Ghosty:
felra: I’m not sure that the article you cited makes an air-tight case. On the face it doesn’t seem to make a clear enough distinction between protection/medical treatment and intended contraception.
That being said, the argument that 5% risk of infection is too much is a good one, and would be the one I would cite in saying condom use is always illicit. It is not clear, however, that condoms can be ruled out simply because they are a contraceptive.
Whether the article authors connect the dots clearly between protection/medical treatment and intended contraception seems irrelevant to the core argument. Likewise, only a moral ground basis (not condom effectiveness) can withstand the onslaught of arguments of pro-contraception proponents.
The article authors properly take a natural law level of argument to refute the use of condoms to as licit to prevent the spread of AIDS. The pro-condom use proponents attempt to bypass/deny that procreation is a
good, and assert that it is sometimes permissible to act directly against basic human
good:
In short, these cardinals [Cardinals George Cottier and Javier Lozano Barragán] argue as follows:
- Since what is directly intended is not to prevent procreation but to avoid contagion, one may apply the principles of double effect and the lesser evil:
a.
Double effect: although the condom is a contraceptive, it also serves to avoid AIDS contagion; therefore, it is legitimate to use the condom for the latter, though it causes contraception, a necessary but not directly sought effect.
b.
Lesser evil: placed between two evils, the use of a contraceptive device condemned by natural and revealed morals, and the deadly risk of contagion with AIDS, an incurable and lethal illness, it is licit to choose the first evil (condom use) to avoid the second and greater evil (death).
As the article authors point out:
Choosing an action as the lesser of two evils is not licit if it means choosing between two moral evils, two sins. In the case of physical evils, one may opt for the lesser.
12
Thus, the principles of
double effect and lesser evil do not apply to the use of condoms, such use being “intrinsically evil.”
13
These cardinals are advancing the same line of reasoning that the
revisionist theologians call the “Preference” or Principle of “Proportionate Good”, which supports the denial of the truth of moral absolutes basic to moral theology. They apply the principle of totality whereby some hoped-for-good-to-come-about can justify the deliberate intention to act directly against a* good* here and now.
