HIV, The Wretched of the Earth, and CC's Teaching

[nerfherder]

From Fr K, SJ

In our bewilderment and puzzlement as to how to deal with the problems that HIV/AIDS brings, let us be grateful for the way the Church and its members have shown themselves so faithful to what the Lord asked of us, that we copy what he has done. And let us continue to examine how in our lives, our families, our Small Christian Communities, our parishes, our religious communities, our organisations, we can extend that response of service. At this time, more than at any other, let us see how we can be Christ to our suffering brothers and sisters, to bereft orphans, to vulnerable children, to grandparents facing yet again the challenge of rearing children.

God’s concern for the world was greatest, his saving power was at its most intense, when in the mocked, despised, agonising, and almost despairing person of Jesus he died on the cross. Today, God still shows that mysterious, deep, powerful love by suffering in a person dying from AIDS, by grieving in a family that loses its loved one, by crying in an orphan left without mother or father.

 

[Bishopite]

Not all HIV infection is caused by sex by any stretch of the imagination. There are a variety of other reasons. Go Google.

I have posted a United Nations AIDS programme advisory on the efficancy of condoms, for information, which would help you to understand that they are effective.

I do not understand that you would prefer 200 million people or more to die, so that you can take a ‘moral’ stance on condoms and sex: life takes priority over procreation. Come and watch people die, in delierium, covered in faeces, wracked with pain, full of candida/thrush, unable to keep food down, and covered with cancer sores.

Did not Christ teach compassion and healing above all. Does not Christ have priority over the Church’s teaching? What stance should we take, once we get over our knee-jerk reaction?

The stance “WE” take is to follow the authority of Jesus, which is the Catholic church, who says that we shouldn’t give them condoms. What kind of Christ’s compassion would it be by allowing them to commit a mortal sin in order to possible avoid contracting HIV?
Christ taught compassion because He taught truth. Your position isn’t actually compassion, but giving a green light to commit mortal sin in order to potentially avoid HIV. Mother Theresa didn’t pass out condoms to the poor in India, because of her anti-contraceptive position; it was that which enabled her to care for the sick and suffering and which gave her compassion.
Abstinence is 100% effective.
Why isn’t the UN advocating abstinence??

 

[Bishopite]

For those who are not Catholic, the condom is certainly morally neutral. Many Catholics are presumably choosing to regard it as morally neutral as well, if evidence is correct.
"

No that’s WRONG. The use of condoms is objectively mortal sin. Subjectively they may not be if the person doesn’t know it is mortal and the culpability may be lessoned.

“Contraception is “any action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act [sexual intercourse], or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” (Humanae Vitae 14). This includes sterilization, condoms and other barrier methods, spermicides, coitus interruptus (withdrawal method), the Pill, and all other such methods.”

"The Church also has affirmed that the illicitness of contraception is an infallible doctrine: “The Church has always taught the intrinsic evil of contraception, that is, of every marital act intentionally rendered unfruitful. This teaching is to be held as definitive and irreformable. Contraception is gravely opposed to marital chastity, it is contrary to the good of the transmission of life (the procreative aspect of matrimony), and to the reciprocal self-giving of the spouses (the unitive aspect of matrimony); it harms true love and denies the sovereign role of God in the transmission of human life” (Vademecum for Confessors 2:4, Feb. 12, 1997). "

How difficult is this to understand?
Do you trust the UN over the Catholic church?

 

[guanophore]

The use of condoms is objectively mortal sin. Subjectively they may not be if the person doesn’t know it is mortal and the culpability may be lessoned.

I think this probably applies to the vast majority of the population we are discussing.

“Contraception is “any action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act [sexual intercourse], or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” (Humanae Vitae 14). This includes sterilization, condoms and other barrier methods, spermicides, coitus interruptus (withdrawal method), the Pill, and all other such methods.”

"The Church also has affirmed that the illicitness of contraception is an infallible doctrine: “The Church has always taught the intrinsic evil of contraception, that is, of every marital act intentionally rendered unfruitful. This teaching is to be held as definitive and irreformable. Contraception is gravely opposed to marital chastity, it is contrary to the good of the transmission of life (the procreative aspect of matrimony), and to the reciprocal self-giving of the spouses (the unitive aspect of matrimony); it harms true love and denies the sovereign role of God in the transmission of human life” (Vademecum for Confessors 2:4, Feb. 12, 1997). "

Right, but one needs to take into account that we are not talking here about a sacramental sexual act. In fact, the majority are probably not marital acts, and even of those, some are coerced. This is an application condoms outside the realm of marital chastity. It is already a grave mortal sin precisely BECAUSE it is not a reciprocal self giving of the spouses. It could be argued that the most self giving act would be to abstain from sexual relations all together if one were infected.

