If you are the parent of teenagers, you have to feel for Pope Benedict XVI.
On his trip to Africa last week, he made one of those outrageous statements about sex and birth control that brought down on him the kind of incredulousness and ridicule that only a 16-year-old can inflict on a clueless parent.
The pope said - after landing on a continent that might not only have spawned HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, but is more devastated by it than any other - that the epidemic can't be resolved through the distribution of condoms.
"On the contrary," he said. "It increases the problem."
If you are the parents of teenagers, and you said something like that - to howls of derisive laughter - you'd be backpedaling right now.
You'd be saying that isn't exactly what you meant to say. What you mean to say is this: "Protection isn't the issue here. The issue is that you shouldn't be having sex in the first place."
And you'd be right. Teens, most of whom have their first sexual encounter by the time they are freshmen in high school, aren't ready for the emotional baggage of a sex life. It is simply too much to handle.
Having said that, you, the parent, are responsible for the rest of this conversation: "But if you won't heed my advice and wait until you are older, until you are in a committed relationship, or until you are married, then you must be conscious enough of what you are doing to take the steps to protect yourself against both pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. You must use a condom.
"And make no mistake," you say. "This condom is not permission. It is protection. Protection against the consequences of your bad decision-making."
If you haven't had the rest of this conversation, you are a bad parent.
And if you are the pope, you are a bad pope.
You can make the case that Pope Benedict was simply adhering to the script. The Catholic Church is against birth control, even in marriage. The church believes it is a man-made barrier between God and the miracle of life, and that it is prohibited by Scripture.
And you can make the case that the pope was suggesting that condoms encourage promiscuity and that promiscuity causes AIDS.
But his remarks sounded very much like church comments of a decade ago that HIV was small enough to slip through a condom - comments that undermined the confidence of too many young people in the most reliable, inexpensive and available birth control to which they had access.
