Thread by @JMHendersonSr

Suppose that a population, say the people of #Malawi, are afflicted by a variety of intestinal parasite due to their dependence on ground water.

One solution would be to hand them cases of Pepto Bismal. Hundreds of cases. Thousands.

@ClintnCAli
@frjohnhollowell

No. Don't teach them to filter and boil water before use. Just give them OTC medications, even prescription medicines. Utterly ignoring that their habit and custom of dependence on groundwater is making dysentery a way of life.

Or ....

Bring them immediate relief with filtration and boiling systems and means and teaching, while providing the means to drill wells that remove dependence on groundwater.

And over in the corner, you're yelling at the folks giving the boil and filter alert, the boil and filter methods, and the deep well drilling. "Damn you, you clean water folks, your scandalous insistence on boiling, filtration, and deep ground wells is the fault of all this!"

No.

Seriously.

It is just like that.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure:

I am not Catholic. I was raised Catholic. I attended Catholic schools through eighth grade and Catholic mass through high school. I participated in the Boys' Choir and was an altar boy.

And, yes, thanks to the perversity of Father Richard Baird, I experienced sexual abuse as a sixth grader after morning mass at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in Falls Church, Virginia.

So, ya know, I have reason to hate the Church. But those reasons don't justify arguments such as the silly assertion that the Church's moral teaching on marriage and sexuality is the cause of pagan African men porking infants and children in pursuit of a hoodoo cure for AIDS.