How difficult is this to understand?

Because the condoms are not being recommended for the purpose of contraception. They are recommended for the prevention of disease transmission. Their use under such circumstances mitigates the effects of the mortal sin that is committed by the act in which they are used.
Do you trust the UN over the Catholic church?

 

[TheApologist]

Nerfherder,
You can’t simply quote one terribly liberal priest and seek to assume this is the teaching of the Church. Please quote official Church documents. Also…contraceptive sex is intrinsically evil because the Church has declared it so.

As for you question regarding whether contraceptive sex is bad for Catholic or everyone…Truth is not limited to certain groups.

The only way for contraceptive sex to be acceptable is if it passes the Double Effect test…which, to all my knowledge, has not.(If anything it has failed it.)

That’s why I wanna look at the Double Effect more closely to prove that contraceptive sex is ALWAYS wrong. Intrinsic evil means it shouldn;t be favored over another evil or shouldn’t even be compared.

Let’s look back at the Double Effect Principal for if contraceptive sex doesn’t pass that test, then there’s no denying that Catholics should NEVER EVER EVER distribute such things or say they are good.

 

[TheApologist]

Right, but one needs to take into account that we are not talking here about a sacramental sexual act. In fact, the majority are probably not marital acts, and even of those, some are coerced. This is an application condoms outside the realm of marital chastity. It is already a grave mortal sin precisely BECAUSE it is not a reciprocal self giving of the spouses. It could be argued that the most self giving act would be to abstain from sexual relations all together if one were infected.

The fact of the matter is…intrinsic evil should NEVER be suggested as a way to get something good. This goes directly under the end doesn’t justify the means. The means because having intrinsically evil contraceptive sex for the end of not spreading disease(and honestly…this is just a possible outcome…and the possiblity goes down as the act occurs more and more). Just because someone is in grave sin doesn’t mean you can encourage more grave sin to stop another grave sin. You need to look at the Double Effect more.

 

[nerfherder]

From Fr K, SJ Lusaka, Zambia

**Faithful to its commission to teach peoples to observe all the commands that the Lord has taught, the Church energetically defends the principles and practice of morality. This has been done to such an extent that some people see the teaching role of the Church as being almost exclusively confined to the moral area, and within that area to issues of sex. This is very one-sided. The instruction from Jesus was to pass on everything he had taught, and his teaching was essentially concerned with showing God as a loving parent and not as a vengeful despot. In his day-to-day practice, the concern of Jesus was much more with showing love and kindness to others, especially those in any way afflicted, than with details of sexual activity. Most certainly, he spoke out strongly against adultery and fornication and lustful thoughts. But he left it at that. He did not go into further detail.

Faithful to its commission, the Church likewise speaks out strongly against adultery, fornication and lustful thoughts. It also speaks out against the debasement of girls and women which these practices so frequently imply. The Church further speaks out in defence of the right to life and the sacredness of life. Hence it condemns abortions which are deliberately sought in order to terminate the life of an unborn child. Also, when speaking about landmarks in the human and Christian vision of marriage, it states that “every action which … proposes … to render procreation (conception) impossible” is illicit (Humanae Vitae, §14).**

 

[LJN21]

Thank you for your thoughtful comments. Let me stress at the outset that this discussion is not principally - although inevitably it focuses on - condoms. Nor can an assumption be made that use of a condom is inherently evil. ‘The Bible forbids evil’: please state categorically what you believe to be the inherent evil in either use of a condom or the condom itself. Does this apply only to Catholics, or to humanity?

We have already said several times why the use of condoms/contricption is evil and you have chosen to ignore it.

If you truely beleive the Catholic Church teaches are the teachings of Christ himself you would know that they apply to the all of humanity.

 

[LJN21]

From Fr K, SJ Lusaka, Zambia

Faithful to its commission to teach peoples to observe all the commands that the Lord has taught, the Church energetically defends the principles and practice of morality. This has been done to such an extent that some people see the teaching role of the Church as being almost exclusively confined to the moral area, and within that area to issues of sex. This is very one-sided. The instruction from Jesus was to pass on everything he had taught, and his teaching was essentially concerned with showing God as a loving parent and not as a vengeful despot. In his day-to-day practice, the concern of Jesus was much more with showing love and kindness to others, especially those in any way afflicted, than with details of sexual activity. Most certainly, he spoke out strongly against adultery and fornication and lustful thoughts. But he left it at that. He did not go into further detail.

