There has been a lot of media coverage of the Holy Father's visit to Africa, most of which has been dominated by a grossly disproportionate fixation on a brief response he made during the flight to Cameroon to a reporter's question about condoms.
Perhaps the best succinct description I've seen about this chasm in perspectives was from the article, "Benedict in Cameroon: a tale of two trips" by National Catholic Reporter Vatican correspondent John L. Allen, Jr. It also sums up the amazingly positive impact Pope Benedict's presence has had in Africa. I should note, however, that while John Allen's reporting can be decent, the National Catholic Reporter is an otherwise notoriously dissident publication and a completely unreliable source for an authentically Catholic perspective.
"In the U.S. and many other parts of the world, coverage has been 'all condoms, all the time,' triggered by comments from Benedict aboard the papal plane to the effect that condoms aren't the right way to fight AIDS. In Africa, meanwhile, the trip has been a hit, beginning with Benedict's dramatic insistence that Christians must never be silent in the face of 'corruption and abuses of power,' and extending through a remarkable meeting with African Muslims in which the pope said more clearly and succinctly what he wanted to say three years ago in his infamous Regensburg address,...
Vast and pumped-up crowds flocked to see the pope, and Benedict seemed swept up in the enthusiasm. Twice he referred to Africa as the 'continent of hope,'...
As counter-intuitive as it may seem to Westerners, it was difficult to find anyone in Cameroon -- at least anyone who wasn't a foreign journalist or missionary, or an employee of an overseas NGO -- for whom the condoms issue loomed especially large. The locals had different opinions on whether condoms are the right way to tackle AIDS, of course, but it didn't seem to dominate their impressions of the event.
Bottom line: Seen from abroad, the trip has been about condoms; on the ground, it's felt like a celebration of African Catholicism."
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