I am not comparing having sex to mouth-to-mouth rescuscitation, but rather the use of condoms if such were truly necessary to prevent transmission of a lethal virus.
I don’t see how sexual abstinence would be any less inconsistent to the procreative and unitive purpose of marriage than sexual relations with the use of a condom.
If consummation of a marriage required that a couple had sexual relations without the use of a condom on at least one occasion for the marriage to be regarded by the Catholic Church as valid, the couple might well wish to have sex without a condom on one occasion, notwithstanding any risks that they might fear, even if the couple later chose to use condoms thereafter. The Catholic Church regards the marriage of Joseph and Mary as blessed, while teaching the perpetual virginity of Mary, so in at least one case it regards marriage as valid apart from consummation.
While it might seem that papal or other discussions of procreative and unitive sexuality prohibit all use of condoms, this conclusion was not specifically asserted by Paul VI. A statement to the contrary by a local priest is presumably not regarded as having magisterial authority.
Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier did not claim to have discovered HIV until the 1980s, i.e., until during the papacy of John Paul II. Thus the specific question of whether condoms might be permitted for some purposes but allowed for other purposes had not arisen at the time that Paul VI wrote “Humane Vitae.”
I would agree that sexual abstinence is a better approach to dealing with sexually transmitted diseases than the use of condoms, as a general rule. But marriage is good and sacred, and forsaking a sacrament over a medical issue is a grave matter.
Addressing the subject of AIDS, John Paul II stated the following: “The Holy See . . . considers that it is necessary above all to combat this disease in a responsible way by increasing prevention, notably through education about respect of the sacred value of life and formation of the correct practice of sexuality, which presupposes chastity and fidelity.”
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29404-2005Jan22.html
As you can see, John Paul II’s words do not resolve the question as to whether that a married couple practicing fidelity to one another should express respect for the sacred value of life by abstaining from all sexual relations or having sexual relations while using a condom for purposes other than birth control. Nor did he declare that all HIV-infected persons should abstain from marriage. Other Catholic leaders quoted in the above article expressed differences of viewpoint on the matter. Here is a quote re one of them:
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The problem is that anytime we try to give a nuanced response, we see headlines that say, ‘Vatican approves condoms.’ The issue is more complicated than that," Monsignor Angel Rodriguez Luno, a professor of moral theology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, said on Friday. "From a moral point of view, we cannot condone contraception. We cannot tell a classroom of 16-year-olds they should use condoms.
"But if we are dealing with someone or a situation in which clearly persons are going to act in harmful ways, say, a prostitute who is going to continue her activities, then one might say, ‘Stop. But if you are not going to, at least do this,’ " said Luno, who is an adviser to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Vatican department charged with safeguarding orthodoxy.
One possible avenue for a new condom policy would be a “lesser-of-two-evils” approach. In this regard, condoms could be approved as a means of reducing the instance of danger or sin in cases where someone is bent on having extramarital sex or sex with a spouse while infected with HIV.
Rodriguez Luno – without endorsing a new policy – placed the issue in the context of the Ten Commandments. Sex outside of marriage already breaks the Sixth Commandment, which forbids adultery, he said. “Infecting someone with AIDS would also mean sinning against the Fifth Commandment – you shall not kill,” he said. “Condoms would diminish that danger.”
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I do not believe that condoms have any impact re who acquires AIDS, but I do think that protecting human life belongs with justice and mercy as among the weightier matters of the law, and so should be given great weight in ethical reasoning.
