Papal Bull?
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faith > Pope's comment on condoms
Date: 24th March, 2009
The Pope's statement about condoms has been widely condemned, but Steve Tomkins thinks that the encyclical Humanae Vitae could offer a solution
Doctrine is more important than human life. The church is more important than people. And, for that matter, religious truth is more important than reality.
These are the values of Pope Benedict’s notorious statement to the press on a plane to Yaounde. “Aids,” he said, “cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”.
The facts of the matter are these: 1. Aids is now killing 2.7million people a year, nearly half of them in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 1.9million people contracted the disease in 2007 alone.
2. No health professionals claim that the distribution of condoms alone is the answer to Aids. Education is equally important, and retroviral drugs help where they are available. But condoms are, of course, a proven and reliable barrier to the virus.
3. The Roman Catholic Church opposes all forms of contraception (unless you count the rhythm method) on the grounds that sex is only allowed for procreation.
Disinformation
4. Numerous Catholic authorities have broadcast disinformation about condoms causing Aids. Cardinal Trujillo of the Pontifical Council for the Family said the virus is small enough to pass through a condom.
Brazilian and Croatian bishops have said the same, the former doing so in a mass-produced leaflet. Archbishop Chimoio of Mozambique has claimed condoms are actually infected with Aids. The Vatican has never corrected these falsehoods.
It’s never a good sign for the moral or logical rightness of your position that you have to lie to justify it.
One can understand that the Church’s wants to promote chastity while contraceptives allow promiscuity, perhaps even understand its desire to restrict sex within marriage.
But when this means that the wife of a man with Aids is forbidden to use a condom merely to save her life, and when this is multiplied across the worst pandemic in world history, something has gone horribly wrong.
The bishops argue that chastity is more effective than condoms in protecting against Aids. Apart from the fact that this ignores all those who have caught Aids from their spouses, what it amounts to is the argument that if people didn’t have sex they wouldn’t catch Aids. Since they are doing, and will continue to do so, that doesn’t help very much.
Principles
One would have more respect for the Vatican’s position is they admitted that they were asking Catholics to sacrifice their lives for their principles. Instead the claim that condoms are useless or worse is winning obedience unto death through deception.
And now the Pope has added his own weight to this campaign of elective ignorance and misinformation. A bad conscience over this is suggested by the fact that the Vatican’s published transcript changed his words to “risks aggravating the problems”.
The most frustrating thing is that Catholic teaching on contraception is based on the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which, while banning contraception, allows “therapeutic means necessary to cure bodily diseases” which also happen to prevent conception, as long as that isn’t the motive for using them.
Surely – though some might argue the Pope is a better judge of this than me – this principle could be extended to allow condoms to prevent Aids.
Pope Benedict said last week he wanted to wrap his arms round Africa. Which perhaps would be much appreciated, but, as it’s unlikely to be feasible, we have to hope that he can come up with something more practical.
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