Harvard AIDS-Prev. Director: "Pope's Correct"

March 19, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, has said that the evidence confirms that the Pope is correct in his assessment that condom distribution exacerbates the problem of AIDS. "The pope is correct," Green told National Review Online Wednesday, "or put it a better way, the best evidence we have supports the pope's comments."

"There is," Green added, "a consistent association shown by our best studies, including the U.S.-funded 'Demographic Health Surveys,' between greater availability and use of condoms and higher (not lower) HIV-infection rates. This may be due in part to a phenomenon known as risk compensation, meaning that when one uses a risk-reduction 'technology' such as condoms, one often loses the benefit (reduction in risk) by 'compensating' or taking greater chances than one would take without the risk-reduction technology."

Pope Benedict knows what's up.

Pope Benedict Supports Jews

Pope Benedict's decision to lift the excommunication of four ultra-traditionalist bishops, including one who has denied the Holocaust, has angered many Jews and Catholics who say the bishops represent repressive and anti-Semitic currents in Catholicism that they want the pope to now explicitly repudiate.

Church officials have been scrambling to downplay the decision announced over the weekend and portray it as a first step in ending the only formal schism in modern Catholicism. But Jewish leaders said the move threatens decades of interfaith dialogue and could harm plans for Benedict's planned trip to the Holy Land later this year. The dispute adds to growing concerns among leaders of other faiths about Benedict's view of interfaith cooperation.

This morning, Benedict made his first public comments on the controversy, telling pilgrims in his weekly audience in Vatican City that he feels "full and indisputable" solidarity with Jews and repudiating the idea of denying the Holocaust. - Washington Post

Good job, Pope.