Condom use legitimate as contraceptive effect an unintended consequence?

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I invite you to comment on a hypothetical situation: a man, Fred, is married to a woman who has a sexually transmitted disease which does not respond to medication. He uses a condom with the intention of preventing the virus responsible for the disease from infection him. If his wife did not have the virus, he would not wear the condom. His intention is not to contracept, but to prevent the spread of disease. The contraceptive effect is an unintended side-effect.

Now I understand that this is not what the Church teaches. But I fail to see the logic. Can anyone explain it to me, when the situation of a woman using oral contraception to protect against acne, or to regulate periods is acceptable to the Church, as the contraceptive effect is an unintended side effect.
 
Hokomai said:
I invite you to comment on a hypothetical situation: a man, Fred, is married to a woman who has a sexually transmitted disease which does not respond to medication. He uses a condom with the intention of preventing the virus responsible for the disease from infection him. If his wife did not have the virus, he would not wear the condom. His intention is not to contracept, but to prevent the spread of disease. The contraceptive effect is an unintended side-effect.

Now I understand that this is not what the Church teaches. But I fail to see the logic. Can anyone explain it to me, when the situation of a woman using oral contraception to protect against acne, or to regulate periods is acceptable to the Church, as the contraceptive effect is an unintended side effect.
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Condoms are forbidden whether for birth control purposes or to prevent disease.
The only time a condom may be used is to collect sperm for analysis but that condom must be perforated to keep the act open to life.
 
thistle said:
Condoms are forbidden whether for birth control purposes or to prevent disease.
The only time a condom may be used is to collect sperm for analysis but that condom must be perforated to keep the act open to life.
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As I said, I know. It is the why I am asking about. Not sure you are right about the sperm collection either.
 
I see one possible difference, but I don’t know if this is *the *difference or not. Having medication in your blood does not alter the physicalness of the touching parts. Wearing a solid condom might be perceived by some as impeding the physical touching. It is supposed to be a union.

I remember a scene from a movie where two people were each separately enclosed in two giant tubes of flexible plastic and then tried to kiss and have relations. They were not able to touch each other; instead, the plastic tubes touched. (It was a comedic play on condoms, I imagine.)
 
The comparison to a girl taking the pill for acne/period control doesn’t really match, and I’ll explain why. She is taking those for non-contraceptive reasons. However, if she has physical relations while on the pill, whether ‘intended’ or not to be used as a contraceptive, she is using contraception. Most importantly, she is aware of this, as she has no qualms that she is taking ‘the pill’. If, however, she is not having relations, then no issue exists.

This does not hold true for the condom, as the condom’s sole purpose is for use during relations, and has no other use outside of it. I cannot provide the answer for your questions, but your ‘pill’ comparison is a bit misplaced.
 
Hokomai said:
I invite you to comment on a hypothetical situation: a man, Fred, is married to a woman who has a sexually transmitted disease which does not respond to medication. He uses a condom with the intention of preventing the virus responsible for the disease from infection him. If his wife did not have the virus, he would not wear the condom. His intention is not to contracept, but to prevent the spread of disease. The contraceptive effect is an unintended side-effect.

Now I understand that this is not what the Church teaches. But I fail to see the logic. Can anyone explain it to me, when the situation of a woman using oral contraception to protect against acne, or to regulate periods is acceptable to the Church, as the contraceptive effect is an unintended side effect.
Click to expand...
The difference it that someone taking a drug to treat acne is actually treating a medical condition. The moral good of the treatment is the only reason the secondary effect is tolerated.

This is a proper application of secondary effect.

Someone using a condom to prevent the spread of disease is not **treating **anything. There is a moral good to the union of the spouses but the condom use itself has no moral good.

So, this is not a case of secondary effect. This is an application of the ends justifying the means which is not a valid moral argument if the means are themselves immoral.
 
Corki said:
The difference it that someone taking a drug to treat acne is actually treating a medical condition. The moral good of the treatment is the only reason the secondary effect is tolerated.

