Charge the Pope with Murder

The Pope visits Africa this week and instantly proclaims that condoms not only do not prevent HIV infection, but actually increase the spread of AIDS.

The Catholic church has long railed against all forms of birth control, saying it interferes with God's will and protecting life. But now we are supposed to believe that the very same God doesn't care enough about African lives to want to protect them. Gotta love that God's will! It makes such crap easier to swallow.

How many Africans will die because of the Pope's insistence on sticking with age old Vatican lies? At last count, 1.5 million Africans die from AIDS every year. Surely some of those lives wouldn't have been lost if they had widespread access to condoms and an educational program. Instead the Vatican prefers everyone to be kept in the dark. Dying in the dark.

Ironically, last week the Pope admitted he isn't infallible. The right hand of God, walking on the earth, makes the same mistakes we all do. Well, not the same. When was the last time you tried to force a shotgun marriage with a Holocaust-denying priest one the rest of Catholicism? Rather than tell the anti-semite to hit the road, the Pope admits he's human, shrugs his shoulders, and says 'the Fuhrer made me do it.'

So let's treat the Pope like he's human. If a doctor mistreated a patient so poorly that the patient died, we would call him incompetent. But if that doctor was intentionally giving the wrong treatment, that's malpractice bordering on murder. And if the result of the intentional act causes widespread death - that's just the pope continuing centuries of Vatican bullshit.

UPDATE: The Washington Post agrees with me.