Again that it is the liberal interpretation of a priest on this matter and NOT the teaching of the church.

You can’t ever teach charity through sin. His assumption is false.

 

[vern_humphrey]

We have already had a list of vatican-sourced research on condoms. UNAIDS is not an agency that is beholden to anyone but the United Nations - it represents all the UN agencies that have an interest in the pandemic, including Unicef (children), UNDP (development), etc.

The research showing that condoms are very effective is generally accepted by the international community, and it may not be fruitful to discuss that further, unless you can find some very objective research findings that prove otherwise.

So tell us what’s happening in Africa – take Botswana for your example. Did Botswana reject condoms? What is the AIDS situation in Botswana today?

 

[fix]

Of course, the personal * intention* (finis operantis) of the acting subject is important— things done for the best of reasons or the worst of reasons can vary widely in moral significance. But, the same moral act (condomistic intercourse) for the best of reasons (possible risk reduction), or, for the worst of reasons (possible consequences of rape) is, by moral definition, always what it is, i.e., condomistic intercourse.

     Please excuse the double negative  but the “moral object” (*finis operis*) of the act *cannot not* be intended. If done for a good reason or a bad reason, the moral act of condomistic intercourse does not cease to be the kind of act it is, unless, of course, one chooses to do something else (i.e., another, or different moral act).

     Pope John Paul details this point carefully in his encyclical: “The reason why a good intention is not itself sufficient, but a correct choice of actions is also needed, is that the human act depends on its object, whether that object is capable or not being ordered to God, to the One who ‘alone is good,’ and thus bring about the perfection of the person” (VS, n. 78). Again, “reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature “incapable of being ordered” to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church’s moral tradition, have been termed “intrinsically evil” (*intrinsece malum*) on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances” (VS, n. 80).

catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Homiletic/2002-06/questions.html

Why is this important? Because following the naturall moral law is love. We follow the law because we love God and we know God intends what is good for us. **
**

 

[vern_humphrey]

That statement, sorry, is totally false. We believe the prion (part of a virus) was transmitted from a monkey to man, probably in the Congo, where certain tribes do eat monkey meat. That happened by eating, not by sex.

Transmission is not always by sex, as we have pointed out earlier, and if it is by sex, it is not always by choice. People cannot always follow the Church’s teaching on this. Abstinence yest. Being faithful to one’s partner, yes. Condom, yes, as the last resort = ABC.

Are HIV-positive people being forced to have sex? Is someone holding a gun to their heads?

Condoms have a failure rate – and as any statistician worth his calculator will tell you, for any event with P greater than zero, over enough trials P will approach 1. In other words, if it can happen, and you keep trying it will happen.

To tell people that condoms make “safe sex” is false and tantamount to killing them.

 

[LJN21]

Are HIV-positive people being forced to have sex? Is someone holding a gun to their heads?

Condoms have a failure rate – and as any statistician worth his calculator will tell you, for any event with P greater than zero, over enough trials P will approach 1. In other words, if it can happen, and you keep trying it will happen.

To tell people that condoms make “safe sex” is false and tantamount to killing them.

I think the argument is in some cases, yes they are. Altho there might not be a gun

HIV positive scum (scum because he is a rapist not because of the disease) rapes a negative woman and now she has HIV through no fault of her own. How is she expected to carry out “normal” moral sexual relations?

 

[estesbob]

I think the argument is in some cases, yes they are. Altho there might not be a gun

HIV positive scum (scum because he is a rapist not because of the disease) rapes a negative woman and now she has HIV through no fault of her own. How is she expected to carry out “normal” moral sexual relations?

Being she has a fatal diease she cant. Even if her partner uses a condom there is at least a 2 in 100 chance she will give him a fatal disease. If everytime you had sex with your spouse there was a 2% chance they would die a slow and painful death would you continue to have sex with them?

If you Dr told you any sexual activity would kill you would that make it of for your spouse to take a lover? After all they can longer carry out normal sexual realations.

 

[fix]

We need to be clear which sin we are talking about here.

The problem of the origin and universality of sin underlies the whole moral teaching of the OT, just as the salvation of sin offered in Christ is fundamental to the message of the NT. The first is probably one of those problems which the human mind can never satisfactorily answer. We can, however, say that had there been no such thing as human sin, we could never have known God in all His fulness as a merciful God, one of whose characteristics is that of forgiving love, revealed to mankind in Christ.

Food for thought.

I am not following?

