The Pope on Condoms in Africa

Pope Benedict XVI: condoms make Aids crisis worse

While en route from Rome to his first stop, Cameroon, the Pope said that the condition was "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems."

Speaking on board his official plane, the pontiff insisted that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against Aids, advocating sexual abstinence and fidelity within marriage as a way of fighting the disease.

How many additional people are going to get sick and die because of this idiot and his religious dogma? A million?

EDIT: A commenter points me to this article quoting the director of AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies saying that the Pope is right.

I apologize for my questions above if this correction holds up. Can anyone who knows more about the subject weigh in?

Catholics and the Pope

Here's what I don't understand. How do grown men and women take Catholicism seriously when the pope is so ridiculous?

Sure, there are crazy rabbis and plenty of crazy imams, but none is officially the head of their whole religion. In the pope, you have all the hypocrisy and evil and pomposity of religion wrapped up in one man.

Now the current pope isn't as bad as, say, Alexander VI, but he's hardly a paragon of moral virtue or wisdom. Shortly after un-excommunicating a holocaust-denying bishop, he has named a guy who said Hurricane Katrina was "God's punishment" and that the Harry Potter books spread Satanism to bishop.

Before he was pope, he and the previous pope covered up the child-abusing spree of Marciel Maciel. (He's also an overtly anti-gay man who wears a dress and bright red Prada shoes and has suspiciously handsome assistants, but that sort of argument is beneath this blog. Yeah right.)

All the popes dress in ridiculously over-the-top costumes and live in gigantic palaces controlling 10-15$ billion in wealth while preaching against greed and materialism and pretending to be against povery. I mean, seriously, how does a grown person look at this guy and see a spiritual leader? It's beyond me.