This is a proper application of secondary effect.

Someone using a condom to prevent the spread of disease is not **treating **anything. There is a moral good to the union of the spouses but the condom use itself has no moral good.

So, this is not a case of secondary effect. This is an application of the ends justifying the means which is not a valid moral argument if the means are themselves immoral.
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👍
 
Hokomai said:
I invite you to comment on a hypothetical situation: a man, Fred, is married to a woman who has a sexually transmitted disease which does not respond to medication. He uses a condom with the intention of preventing the virus responsible for the disease from infection him. If his wife did not have the virus, he would not wear the condom. His intention is not to contracept, but to prevent the spread of disease. The contraceptive effect is an unintended side-effect.

Now I understand that this is not what the Church teaches. But I fail to see the logic. Can anyone explain it to me, when the situation of a woman using oral contraception to protect against acne, or to regulate periods is acceptable to the Church, as the contraceptive effect is an unintended side effect.
Click to expand...
To understand both situations, one must first understand why the Church abhors contraceptives. The Church believes that sex is first and foremost an act of procreation. To interfere with it is to interfere with the the whole objective of sex - procreation. The moment that this procreative element is removed, sex becomes nothing more than an act of self-gratifying pleasure, exploited for the sake of giving oneself selfish pleasure without the opportunity of the creation of life. Contraceptives are thus condemned because they enable this to happen. The actual sin committed is recreational sex, and not strictly the use of substances that can be contraceptives.

With this in mind, let us tackle the second situation first. It is acceptable for women (or men, if there were such a medical indication) to take an oestrogen-and-progresterone pill for the purpose of therapy - be it as vain as acne control or as serious as cancer prophylaxis - so long as they do not knowingly and willingly engage in sex while they are using it. So long as they remain chaste, there is no sex that the pill will interfere with, and so there is no recreational sex. However, if she decides to have sex with her husband while still using the pill, she has committed a sin. Even though the initial intention of taking the pill was therapeutic, she knows that the pill would prevent her from conceiving, and yet she decided to have sex. Thus it can be easily concluded that she had no intention of having sex for the purpose of procreation - it was merely recreational. Thus, it is a sin. If the husband was aware of this and yet continued to have sex, then he is party to the sin too.

Now, back to the first situation - a man wishes to wear a condom to avoid contracting a incurable sexually-transmitted disease from his wife. However, condoms do not prevent the transmission of sexually-transmitted diseases by simply being worn on the penis - they prevent the transmission of sexually-transmitted diseases during sex. Why does he want to have sex then, if he knows that condoms are contraceptive? It is clearly not for procreative reasons. It is not explicitly mentioned in your analogy, but it is clear that if he wanted to have children (and I hardly think it wise to have a child when your wife is carrying an incurable sexually transmitted disease), he wouldn’t be so eager to have sex with a condom on.

Contrary to what you think, the Church does not consider the condom itself evil. In fact, if it were possible for condoms to have a therapeutic use, then the same rules would apply to it as to the pill - it can be used for therapeutic purposes so long as the user abstains from sex. However, this is not the case in the analogy you gave. Instead, it is the fact that the condom is being used to have sex without procreation that is the evil inherent in the system.

You have set up a false dilemma by forcing us to choose whether he has to use a condom or not at all - why can’t he just not have sex? Is it so hard? Why is it so necessary for him to have sex? Is he or his wife going to die without it? Sometimes, I wonder if the only reason why there has been so much confusion is because modern society has forgotten the meaning of sex. People appear to assume sex is a necessary expression of love within a loving couple, to which children are merely incidental or optional. Basically, “We don’t really need children, but we simply must have sex.” If that is so, then they are sorely mistaken. Sex is not just some pleasurable activity. It is a great act between a committed husband and wife that creates life - and it should not be anything but that. 🙂
 
“Every moral act consists of three elements: the objective act (what we do), the subjective goal or intention (why we do the act), and the concrete situation or circumstances in which we perform the act… All three aspects must be good – the objective act, the subjective intention, and the circumstances – in order to have a morally good act.” (USCCB Catechism, p. 311-312.)

