from the Cardinal Newman Society
Notre Dame Commencement Speaker, AIDS Partnership at Odds with Vatican, Bishops
The University of Notre Dame made two major announcements Monday that
put the University at odds with Pope Benedict XVI on the promotion of
condoms to prevent AIDS—even as the U.S. bishops fight to defend
Catholic colleges’ First Amendment right to uphold Catholic teaching on
contraception.
The University also has reignited concerns about its standards for commencement speakers and honorees with its selection of Dr. Thomas Quinn, founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health, as Distinguished Alumnus and graduate commencement speaker on May 19.
This week, Notre Dame announced that its Eck Institute for Global Health is now a full member of the AMPATH Consortium, a collaborative effort led by Indiana University to address the pandemic of HIV/AIDS in western Kenya.
Although the consortium has done much good for Kenyans struggling with the spread of HIV infections, AMPATH also promotes condoms and has partnered with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to integrate family planning programs, including contraception.
Notre Dame indicates that AMPATH is expanding its services to include “delivery of essential primary care services and control of communicable diseases and non-communicable, chronic illnesses.” The University’s will bring its expertise in tropical and communicable diseases to support research at Moi University School of Medicine and to address “constraints to health care in western Kenya.”
But Notre Dame also says, “Joint research activities, participation in seminars and academic meetings, student and faculty exchanges, and special short-term courses will be used to advance the mission of the Consortium.”
A USAID study from 2005 to 2009 followed an AMPATH pilot program to offer both HIV/AIDS prevention services and family planning services from a single clinic. The final report explains that prior to the pilot program, AMPATH provided only “condom counseling” and “strategically” placed condoms “in the waiting bay, check in/out rooms, and consultation rooms for patients to access.” But in the trial, AMPATH provided clinic patients the “oral contraceptive pill, intrauterine contraceptive device, implants, injectable depo provera, or condoms” upon request.
Today, the AMPATH Reproductive Health program promotes contraception to AMPATH clients, according to AMPATH’s website. Among the consortium’s other programs is the B-Fine Women’s Project, a clinic that offers a variety of services including distribution of condoms in local bars and motels and providing condom “education” to truck drivers.
An Indiana University article last year described AMPATH’s at-home counseling and testing (HCT) program, which includes youth outreach: “It influences youth, teaching proper condom use and distributing free condoms to the community, encouraging safe sex practices.” An AMPATH program manager’s presentation on the HCT program reveals that 150,000 condoms were distributed between July and October 2009.
Notre Dame’s selection of Thomas Quinn to be honored as Distinguished Alumnus and to speak at the Graduate School commencement ceremony similarly raises concerns about the University’s commitment to Catholic teaching on contraception, and it appears to violate the U.S. bishops’ 2004 policy banning Catholic honors and platforms for opponents of Catholic moral teaching.
That policy was the basis for protests in 2009 against Notre Dame’s selection of President Barack Obama as commencement speaker and honoree. Opponents included 83 bishops who publicly criticized the University and more than 367,000 individuals who signed a Cardinal Newman Society petition.
At the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health, Quinn is responsible for facilitating numerous faculty projects, including many that promote the use of contraceptives including male and female condoms, “emergency” contraception (which can cause early abortion), and IUDs (which also can cause abortion). Current examples include:
“You may have concerns about what those individuals are doing,” Quinn said. “I myself am not. I keep the data in line.”
Quinn has done his own important work studying HIV/AIDS and its prevention. But his work has involved condom distribution to prevent HIV infection, as he explained in a December 2000 article about his project in Uganda:
“There are 30 million people infected with HIV and you need to do something to actively try to change that,” Quinn said.
But a 2004 study by Cambridge University researchers found that Uganda’s incidence of HIV declined by 70 percent in the 1990s under a program emphasizing abstinence, behavioral change and communication—before widespread condom distribution and counseling became available through programs like Quinn’s. (More on this here.)
The Cambridge researchers questioned the strategic emphasis on condoms and recommended a “shift in strategic thinking on health policy and HIV/AIDS, with greater attention to epidemiological intelligence and communications to mobilise risk avoidance.”
“My commencement address won’t be about these issues,” Quinn promised. “What I want to do is talk about their futures and their lives.”
“I know there was a lot of controversy about President Obama,” said Quinn. “I want to reassure the Society that they can rest assured that I won’t be promoting anything like that. My job is saving lives.”
Despite some media confusion about a statement made by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 regarding the use of condoms by male prostitutes, the Holy Father and Vatican officials have strongly opposed condom distribution as immoral and an impractical solution to preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Moreover, the Catholic bishops of Kenya—where Notre Dame will be cooperating with AMPATH—have publicly reiterated Catholic teaching against condoms. They promise that Catholic Church efforts to address HIV/AIDS, “both in partnerships with others and on her own, will always be aimed at a search for human and liberating solutions to the pandemic.”
The University also has reignited concerns about its standards for commencement speakers and honorees with its selection of Dr. Thomas Quinn, founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health, as Distinguished Alumnus and graduate commencement speaker on May 19.
This week, Notre Dame announced that its Eck Institute for Global Health is now a full member of the AMPATH Consortium, a collaborative effort led by Indiana University to address the pandemic of HIV/AIDS in western Kenya.
