To the editor:
Regarding the pope’s condemnation of condoms in Africa:
While few would compare Pope Benedict XVI to John Lennon, their methods of saving humanity are in some sense similar.
In the 1960s John Lennon pushed for peace with his anti-war sign “WAR IS OVER! — if you want it.” His message was meant to convey the simple fact that peace is merely a matter of the people willing it.
Obviously, the fact that most nations and individuals are today at war with one another — both on the battlefields and in the court rooms — indicates that few people really want peace. Posing as peaceniks, what they really want is their own individual “rights” regardless of the consequences this may have for others.
This same kind of selfish freedom that has historically prevented peace also stands in the way of abolishing the AIDS virus. AIDS can be eradicated tomorrow if, as the pope suggests, people were simply willing to exercise a little self-constraint and practice abstinence and marital fidelity.
Barring this refusal to submit oneself to the natural law, no amount of money or mass influx of condoms to various nations will stop the spread of the deadly virus. On the contrary, it will only aggravate the problem just as the fictitious kind of individual “rights” we have all championed since the 1960s has led to a mass proliferation of war and hostility.
Pope Paul VI rightly predicted back in 1968 that failure to follow the dictates of Natural Law on contraception would lead to a lowering of moral standards, a rise in infidelity and promiscuity, a lessening of respect for women, and government-enforced limitations on population.
Ours is a time of continual movement which often leads to restlessness, with the risk of “doing for the sake of doing.” We must resist this temptation by trying “to be” before trying “to do.”
Paul Kokoski, Hamilton,
Ontario, Canada