In the paper, extracts of which were released to media on Thursday, Ndungane, who is spiritual head of millions of Anglicans in southern Africa, called for an "exceptional response to an exceptional crisis".

He said HIV/AIDS hits the poor hardest, and is also a disease that too often marginalizes and excludes, "not least because of its associations with sex. He said stigma has become a silent killer, "decimating families who find it impossible to communicate with each other about the illness in their midst".

The African Archbishop has been listening too much to America's Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold's agit-poop. Either that or he hasn't been reading his Bible lately.

First of all he says the church is to blame for "stigmatizing those with HIV/AIDS." Now I don't know where the bishop is coming from, but I can assure you that I have never heard a single orthodox priest or bishop in the ECUSA publicly condemn men or women with HIV/AIDS. I wish he would identify such persons.

Most orthodox folk I know have enormous compassion for such persons and some orthodox churches have public ministries to persons with HIV/AIDS. They are treated much like an alcoholic. If you need help all you have to do is ask for it.

He talks about "fear, denial and violence..." Again who is he talking about? His American-born assistant for HIV/AIDS the gay "missionary" from 815 namely Ted Karpf publicly screams "the church has AIDS" whenever he gets an opportunity. It's a lie of course, but if you say it long enough and loud perhaps someone will believe it is true.

I know of no one who is afraid of people with HIV/AIDS, and only a fool lives in denial, and no one that I know has been "violent" towards gay persons, and those with AIDS. It's a fiction. (My brother-in-law died of AIDS. He was loved to the end even though this writer disagreed with his lifestyle that caused it.)

A personal note might be in order here, as I have been labeled homophobic often enough by revisionists. In the early 80's I shared a house with a Baptist minister in northern New Jersey whom I discovered was afflicted with HIV. I had just come off a three year stint working for American Leprosy Missions, so I neither feared the disease nor the man who had it. I nursed him as best I could, but as he got weaker I finally had to put him in hospital in NYC (that great liberal city) where he was promptly treated him like a pariah and they put large red signs on his bedroom door and no one went in or out without being fully gowned and their faces covered. It was humiliating. I got him out of there and put him in an extended care unit in a hospital in Connecticut, where he died in peace. And for the record, he had been married, had two children, divorced, said he was gay and went out to Provincetown, Long Island for a number of years where he contracted HIV among the vast gay community. He later repented, and an evangelical church in New York City invited him on staff - he held a PhD in psychology along with two theological degrees.)

Ndungane: "Christianity has too often espoused a destructive theology that links sex and sin and guilt and punishment," said the archbishop in a paper to be presented at a conference in Cape Town on Friday.

Let's unpack that. First of all if sex is practiced within marriage between a man and a woman there is absolutely no link between sex, guilt and punishment. None. If you are married and feel guilty about sex see a psychiatrist or therapist quickly or you will destroy your marriage. If you are engaging in promiscuous behavior - fornication, adultery or homosexual activity then that is an entirely different matter. In that case there IS a link between sex, sin and guilt.

God has made it abundantly clear (and only a few Fundamentalists and some oddball Catholics believe that sex within marriage should not be enjoyed) that sexual activity is a great gift to the world and for all married couples.

When the archbishop paints with a broad sweeping brush linking sex, sin, guilt and punishment, who and what is he talking about?

If a person indulges in sex outside of marriage he or she will or ought to KNOW that is sin and feel its attendant guilt and shame. Men and women who have experienced divorce because of adultery (and it is evident enough in Hollywood movies) will tell you endless horror stories of guilt and shame. And well they might.

One of the devastating aspects of President Bill Clinton's sexual escapades is the complete absence of a culture of shame and guilt. His "sin" was being caught.

The archbishop is making linkages that are unbiblical. A quarter of the adult population in South Africa has HIV/AIDS. His country has the single largest AIDS population on the African continent and most, if not all of it, has to do with sex outside of marriage either heterosexual or homosexual, (mostly heterosexual.) So this begs the question.

The "destructive theology" Ndungane talks about is obviously aimed at orthodox folk who want to say that sex outside of marriage is a 'no no' and the empirical evidence is there for all to see.

The archbishop's bashing of unnamed persons smacks of a sort of ortho-phobism that he now condemns. But what he is displaying is a misplaced compassion.

No one is bashing those with HIV/AIDS, but what biblically-instructed Anglicans are saying or ought to say, is that the best and only means of sexual expression is in marriage and if you indulge yourself outside of that you will experience guilt and shame and you will have to repent. THAT is the message of Scripture and ought to be the message of the archbishop.

Whacking unnamed persons for their "destructive theology" is just as bad as certain American bishops calling the growth of the Christian Church in Africa like the growth of the Nazi party and calling African Anglicans pre-Copernican because of their simplistic theology.

The archbishop does the church and himself no good service blasting unnamed persons, and accusing and blaming the church for the AIDS crisis.

This is precisely what Griswold did after 911, he blamed American foreign policy and Islamophobia for what took place. It was an enormous fiction and a lie, especially as we are learning more each day about Islam, Al Qaeda and terrorism.

Ndungane: "Another tragic and shameful area of the church's spiritual blindness is in relation to women, and this too is having devastating consequences in relation to HIV/Aids."

The bishop is partly right. Women have become the victims of the AIDS crisis but not because of the church or its silence. African women (and some North American women) have become the victims of their husband's promiscuity. Their men have gone with prostitutes picked up HIV and given it to their wives. Should THEY feel guilt and shame? Damn right they should. They have given their wives a death sentence. It is as if they had put a gun to their heads and blown their brains out. And yet God in his graciousness still offers forgiveness through repentance and faith. THAT is the good news. Why are we not hearing that from the archbishop?

The archbishop is doing and saying the very thing he accuses the orthodox of doing, playing the blame game himself ...no names of course.

"Christianity has been complicit in sustaining the patriarchal dominance of men and the subjugation of women in... politics, economics, culture, society and the family as well as within the institutional church," says the bishop.

Oh God. The archbishop should read the statistics of those coming into the ministry in the ECUSA, - weak feminized men, older, angry, man-hating lesbians, assorted lesbitransgays and a bisexual in Oklahoma to complete the picture - the Episcopal Church is littered with them. And if the Rev. Robbie Low is correct it is happening as well in the Church of England. Would the last "patriarchal" priest leaving ECUSA please turn out the lights.

If the Archbishop of Southern Africa wants to say something of lasting value he should stand up and say something like this.

"My dear friends, South Africa is in the midst of a sexual holocaust. One quarter of all adult persons has HIV/AIDS. We are the worst country in Africa and possibly the world for HIV statistics. It is a double tragedy because we have had Christianity on this part of the continent for over 300 years and clearly we have had little impact in the area of sexual ethics. If you think what happened in Rwandan with two million dead - a blood bath between the Hutus and Tutsis - was a holocaust, you ain't seen nothin' yet."

"The tragedy in South Africa is sexual promiscuity - men and women indulging themselves outside of marriage, and as a result we are killing ourselves and our economy. As a nation we need to repent, individually and collectively and agree that God is right and we are wrong. We have broken His most holy laws and we are paying a horrible and terrible price. Our people are going to be dying by the millions. I implore you to repent and change your ways. In a very short time we will have tens of thousands of children on the streets growing up without parents. Who will look after them? I call the nation to repentance..."

END