I offer this:

1. Those who live “by the flesh” experience God’s law as a burden, and indeed as a denial or at least a restriction of their own freedom. On the other hand, those who are impelled by love and “walk by the Spirit” (Gal 5:16), and who desire to serve others, find in God’s Law the fundamental and necessary way in which to practise love as something freely chosen and freely lived out. Indeed, they feel an interior urge — a genuine “necessity” and no longer a form of coercion — not to stop at the minimum demands of the Law, but to live them in their “fullness”. This is a still uncertain and fragile journey as long as we are on earth, but it is one made possible by grace, which enables us to possess the full freedom of the children of God (cf. Rom 8:21) and thus to live our moral life in a way worthy of our sublime vocation as “sons in the Son”.

Veritatis splendor

 

[fix]

Sorry, I misunderstood your earlier post. I thought you were saying that adulterers wouldn’t use a condom. You are saying that they would. The point is that in some parts of the world condoms may be hard to come by, or men may not want to use them for reasons that have nothing to do with morality. In those circumstances, arguably persuading a man to use a condom is in no way “choosing an evil.” It is persuading someone who is already doing something wrong to refrain from doing a further wrong (passing on a deadly disease).

Edwin

How? It is furthering a bad act and it predisposes one to continue acting in an immoral way. It sets up a mindset where one “feels free” to continue acting wrongly.

 

[LogosSokratikos]

There is, in fact, a 100 percent effective way to not transmit HIV sexually…maybe it was ABSTINENCE?!

I understand that transmission of the flu is avoided by washing your hands and avoiding to touch others. Not very viable. There is also a 100% effective way to avoid food poisoning, but I don’t think you will find it palatable.

This is just like the argument that contraceptives are okay because they are better than abortion. Ridiculus.

Many don’t know they have the virus. Furthermore, many (I don’t know if most) women who have contracted HIV, have gotten it from their spouses.

The truth is that if you have a deadly STD you shouldn’t have sex.

This would be viable if human nature didn’t get in the way. Humans have a built in sex drive.

A real fix for HIV transmission, shouldn’t be one designed for saints, but for common people. Everyone has a call to sainthood, but a medic confronting an epidemic shouldn’t expect that.

 

[fix]

I understand that transmission of the flu is avoided by washing your hands and avoiding to touch others. Not very viable. There is also a 100% effective way to avoid food poisoning, but I don’t think you will find it palatable.

Many don’t know they have the virus. Furthermore, many (I don’t know if most) women who have contracted HIV, have gotten it from their spouses.

This would be viable if human nature didn’t get in the way. Humans have a built in sex drive.

A real fix for HIV transmission, shouldn’t be one designed for saints, but for common people. Everyone has a call to sainthood, but a medic confronting an epidemic shouldn’t expect that.

So, humans are prisoners of their passions and must act on every sexual impulse or else what?

 

[vern_humphrey]

I understand that transmission of the flu is avoided by washing your hands and avoiding to touch others. Not very viable. There is also a 100% effective way to avoid food poisoning, but I don’t think you will find it palatable.

So you would go around telling people it’s okay to not wash your hands during flu season?

Many don’t know they have the virus. Furthermore, many (I don’t know if most) women who have contracted HIV, have gotten it from their spouses.

Which is why people with HIV should abstain – and should not be told that using a condom is “safe sex.”

This would be viable if human nature didn’t get in the way. Humans have a built in sex drive.

What about the built-in anger drive? Does that make it okay for me to kill someone?

A real fix for HIV transmission, shouldn’t be one designed for saints, but for common people. Everyone has a call to sainthood, but a medic confronting an epidemic shouldn’t expect that.

A real fix for HIV transmission, shouldn’t involve lying to people and telling them condoms are “safe sex.”

 

[LJN21]

I understand that transmission of the flu is avoided by washing your hands and avoiding to touch others. Not very viable. There is also a 100% effective way to avoid food poisoning, but I don’t think you will find it palatable.

Washing your hands and eating (well in moderation) are not Immoral. You parallels do not hold water.

Many don’t know they have the virus. Furthermore, many (I don’t know if most) women who have contracted HIV, have gotten it from their spouses.

That is completely irrelvent. Sex with a condom is intrinsically evil and a sin. Sin > Disease Having HIV in a state of graces is better than being in a state of mortal sin.

This would be viable if human nature didn’t get in the way. Humans have a built in sex drive.

Sex is not a biological need. Making it one makes us no better than animals. It is also human nature to lie cheat and steal that doesn’t make them acceptable behavior.

A real fix for HIV transmission, shouldn’t be one designed for saints, but for common people. Everyone has a call to sainthood, but a medic confronting an epidemic shouldn’t expect that.

Everyone is call to sainthood you point is not valid.