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1. The Pope doesn't speak for me on this issue (or on many other issues) even though I'm Catholic, I disagree most strongly with his comments. I believe the freedom to express works both ways, that includes the Belgian community expressing its views, as much as the Vatican's retaliation.

   Posted By: Free to expresss too

2. I don't see what's so shocking. The Holy Father did indeed make a rather silly statement. Bodily fluids carry the AIDS virus. Anything that stops the exchange of bodily fluids most certainly will inhibit the spread of the virus. To claim the opposite is ridiculous. No wonder the Belgians objected. The Holy Father seems to be suffering from "Foot in Mouth" virus lately. But we love him just the same.

   Posted By: Stanley J. Harris

3. So freedom of opinion is only for those advocating the leftist-liberal-socialist-modernist-contraceptive-fornicating-divorcing-feminist-baby killing-homosexual-euthanasia-culture of death agenda? It seems only a matter of time before Catholics advocating orthodoxy will be subject to legislation telling us what to think and how to live. Perhaps the Gulags of the Left didn't disappear after all?

   Posted By: Robert Haddad

4. JMJ
   
   The Belgians are lost. On the other hand, who cares what crazy people think?
   
   I hope that our Holy Father or his representative at the ambassadorial level receives the Belgian ambassador and straightens him out.
   
   God help the Europeans, they think they are so progressive. Perversions are now fine for them.

   Posted By: Luis Howard for the Howard Family

5. Belgium may be referred to as a Catholic country but you will find very few believe.

   Posted By: ron hodges

6. Though Popes have commonly enough been known to be wrong in what they say and do, it seems as though in 2009 everything they say is automatically wrong! Have the Belgian Govt critics read the research from Harvard Uni Centre for Prevention of HIV/AIDS? Referring specifically to the African experience (not to western situations) the Centre points out how and why the condom campaign in Africa has not worked and indeed cannot work. As several African countries have discovered for themselves through reflecting on their own tragic experience, the Centre concludes that it's behavioural change that is the key in Africa, and which is already bringing good results in several countries. (Could Africa teach our "enlightened" west something here?)

   Posted By: Jim Monaghan

7. It is indeed astonishing that a government can condemn the Holy Father for expressing his own teaching.
   The Belgians weren't using their heads.

   Posted By: Anne Boyce

8. I do think the Belgians didn't engage their brains before making their comments. On the other hand, I think the Holy Father needs to realize that the world hears him in brief soundbytes - he should try to be very clear about what he's actually saying, especially knowing that the Press isn't necessarily interested in conveying his real thought. Of course condoms put a barrier between infectious fluids and the next potential victim - but only if they're actually used. It seems that government dependence on condom distribution is likely to promote the spread of AIDS - partly because condom distribution doesn't necessarily mean that people can be persuaded to use them. Still, condom distribution should be part of the strategy to combat AIDS - just not the whole thing. Because that won't work!

   Posted By: Joan Seymour

9. Well called, Robert Haddad - the only epithet you missed was "dumbed down".
   One of the recent ploys of the affluent, secularist western media is to isolate the pope by suggesting, with the help of 'enlightened Catholics' that his views are idiosyncratic and non-representative of Catholics.
   We'll see about that!

   Posted By: James Kepler

10. Belgium: for whom the bell tolls.

    Posted By: Marie

11. Bring back the old days and send a crusade to Belgium to bring back the government in chains for daring to to speak out against the Pope. And let them beg for mercy like they used to have to do.

    Posted By: Phill

12. When I read of Belgium's demise, I recall Dom Marquis' words: "an old bitch, gone in the teeth", which, sadly, it seems, could be said of other countries in Europe.
    Writing God out of the constitution - effectively denying their patrimony - was an early indicator. the Pope used the term "Christophobia"to describe this malady.
    
    Lunacy, self-loathing and infidelity won't prevail - in Europe or elsewhere. This we have on good authority - but Catholics everywhere should be bracing themselves for a rough ride.

    Posted By: John

13. Those who think the Pope is wrong about the connection between condoms and AIDS/HIV ... including the Belgian parliament ... should read the following excerpt :
    
    "Dr. Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, told National Review Online last week that despite AIDS activists and media outlets pounding the pope for downplaying the effectiveness of condoms, the science actually supports the Catholic leader's claim.
    
    "The pope is correct," Green told NRO, "or put it a better way, the best evidence we have supports the pope's comments."
    
    "There is," Green added, "a consistent association shown by our best studies, including the U.S.-funded 'Demographic Health Surveys,' between greater availability and use of condoms and higher (not lower) HIV-infection rates. This may be due in part to a phenomenon known as risk compensation, meaning that when one uses a risk-reduction 'technology' such as condoms, one often loses the benefit (reduction in risk) by 'compensating' or taking greater chances than one would take without the risk-reduction technology."
    
    http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92702
    

    Posted By: c.d.

14. I am actually Belgian and based on what has been happening in Belgium - the government is probably the least qualified of anyone in the world to express an opinion on the pope's comment.
    Rather than spend their time on this they would be well advised to look after their own country and fix the problems in Belgium.
    Anybody who bothered to find out the truth of what the pope said can only shake their head and I can only hope that the Belgian government does not speak for the majority of Belgians in respect of this issue. They certainly don't speak for me.
    Sadly Belgium can no longer be described as a catholic country - I doubt that 50% of the population now is even nominally catholic!
    
