March 17, 2009 11:15 AMOh... The Catholic Church does it again.
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — Pope Benedict XVI said on his way to Africa Tuesday that condoms were not the answer in the continent's fight against HIV, his first explicit statement on an issue that has divided even clergy working with AIDS patients.
Benedict is following the old doctrine that it's better to abstain from sex than to use condoms ever. Which, if you have AIDS, one would hope that you wouldn't be randomly having sex nilly willy with everyone in the world anyway. That said, this is a continent where the virus has severly depleted the life expectancy. 22 million people in sub-Sahara Africa are infected with HIV. Children are born with AIDS because their mothers were carrying it; women were once raped because it was believed that a virgin could heal those with the disease. Without proper testing, there are people with AIDS and spreading it without any knowledge. But the Pope thinks that the real evil here is condoms?
"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon, where he will begin a seven-day pilgrimage on the continent. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."
It increases the problem? How? The people are having sex anyway, don't you think that providing them access to condoms might be a better solution? The Catholic Church, in recent weeks, appears ready to just repeat their old dogma. Instead of focusing on the stories at hand, they come at them with all of their furor and come off looking... cold, foolish? Between this and the condemnation of the rape victim and her mother, I just find myself staring blankly at this institution.
So, walking into Cabin (aka the "Cougar Den") last night with friends; a gentleman decides that he is going to politely tell us, as he walks out, "Good Luck getting in, they are making sure to check fakes these days." For real? The youngest among us was 24. I understand that it was Cougar central and maybe he felt us youngin' were invading his turf, but the dude was a little off. It's been six years since I needed to be carded. I'm an old man. Hell, I probably have some of his children in class. Stupid fool. While I could have taken away from it, "Aw, he thought we were young," I was totally sporting a grizzly Adam's beard. So in reality, he was just a stupid tool bag. That's all that needs to be said about that.
Watchmen was decently enjoyable. I wasn't a huge, drooling mess over the Graphic Novel anyway. I read it, enjoyed it for what it was, but it never spoke to me in ways that it does others. Which is fine. So the changes that were done, well, I can deal with them. Besides, a giant octopus monster really wouldn't have translated all that well to the big screen, imho.
PRAXIS is over for now. If I passed, it's over for good. If I didn't... well at least I know that I have to start studying my ass off in regards to sentence structure.
Now to begin hacking away at some take home exams.