The Vatican on The Today Show

Image via Travelers Journal

I was catching up on some podcasts and was surprised to see that the Today Show did a couple of episodes from Vatican City recently. Vatican City, depending on who you ask, can bring up a wide variety of emotions thoughts. My first thought, was WTF then I grabbed my notebook and began writing about the church, Pope, and city. Most of the time when I begin jotting down my thoughts on a topic I write down a few bullet points and then turn it into a tweet or a Facebook status, but these notes quickly filled several pages in my notebook and could have filled much more of it if I hadn't decided that I should switch to my computer for the rest of my notes on this frustrating topic.

Even as a believer the catholic church angered me for the obvious reasons which include, but aren't limited to, their stance against the use of condoms, the lies that they spread about AIDS, the sex abuse that they allowed to go unpunished and tried to cover-up, and their extreme wealth that could help so many worthy causes. The biggest problem that I have with the catholic church is the lies that they have spread about how condoms aren't effective in stopping the transmission of the AIDS virus. In developed countries we know that condoms are effective in stopping the spread of AIDS, but in developing countries where sex education is very poor these lies are deadly and unconscionable. For years scientists have known that condoms can prohibit the spreading AIDS, but because the church is opposed to any form of birth control they have stooped to lying about condoms and have therefore caused many more people to contract AIDS than would have if the church had only been truthful.

The Today show could have focused on many more worthier topics, but because there are so many catholics in this is a place that would interest many of their viewers. Even so, they could have just stuck to the facts and didn't need to make such an effort to show the pope so much undeserved respect. They were making such an effort to paint the pope as such a holy person, I was actually surprised that they even brought up the fact that there was a sex abuse scandal. However, they didn't go into how the church has done everything that they can do to cover-up the scandal which led to more children being abused. In closing, I know that the Today Show has covered the scandal quite throughly in the past and that they probably didn't want to make these episodes a rehash of the information that they and other news programs have reported before or upset the Vatican after they had been given so much access to the pope and the city.