“a good intention is not itself sufficient, but a correct choice of actions is also needed.” (Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, n. 78.)

“The whole tradition of the Church has lived and does live on the conviction” that “there exist acts which, per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object.” (Pope John Paul II, Speeches, To participants of the International Congress on Moral Theology. April 10, 1986.)

“In qualifying the contraceptive act as intrinsically illicit, Paul VI intended to teach that this moral norm is such that it admits of no exceptions: no circumstances whether personal or social have ever been able, are able, or will ever be able to make such an act an intrinsically ordered act.” (Pope John Paul II, Address to Participants of the Second International Congress of Moral Theology, Sala Clementina, Vatican City, 12 November 1988, no. 5).

“Contraception is to be judged objectively so profoundly illicit that it can never, for any reason, be justified. To think, or to say, anything to the contrary is tantamount to saying that in human life there can be situations where it is legitimate not to recognize God as God. Users of contraception attribute to themselves a power that belongs only to God, the power to decide in the final instance the coming into existence of a human being.” (Pope John Paul II, Address on Responsible Procreation, 17 Sept, 1983.)
 
Hokomai said:
I invite you to comment on a hypothetical situation: a man, Fred, is married to a woman who has a sexually transmitted disease which does not respond to medication. He uses a condom with the intention of preventing the virus responsible for the disease from infection him. If his wife did not have the virus, he would not wear the condom. His intention is not to contracept, but to prevent the spread of disease. The contraceptive effect is an unintended side-effect.

Now I understand that this is not what the Church teaches. But I fail to see the logic. Can anyone explain it to me, when the situation of a woman using oral contraception to protect against acne, or to regulate periods is acceptable to the Church, as the contraceptive effect is an unintended side effect.
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There are three fonts of morality:
  1. intention
  2. moral object
  3. circumstances (esp. the consequences or effects of an act)
    All three fonts must be good for an act to be moral.
If a bad consequence is intended, the intention is sinful. If a bad consequence is not intended, that particular bad intention is avoided. But every bad consequence to our actions that can be reasonably anticipated still has moral weight. If you reasonably anticipate that your action will cause grave harm (which is not outweighed by any good effects), then your choice of that act is immoral, even if you do not intend the harm.

Intention is in the first font; bad consequences are in the third font.

If the bad consequences are morally outweighed by the good consequences, and all that you intend is good, the act is nevertheless not moral unless it has only good in the moral object. An evil moral object makes the act inherently disordered, and therefore always wrong to deliberately choose, regardless of intention or circumstances.

So when you asset that the bad consequences of an act are unintended, you do not thereby determine the morality of the act. We still need to know what type of act, in terms of morality, is being chosen. If the chosen act is intrinsically evil, then nothing in the intention or circumstances can justify the deliberate choice of such an act.
 
Hokomai said:
I invite you to comment on a hypothetical situation: a man, Fred, is married to a woman who has a sexually transmitted disease which does not respond to medication. He uses a condom with the intention of preventing the virus responsible for the disease from infection him. If his wife did not have the virus, he would not wear the condom. His intention is not to contracept, but to prevent the spread of disease. The contraceptive effect is an unintended side-effect.

Now I understand that this is not what the Church teaches. But I fail to see the logic. Can anyone explain it to me, when the situation of a woman using oral contraception to protect against acne, or to regulate periods is acceptable to the Church, as the contraceptive effect is an unintended side effect.
Click to expand...
The morality has already been explained so there is no need for me to explain it. But I did want to say something. Even if your example was moral I would still advise against it mainly because of the risk of a failed condom. It would be better just to avoid having sex if you know that one has an std. The reason that condoms aren’t successful at stopping the spread of stds is because they aren’t 100% sucessful. Condoms promote risk free sex but no sex is risk free. So people have sex assuming nothing will happen but it does. If you don’t use artificial contraceptives you have the attitude something could happen so you are more carful.

