Elevating Discourse – AIDS and Abstinence
On the subject of useless arguments:
I am sick of hearing about the Pope and AIDS.
This came up on the previously-mentioned episode of Q&A I watched tonight. Again the discussion went approximately along the lines of:
Step 1: 98% of the group jeer at the remarks of the Pope
Step 2: Someone from the crowd stands up and gives a short speech criticising the Pope’s actions, to loud applause.
Step 3: A question is almost jokingly referred to a Catholic member of the panel (no Christian thinkers, just a pollie and a rogue priest), who makes a further joke to show they “get” it, and then offers half an answer, almost tongue in cheek itself.
All of this is clearly worse than useless, and extremely unenlightening.
I don’t want to talk about the Pope. I want to talk about AIDS. How do we fight it, and who is doing the fighting?
If the Catholic church refuses to participate in public education programs, that is their prerogative.
Why are we angry? Do we wish to use the Catholic infrastructure for public health education? If so, arguments convincing to Catholics need to be made. It’s not hard to see that pure utility isn’t going to work as an argument to an organisation with a clear moral mandate. Arguments which address Catholic sensibilities and reflect Catholic internal politics are needed if Rome is to be convinced.
Do we wish the Catholic church to stop encouraging abstinence? encourage away, but why is it our right to tell them what to teach? Since when have we developed a monopoly on truth? I agree that the scientific claims made by the Pope are clearly wrong, but when has the Catholic church been behelden to preach Science’s dogma?
Beyond all this- is the utilisation of Catholic infrastructure, or even the impact of contrary Catholic teaching on more mainstram public health education, worth spending so much time on in addressing the AIDS epidemic? I would guess not.
I think the real problem here is that we tend to look for “bad guys”. If we can find people with power who believe differently to us about addressing the issue, solutions all of a sudden seem political. “If we could only stop the course of the disease!” becomes “If only those Catholics would get on board with our programs!”
Why don’t we accept that the Catholic church will take a different opinion to the broader public-health community, and leave it at that. Their mandate is the spiritual health of the people under their care. Like me, you may disagree with some or all of their teaching, but you cannot expect across-the-board subscription to some sort of humanist/rationalist approach to the world and its problems.
However rational and humane it may seem.
Am I making sense? Please comment it up – I want to hear your thoughts on this.
truth and action 
Excellent points, Joel. Again, this is an example of the debate being dumbed down to goodie vs. baddie. There are much larger questions about the autonomy of the church, and the responsibility thereof. I do agree that spreading misinformation is a problem- if the church teaches something that is scientifically untrue and consequently makes the problem worse, it is bad. But the church should not be interfered with, unless it is doing something absolutely illegal.
Erin
March 19, 2009 at 2:59 pm
I agree with you that the main concern of any criticism must be the competing public-health messages, and its effect on populations.
It would be beneficial if there was some wider recognition that we don’t all actually agree on what the “problem” is. Broadly, the Catholic church sees the modifiable cause of AIDS as being non-monogamy and lack of abstinence in the unmarried. The health community sees the modifiable cause as being lack of safe-sex practices and sexual health awareness.
If either approach to stopping the epidemic gained 100% compliance, it would work. The problem is that such compliance is a fantasy, and then you are left with the question of what is a better solution with, say, 30% compliance.
From a materialistic and utilitarian perspective, the safe sex/sex ed approach is clearly more effective. However once the moral imperatives (to which the Catholic Church is subject) become involved in the discussion, the disagreement of premises between the two camps explains completely the discrepancy in approaches.
Why is this discussion of premises not happening? We can address these things if we really want to.
joelrizillio
March 20, 2009 at 12:36 am
Hey Joel, I stumbled across your blog. I dig it. I just wanted to say I agree that “the real problem here is we tend to look for the bad guys.”
I have no mind for politics or strategies but I believe with all my heart that the first step to a solution is to say, “I am the bad guy” instead of looking to blame others…but you knew that already.
I think this lends itself to putting yourself in the other “side’s” shoes which is always a good start to finding a solution.
Phil Markham
June 1, 2009 at 5:07 am
yeah i find its always helpful to put myself in the other guys shoes, you know walk a mile in his shoes so to speak. That way when I do criticize I’ll be a mile away and he’ll be barefoot… (was that eddy murphy?)
Jaime
October 1, 2009 at 5:54 am