The National Catholic Register reported this week on "finding a delightful and life-giving use for post-colonial Euro attempts at culling the non-white numbers so despised by white population planners whose motto is 'Just Enough of Me. Way Too Much of You!'"
Prince Charles, if he sees the above video, may echo his great-great-great grandmother's, Queen Victoria's, alleged remark: "We are not amused". It's reported today that the Prince may be conspicuous by his absence during Pope Benedict's forthcoming visit to Britain because of differences with the Catholic Church on population control; and last month I reported that the Prince of Wales delivered a poorly-informed address at Oxford University on the consequences of population growth.
The National Catholic Register posting on condoms should not be disregarded as frivolous. It's making a very serious point on the eve of World Population Day: Let's not forget that another of Pope Benedict's opponents is International Planned Parenthood Federation for which so-called "family planning" is big business - and whose own press statement acknowledged the health risks to women even in the case of consistent condom use, a point made in an excellent letter in The Times from Liz Todd:
"Sir, Amid the criticism of the Pope’s stance on condoms (report, Mar 18) by Aids activists, NGOs and others claiming to promote, inter alia, sexual health, freedom and compassion for Aids/HIV sufferers, the clinical issue has been missed. If one’s partner has Aids or is HIV-positive, abstinence will eliminate the risk of contagion or death completely; condom use, however, will mitigate these risks by 90 per cent at best. Even the WHO report and statistics on condom use in Aids and HIV cases acknowledge this fact. Abstinence is a 2,000-year-old doctrine and virtue of the Catholic Church. The Aids and HIV epidemic is a 20th and 21st-century epidemic, and, from the Catholic Church’s perspective, having observed the human condition over centuries, yet another social and anthropological context in which it will continue to expound the virtue of sexual abstinence."And as Cardinal Murphy O'Connor pointed out on the same day in The Times:
"It is certainly true that the widespread distribution of condoms can run the risk of greater promiscuity and that the best way to combat the Aids epidemic is by healthcare, education and fidelity in married life."
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