Also about using the pill to control acne or periods, its better to fix the problem than add things to your body to offset the effects. Its not good to mess with a persons natural cycle if you have to fix it find a way to change the cyle not stop the bad part. I hope you undrrstand what I’m trying to get at I noticed I may haven’t made this clear. To put it more simply its better to fix the problem instead of masking the problem.
 
Filii Dei’s answer was mostly accurate. He is a bit too strong on the use of hormonal therapy for legitimate therapeutic purposes. A couple in such circumstances is not obligated to abstain from marital relations due to the principle of double effect (I’m sure this has been explained before to your satisfaction).

The prevention of disease is another issue, unfortunately. If the disease is temporary (either running a short course or curable with proper treatment i.e. antibiotics) then the only reasonable course is to abstain until it is cured. In most cases, I presume this would take no more than 2 weeks but may take a few months. Neither is problematic. Many couples who practice NFP face abstention periods of 2 weeks in the face of uncertain signs or premenopause. Likewise, many couples (even those who do not practice NFP) are advised to abstain for 3 months or more after childbirth to facilitate the wife’s recovery.

If it is reasonable for a couple to abstain for a few months so the wife can recover from giving birth, then it is equally reasonable to expect them to abstain during treatment of a curable disease.

Your particular scenario seems to involve an incurable disease, however. In that case, the couple must weigh the severity of the disease against their own life situation and discern the correct situation for them. If the disease is chronic/recurring and only mildly debilitating (such as Herpes or HPV) then the benefit of a condom is dubious. Most such diseases spread by skin contact which cannot be avoided during intercourse, anyway. Granted, a minority of HPV infections can turn cancerous in both women and men, but adequate medical exams should be able to catch any precancerous cells before any cancer sets in.

If the disease happens to not only be chronic but also potentially fatal (such as HIV), the considerations are all the more severe. The couple need to seriously consider their lives. Are there or could there be children or other family members who depend on them? Do they have other obligations that would prevent their potential future treatment courses? How much do we really need intercourse to develop our relationship? Then, of course, there is the question of what alternatives to consider to reduce the chance of spreading the disease. Can a medication make the infected person less contagious or the uninfected person less susceptible? (Truvada was just approved by the FDA for the latter - I’m sure the Church has no problem with a married person using this drug whose spouse is infected) If the couple do not accept the Church’s teaching that intact condoms are not permitted for any reason, they still have another consideration: Is the known failure rate of barriers within our risk tolerance? (assuming a 2% failure rate, using 100 condoms per year virtually assures 2 “unprotected” sessions during the same period)
 
Filii_Dei said:
To understand both situations, one must first understand why the Church abhors contraceptives. The Church believes that sex is first and foremost an act of procreation. To interfere with it is to interfere with the the whole objective of sex - procreation. The moment that this procreative element is removed, sex becomes nothing more than an act of self-gratifying pleasure, exploited for the sake of giving oneself selfish pleasure without the opportunity of the creation of life. Contraceptives are thus condemned because they enable this to happen. The actual sin committed is recreational sex, and not strictly the use of substances that can be contraceptives.
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This is a very poor description of the Church’s view of sex as one of the unitive aspects of marriage.
The description above, “The moment that this procreative element is removed, sex becomes nothing more than an act of self-gratifying pleasure, exploited for the sake of giving oneself selfish pleasure without the opportunity of the creation of life”, seems to make every post -menopausal couple and every couple unable to have children look like nothing more than selfish sinners.
The Church does not view non-procreative sex in this way. If she did, she could not allow and promote NFP which, by it’s very nature provides to the couple knowledge that allows them to licitly engage in sexual relations at times when procreation is not possible…or at least extremely unlikely.
I suggest that perhaps you should consider rethinking and rephrasing this portion of your argument in the future…

Peace
James
 
NFP, even when used very strictly, does not make marital relations non-procreative. The marital act still retains its threefold good moral object: the marital, unitive, and procreative meanings. Natural marital relations open to life is inherently directed at those three good ends. Even when an end such as procreation is not attained, the act remains ordered toward that good end, and so it remains a good and moral act. It is the ordering of the act toward its moral object that makes the act good or evil, not the attainment of that end.

