The Catholic Church: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

I'm proud to be a Catholic.  While Protestants were busy reading the Bible, addressing each other as "Goody", building barns, and milking cows, my religious ancestors were hunting down witches and heretics and setting them on fire, writing books about damning people to Hell and following through by actually damning them to hell, devising complex codes and secret societies to keep losers at bay, invading an entire region of the globe in search for a magic cup, building labyrinths, burning surviving classical texts, improving torture techniques, trying to keep a dead language alive, and otherwise founding Western civilization.  But to really appreciate how cool Catholicism is when compared to Protestantism, one need only compare Gregorian Chant to Creed.

However, a lot of that bad stuff can be attributed to the fact that the Catholic Church was once synonymous with Western Society, including within the deadly realm of politics; the Reformation was far less about religious disagreement than it was about political disagreement.  And while it may have started as honest philosophical debate, once it went mainstream, just like hip hop, it fell into the hands of publicity artists and money grubbers, became violent, and self-destructed.  Contrary to popular belief, disagreement was and is highly present within the church; just look at Andrew Sullivan.  Much of the view of the Catholic Church as this monolithic, socially engineering entity is actually rooted in Protestant propaganda.  Widespread literacy didn't happen for logistical reasons until the invention of the printing press, which happened to coincide with the Reformation.  An illiterate populace in which reason-less blind faith is a virtue is primed for the manipulation of politicians.  Or, in the words of Seneca the Younger, "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." 

For the past ten years or so, despite its 1500-year edge in coolness, Catholicism in America has not been doing so hot.  About half the churches in the Northeast near where I'm from have had to close due to financial troubles in the very institution that revolutionized the money for absolvement business paradigm 400 years ago that is now generating cash in droves for the carbon credits industry.  Who would have thought people would react so strongly to widespread sexual abuse of boys?  

Anyways, what people forget is that the Catholic Church actually does many good things, like being the second largest source of charitable contributions in the world, after the U.S. government.  The Catholic church was responsible for almost all the scholarship and invention of the middle ages, as well as the survival of a large amount of classical literature.  Despite its well-published feud with Galileo, the Catholic Church actually has had a very good relationship with science generally, endorsing Darwin's Theory of Evolution over a hundred years ago.  And like all those who aren't ignorant, the Catholic Church recognized in Vatican I that Darwinian Evolution answers the question how without touching on why:

Not only can faith and reason never be at odds with one another but they mutually support each other, for on the one hand right reason established the foundations of the faith and, illuminated by its light, develops the science of divine things; on the other hand, faith delivers reason from errors and protects it and furnishes it with knowledge of many kinds.

In other words, knowing that your child is composed of cells doesn't make you love him any less.

But as much as the Catholic Church is both a lot cooler and light years ahead of other factions of Christianity in its support for science, occasionally it does something so idiotic that I have to feel nothing but embarrassment: for example, the Church's solution for AIDS in Africa, which is that condoms are immoral.  I wish here to issue a caution for those readers who can't discuss or read about sex because it's "bad:" we're about to have an adult conversation about facts.  Promiscuity may be bad, but ignoring reality exacerbates the problem, and, the Catholic Church, as an institution based in Christian morality, should know better than anybody that ultimately you're intentions don't matter, only the consequences of your actions.  I mean all the way back to Aristotle, whose philosophy shaped much of the Church's, they knew that was the highest stage of moral development.  

There is a concept in immunology called herd immunity, that is, there is a certain percentage of prophylaxis and/or vaccination that serves to slow the spread of a biological agent to a point where it can't find hosts quickly enough to replicate itself and eventually goes to zero.  For H1N1 pandemic 09, herd immunity is 40%, therefore if only 40% of a particular population gets vaccinated, that is sufficient so that H1N1 cannot replicate itself, and the virus eventually fizzles out (although herd immunity levels must be maintained or else new outbreaks occur).  Herd immunity also explains why all those morons who think not vaccinating their children against measles or mumphs will prevent autism haven't paid the piper yet.  We already have hard proof that condoms are sufficient to establish herd immunity for AIDS from Thailand, where widespread condom use has dramatically slowed down the spread of the virus.  

The idea of herd immunity is also related to the fact that most people outside the developed world are not in the position to control their own sexual risk factors.  In many parts of Africa, polygamy is common - including with the South African President - (although polygamy may not be as much of a factor as previously thought) arranged marriages and anal sex for prophylactic purposes are all more common.  Without condom use that is a deadly combination for spreading HIV, since transmission from vaginal sex with a person who has the virus is 1 in 500, but 1 in 5 for anal sex.  These statistics are grossly overgeneralized, as viral load and other factors play a large role in transmissibility, but they form a good benchmark.  Transmissibility is actually probably considerably higher than these figures in sub-Saharan Africa due to constant new infections and immune systems already suppressed by other epidemics such as malaria.  Furthermore, Africans are genetically more likely to acquire HIV. All these compounding factors make establishing herd immunity as quickly as possible a necessity.  In sub-Saharan Africa, one of the things preventing widespread condom use is the Catholic Church's stance on the issue.  That stance is frankly inexcusable in the face of reality.  The spread of AIDS in Africa is a tragic problem with a clear moral imperative and a clear scientific solution.  The Catholic Church, with its vast infrastructure and ability to bypass political entanglements, should be spearheading the effort to distribute condoms to sub-Saharan Africa, not standing in its way.