No change in the Church’s teaching on condoms

By ABRAHAM V. LLERA, abrahamvllera@yahoo.com
November 22, 2010

(Credit: Rachel Zoll of the Associated Press and Pia de Solenni.)

“There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.”

The above is what the Pope says in his book “Light of the World.” This is what the Inquirer, regrettably the worst example of Philippine journalism, trumpets: “Pope: Condom use OK in AIDS fight.” “Using condoms may sometimes be justified to stop the spread of AIDS, Pope Benedict XVI says in a new book, in surprise comments that relax one of the Vatican’s most controversial positions.”

And here’s how the granddaddy of the anti-life movement Rep Edcel Lagman calls it: “A departure from the strictly very conservative approach of the papacy and the Catholic Church.”

Lagman could be forgiven – congressmen are notorious for opening their mouths first before learning all they can about the subject, but the Inquirer’s lapse is unforgivable: the high standards of journalism require the Inquirer to do much more, way, way more.

Here’s where the two went wrong:

First, the Pope has not made any new pronouncement, LEAST OF ALL, changed any Church teaching. All he did was, in the words of Rachel Zoll of the Associated Press, “put a spotlight on a nuanced discussion within the church about how best to address the scourge of AIDS.”

Indeed, Fr. Martin Rhonheimer, an Opus Dei priest and ethics professor at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, argued as long ago as 2004 that “an HIV-infected married man who uses a condom to protect his wife from the virus is not trying to block a pregnancy, but to prevent infection; his actions, therefore, could be seen as in accord with Catholic teaching.”

Nicholas Cafardi, a canon lawyer and former dean of Dusquesne University School of Law, agrees: "It's an interesting application of ancient moral principles. Even if you are performing an otherwise evil act, you can mitigate the evil of the act."

Michael Baur, a philosopher at Fordham University, observes that the Pope could be making a distinction between greater and lesser evils, or what moral theologians call “double effect”: an evil may be tolerated for an intended good, in this case, the spread of AIDS.

Fr. Joseph Fession of Ignatius Press, the book’s publisher, insists that the Pope is NOT justifying condom use, but was merely giving his observation that the male prostitute who uses condoms to protect another from contracting the disease is showing signs of taking moral responsibility for another person.

Here, again, is the verbatim quote from the book:

“There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.”

Pope Benedict XVI is NOT endorsing condoms. All he is saying is that the action of the male prostitute could be the first step in the male prostitute’s realization that his (the male prostitute’s) action (being a male prostitute) is wrong.

Neither should Pope Benedict XVI’s statement be interpreted as the Church’s endorsement of male prostitution.

Should readers entertain any residual doubts, here’s the pertinent section of the book (pp 117-119) courtesy of Pia de Solenni:

INTERVIEWER: On the occasion of your trip to Africa in March 2009, the Vatican’s policy on Aids once again became the target of media criticism. Twenty-five percent of all Aids victims around the world today are treated in Catholic facilities. In some countries, such as Lesotho, for example, the statistic is 40 percent. In Africa you stated that the Church’s traditional teaching has proven to be the only sure way to stop the spread of HIV. Critics, including critics from the Church’s own ranks, object that it is madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms.

POPE BENEDICT XVI: The media coverage completely ignored the rest of the trip to Africa on account of a single statement. Someone had asked me why the Catholic Church adopts an unrealistic and ineffective position on Aids. At that point, I really felt that I was being provoked, because the Church does more than anyone else. And I stand by that claim. Because she is the only institution that assists people up close and concretely, with prevention, education, help, counsel, and accompaniment. And because she is second to none in treating so many Aids victims, especially children with Aids.

I had the chance to visit one of these wards and to speak with the patients.

That was the real answer: The Church does more than anyone else, because she does not speak from the tribunal of the newspapers, but helps her brothers and sisters where they are actually suffering. In my remarks I was not making a general statement about the condom issue, but merely said, and this is what caused such great offense, that we cannot solve the problem by distributing condoms. Much more needs to be done. We must stand close to the people, we must guide and help them; and we must do this both before and after they contract the disease.

As a matter of fact, you know, people can get condoms when they want them anyway. But this just goes to show that condoms alone do not resolve the question itself. More needs to happen. Meanwhile, the secular realm itself has developed the so-called ABC Theory: Abstinence-Be Faithful-Condom, where the condom is understood only as a last resort, when the other two points fail to work. This means that the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality, which, after all, is precisely the dangerous source of the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves. This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also a part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man’s being.

There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.

INTERVIEWER: Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?