If a couple uses contraception, but the contraception fails and they procreate a child, their act (using contraception) was still intrinsically evil. It was still a deliberately chosen act that was inherently directed at thwarting the procreative meaning of sex.

On the other hand, if a couple is infertile, and they have natural marital relations open to life, their act remains procreative, even though it fails to attain that end. For the couple deliberately chose an ordered type of act, an act inherently directed at the marital, unitive, and procreative ends.

When a couple uses procreation, they sin by choosing to thwart the procreative meaning. But the unitive and marital meanings may still be present. The act is not wholly disordered. So a married couple using contraception sin gravely, but they sin less than an unmarried couple using contraception. The sexual acts of the latter are more disordered, because they lack both the marital and procreative meanings.
 
Corki said:
The difference it that someone taking a drug to treat acne is actually treating a medical condition. The moral good of the treatment is the only reason the secondary effect is tolerated.

This is a proper application of secondary effect.

Someone using a condom to prevent the spread of disease is not **treating **anything. There is a moral good to the union of the spouses but the condom use itself has no moral good.

So, this is not a case of secondary effect. This is an application of the ends justifying the means which is not a valid moral argument if the means are themselves immoral.
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I admire the elegance of this argument, but i am afraid it does not convince me. It seems to me that prevention and cure are both moral goods, and therefore the secondary effect concept stands.
 
Pug said:
I see one possible difference, but I don’t know if this is *the *difference or not. Having medication in your blood does not alter the physicalness of the touching parts. Wearing a solid condom might be perceived by some as impeding the physical touching. It is supposed to be a union.

I remember a scene from a movie where two people were each separately enclosed in two giant tubes of flexible plastic and then tried to kiss and have relations. They were not able to touch each other; instead, the plastic tubes touched. (It was a comedic play on condoms, I imagine.)
Click to expand...
Now** that’s** a bit of good campaigning against condoms! You should send it to that new Vatican PR person. 🙂
 
Ron_Conte said:
NFP, even when used very strictly, does not make marital relations non-procreative. The marital act still retains its threefold good moral object: the marital, unitive, and procreative meanings. Natural marital relations open to life is inherently directed at those three good ends. Even when an end such as procreation is not attained, the act remains ordered toward that good end, and so it remains a good and moral act. It is the ordering of the act toward its moral object that makes the act good or evil, not the attainment of that end.

If a couple uses contraception, but the contraception fails and they procreate a child, their act (using contraception) was still intrinsically evil. It was still a deliberately chosen act that was inherently directed at thwarting the procreative meaning of sex.

On the other hand, if a couple is infertile, and they have natural marital relations open to life, their act remains procreative, even though it fails to attain that end. For the couple deliberately chose an ordered type of act, an act inherently directed at the marital, unitive, and procreative ends.

When a couple uses procreation, they sin by choosing to thwart the procreative meaning. But the unitive and marital meanings may still be present. The act is not wholly disordered. So a married couple using contraception sin gravely, but they sin less than an unmarried couple using contraception. The sexual acts of the latter are more disordered, because they lack both the marital and procreative meanings.
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Ummm - no, it is not procreative and therefore cannot remain so. I get that there is no actual impediment to procreation place there by the immediate actions of the partners, but it is not procreative. To take an example: a man has a vasectomy, confesses validly, and resumes having sex. is his sexual activity procreative? If words mean anything it isn’t.
 
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