Although the consortium has done much good for Kenyans struggling with the spread of HIV infections, AMPATH also promotes condoms and has partnered with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to integrate family planning programs, including contraception.
Notre Dame indicates that AMPATH is expanding its services to include “delivery of essential primary care services and control of communicable diseases and non-communicable, chronic illnesses.” The University’s will bring its expertise in tropical and communicable diseases to support research at Moi University School of Medicine and to address “constraints to health care in western Kenya.”
But Notre Dame also says, “Joint research activities, participation in seminars and academic meetings, student and faculty exchanges, and special short-term courses will be used to advance the mission of the Consortium.”
A USAID study from 2005 to 2009 followed an AMPATH pilot program to offer both HIV/AIDS prevention services and family planning services from a single clinic. The final report explains that prior to the pilot program, AMPATH provided only “condom counseling” and “strategically” placed condoms “in the waiting bay, check in/out rooms, and consultation rooms for patients to access.” But in the trial, AMPATH provided clinic patients the “oral contraceptive pill, intrauterine contraceptive device, implants, injectable depo provera, or condoms” upon request.
Today, the AMPATH Reproductive Health program promotes contraception to AMPATH clients, according to AMPATH’s website. Among the consortium’s other programs is the B-Fine Women’s Project, a clinic that offers a variety of services including distribution of condoms in local bars and motels and providing condom “education” to truck drivers.
An Indiana University article last year described AMPATH’s at-home counseling and testing (HCT) program, which includes youth outreach: “It influences youth, teaching proper condom use and distributing free condoms to the community, encouraging safe sex practices.” An AMPATH program manager’s presentation on the HCT program reveals that 150,000 condoms were distributed between July and October 2009.
Notre Dame’s selection of Thomas Quinn to be honored as Distinguished Alumnus and to speak at the Graduate School commencement ceremony similarly raises concerns about the University’s commitment to Catholic teaching on contraception, and it appears to violate the U.S. bishops’ 2004 policy banning Catholic honors and platforms for opponents of Catholic moral teaching.
That policy was the basis for protests in 2009 against Notre Dame’s selection of President Barack Obama as commencement speaker and honoree. Opponents included 83 bishops who publicly criticized the University and more than 367,000 individuals who signed a Cardinal Newman Society petition.
At the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health, Quinn is responsible for facilitating numerous faculty projects, including many that promote the use of contraceptives including male and female condoms, “emergency” contraception (which can cause early abortion), and IUDs (which also can cause abortion). Current examples include:
- reproductive health project in Malawi
- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation project to promote contraception in Kenya (see also here)
- condom marketing project in Mozambique
- project to study a new female condom
- family planning project in Liberia
- HIV/AIDS prevention project in Kazakhstan
- HIV/AIDS counseling project in Lesotho
- HIV/AIDS prevention project in Kazakhstan
“You may have concerns about what those individuals are doing,” Quinn said. “I myself am not. I keep the data in line.”
Quinn has done his own important work studying HIV/AIDS and its prevention. But his work has involved condom distribution to prevent HIV infection, as he explained in a December 2000 article about his project in Uganda:
“The number of sub-Saharan Africans living with HIV is frighteningly high,” opined Dr. Quinn. “The number is almost meaningless, it’s so high. We wanted to take some of the lessons we learned early in the United States, such as condom use and safer sex education, and see if we could make them work over there.”In an interview with The Cardinal Newman Society, Quinn claimed that the Catholic Church in Uganda endorsed the Ugandan government’s policy of “abstinence, be faithful, condoms” to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS.
…All subjects in both groups received intensive instruction from trained personnel on the prevention of HIV and condom use. Subjects were also offered free condoms….
“There are 30 million people infected with HIV and you need to do something to actively try to change that,” Quinn said.
But a 2004 study by Cambridge University researchers found that Uganda’s incidence of HIV declined by 70 percent in the 1990s under a program emphasizing abstinence, behavioral change and communication—before widespread condom distribution and counseling became available through programs like Quinn’s. (More on this here.)
The Cambridge researchers questioned the strategic emphasis on condoms and recommended a “shift in strategic thinking on health policy and HIV/AIDS, with greater attention to epidemiological intelligence and communications to mobilise risk avoidance.”
“My commencement address won’t be about these issues,” Quinn promised. “What I want to do is talk about their futures and their lives.”
“I know there was a lot of controversy about President Obama,” said Quinn. “I want to reassure the Society that they can rest assured that I won’t be promoting anything like that. My job is saving lives.”
Despite some media confusion about a statement made by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 regarding the use of condoms by male prostitutes, the Holy Father and Vatican officials have strongly opposed condom distribution as immoral and an impractical solution to preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Moreover, the Catholic bishops of Kenya—where Notre Dame will be cooperating with AMPATH—have publicly reiterated Catholic teaching against condoms. They promise that Catholic Church efforts to address HIV/AIDS, “both in partnerships with others and on her own, will always be aimed at a search for human and liberating solutions to the pandemic.”
This entry was written by Matthew Archbold, posted on April 25, 2012 at 1:20 pm, filed under Abortion, Catholic Identity Abuse, Contraception, Notre Dame, The Bishops. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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