| @cuendillar and sennomulo: 1. The percentage of Catholic priests who are pedophiles is less than the percentage of the general public, you just hear about it a lot more when it's a leader of some kind. By no means does the church want to protect proven child rapists, they want them excommunicated and prosecuted.
2. Not true. Pope Benedict announced that condom use may be acceptable to prevent the spread of AIDs. Even before this, they didn't really exacerbate the problem because most rapists and other people who are spreading AIDs were not avoiding condoms because they were trying to be good Catholics.
The spread of AIDs would be much less if people were following the Catholic teaching of abstinence between unmarried partners. The fact that this is not realistic is what led to the condom exception.
In fact, there are successful Catholic efforts to slow the spread of AIDs as well as for many other humanitarian causes. Catholics and religious people in general do more charitable giving and volunteering than the general public. Believers even give more to secular charities than non-believers! From a study at Stanford: http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6577 |
World Population 1900 
Largest Second Place Cities 
Confederate Cities (1860)
