easily available as you suggest. In Uganda, when the price suddenly tripled, that makes it
really hard for really poor people to even think of using them.

Enforcing Catholic agendas does not even need alot of Catholic followers on the ground, if the Church can influence a few politicians in any given country. Note how RU 486 was held up
in Australia for many years, due to the influence of just a couple.
That means that non Catholics also, are affected by Catholic politics,
which is exactly what I am protesting about.

On contraception, the Church has now shot itself in the foot one
more time. Africa meant more less educated followers who might still
believe the dogma, unlike the declining West. Now both Catholics
and non Catholics in Africa are dying, in part due to that obsession
with contraception.

Yabby,
You continue to ignore the fact that sexually transmitted disease is on the increase here in Australia and both condoms and the pill are available. Religious dogma as you claim plays no part in the sexual encounters of multiple partners in Australia. In fact it is exactly your attitudes that promote this position of "free love" with whoever whenever you feel like. Morality is not just a teenage requirement, it affects all society.

However morality covers attitudes far wider than sexual transmitted disease. Corruption in business, selfishness, and injustice are also factors affecting decline in a moral society. Standards must be put in place so less people get ripped off, injured or are treated as second class. What standards would you see represent best the desire of a great society? Holland is not a totally irreligious society, in fact the Christian Democrats have great influence there in politicts.

Yabby,

To use your own words:

"My point is that Catholic dogma is actually responsible for hunger
and suffering in Africa. "

So this is the core of your case.

You blame the Catholic Church for the misfortunes of Africa.

I have recently returned from the UK to Australia. Prior to leaving the UK I was at meetings in a local UK Catholic parish. We were adopting an African Parish to give it money for schools, health care, water, skills and education. We were placing our money and other support on the line. In other words, to raise it from poverty. We we were seeking to put people on their own feet, to be able to raise families in dignity and not make them dependant on first world handouts. The trouble is that you will never recognize the tremendous work the Catholic Church and many other Christian churches do in providing education, health care, local charitable projects and simple support for families. Catholic Priests, Nuns and lay people have given their lives, including their deaths to help people in Africa. You ignore so easily how the Vatican was a champion of the forgiveness of third world debt. Personally I had doubts about the Vatican's approach. I wanted more local government responsibility on the ground (including the current government of Rwanda of whom's effectiveness and honesty I have grave doubts).

I think local African despots have had it too easy to plunder western aid and their countries own resources. I think western governments and banks have acted irresponsibly in their loans using taxpayers and account holders money. Now both are trying to occupy the moral high ground. We conveniently overlook this.

But the Vatican for over thirty years has been more interested in the plight of poverty stricken people. Indeed, debt relief would probably never have been on the first world agenda except for its efforts. The power of the Vatican as an independant soveriegn power was instrumental in lobbying first world governments to come to the party. John Paul II was a leader in that regard.