    

    Posted By: annemie

15. There certainly do seem to be a number of papal mindreaders -- people who presume to know exactly what the Pope means whenever he speaks. So when the Pope says that prophylactics can aggravate the spread of AIDs, those such as editors of Lancet and the Belgian Parliament immediately assume that the Pope meant that condoms can pass on AIDs. Had they read the Pope's similar remarks, such as in 2005 when he addressed the bishops of Africa, they would have known that the Pope referred more to the dangers of a contraceptive mentality which leads to promiscuity, divorce and family breakdown. Who can condemn that?

    Posted By: Kyle

16. As a Belgian, I am deeply ashamed by this move of our representatives. They have shown incompetent in many areas these last years, and it would have been better to use this time to think about how to govern our country. It's another sign that Belgium is becoming more and more anticlerical. As for the pope's statements, statistics confirm that he is perfectly right.

    Posted By: Bruno Jacobs

17. "Cui bonum?" Can Catholic News provide a break-down of the condom manufacturing companies who supply their products to African countries? I suspect their profit margins would indicate a motive other than the "responsible sex" their propaganda claims to promote.

    Posted By: Jimmy

18. It is time to go on the offensive! When people choose to have sex with multiple partners, it is like letting children play with guns. If someone thinks that they can have sex as much as they like, with as many different partners as they like, with no risk of STDs such as HIV just by using condoms - they are fooling themselves!
    
    The pope is perfectly correct and the Belgian parliament has got it wrong, because he has taken a longer term view of the risk of getting HIV from having sex with multiple partners, whereas the Belgian Parliament has taken a very narrow short view. Transmission of HIV is like being hit with a bullet - it only needs to happen JUST ONCE - and when the bullet strikes, there is no cure. A condom only has to break once, or fall off once during sex with someone else who has got HIV - and the bullet has struck a new person. It does not matter that someone has previously gotten away with having had sex 99 times with multiple partners without getting AIDS. All it takes to get HIV is for a condom to break (because the rubber has either perished or because of a manufaturing defect) - and that person can get a potential death sentence.
    Telling people that they can have sex with mutiple partners as often as they like,with no risk of getting HIV by using condoms, is like allowing children to play with guns - if they do it often enough the probability increases that they will end up getting hurt.
    
    The following is a quotation from the US Food and Drug Administration website at http://www.fda.gov/oashi/aids/condom.html
    
    "Extreme temperature -- especially heat -- can make latex brittle or gummy (like an old balloon). So don't keep these latex products in a hot place like a glove compartment"

    Posted By: Bruce Murray

19. It is interesting that Dr. Edward C. Green, is quoted as supporting the Pope. Dr Green is not a catholic, in fact he is an agnostic. His view that condoms have not worked is based on his very valid scientific research. But because this contradicts the media and the Belgian government, he is not given press coverage.
    The Pope is right and those on this forum who have disagreed with him need to do more research and realize that their opinions are in error.

    Posted By: Markodan

20. Does the western world suffer from a 'collectively dumb' syndrome? How many westerners ask or obtain the opinion of people of Africa on this issue of condoms? Why must you people decide what is in the 'best interest' of Africans? Time and time again organisations and individuals from Cameroon and mainly Uganda have complained that the west is promoting their agenda;that issues of aid are linked to accepting other exports of western decadence BUT nobody wants to listen! Is this the same Belgians that were nothing short of brutal in the Congo?
    Stanley Harris: If you abstain from sex you will not get AIDS.
    Excuse me, esp. those who profess to be Catholic yet attack Our Holy Father whenever the opportunity arises: Go to confession for your soul is in danger.A little humility goes a long way.

    Posted By: mark

21. For any Catholic to say that the Pope does not speak for them on a matter of faith and morals is explicitly to remove oneself from unity with the Magisterium and therefore the Church itself. Indeed, this is at the heart of the present issue; the Pope is not saying anything new or outrageous but only what is demanded of him to say based on authentic catholic moral tradition. For any Catholic, non-Catholic or government to condemn him for his views on condoms, is essentially to condemn Catholic tradition and the deposits of faith on which it is founded.

    Posted By: Celeste Badman

22. What good is Belgium today except for their chocolates?
    They have an atrocious record from their colonial days and like so many European countries today are happy for national self suicide through immigration. Ah well, we all get what we deserve in the long run.

    Posted By: Michael Webb

23. The reason Belgium was created was to allow Catholics freedom of religion and free them from Dutch protestant oppression. Having passed this resolution institutionalising anti-Catholicism, the Belgian Parliament should logically now vote to wind itself up and hand sovereignty over Belgium back to Holland.

    Posted By: Ronk

24. Well, in the past the whole of the Netherlands was excommunicated, and before that Dr Martin was excommunicated for writing that selling indulgences and pardons was sinful.
    But there have been no excommunications of the man or men who murdered soldiers and police in Northern Ireland recently. Were there ever excommuncations of the Irish Republican Army, or of the Croatian Ustasha during and after World War II?
    Why were the Knights Templars sentenced to be burnt at the stake?

    Posted By: John of Perth

25. Nihilism always self-destructs, Ronk.

    Posted By: James

26. John, the Church has always taught that selling indulgences and pardons is sinful. Nobody has ever been excommunicated for stating this fact.

    Posted By: Ronk

27. John of Perth: forget the false analogies so prolifically and tritely used by the enemies of the Church. Focus on the facts, and open your mind - the result may surprise you: it's liberating!

    Posted By: John

28. The Belgian Government should consider the cause of AIDS, that it is predominantly a sexually transmitted disease and that if the citizens of the world could control their sexual appetites and restrict themselves to virginity and monogamy, aids would stop. AIDS through blood transfusions is being dealt with and that would remain for awhile. Also to believe that people cannot remain sexually pure is not responsible thinking.

    Posted By: jim crill

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