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

[nerfherder]

Please note that if we believe Catholicism holds the Truth, we believe this Truth is appliable to all.

But The Other may not believe that your truth is applicable to him or her.

 

[TheApologist]

But The Other may not believe that your truth is applicable to him or her.

Yes but this doesn’t deter us in our quest to bring others to moral things.

 

[TheApologist]

Your assumptions are unhappily incorrect. I think if you get information from some of the websites (I cannot do it for you as it is now past 1 am here in South Africa) you will find that as I have said, there is no 10 per cent chance of getting HIV in one act of intercourse without a condom, nor is there a 10 per cent chance of getting HIV in one act of intercourse using a condom.

I said we should “just say” that it was 10 percent, as I didn’t know what the percent is. No matter what the percent…there still is a percent and the more times someone has sex(often in marriage…no?) the higher the chance for getting HIV. So effectively handing out condoms does NOT effectively stop the transmission of HIV.

 

[TheApologist]

Perhaps you are not terribly au fait, as a student, with issues relating to HIV and AIDS, and perhaps you have been too busy to read the previous 400 postings, and perhaps you are jumping in at the end here.

You are correct in your approach through the Double Effect Principle, and I hope someone takes you up on that. I have posted the material needed for the discussion.

Otherwise, your brief coments are not conducive to productive thinking. And sorry to say darling, but your signature makes you look like a bag lady. I think I am running out of patience. Sorry.

Excuse me? You stated that there are only two things one can do when they have HIV…be saved with condoms or transmit the disease. I refuted it. I’m sorry you find abstinence “not conducive to productive thinking.”

I also find no reason to call me a bag lady when I like to pray to saints. I will not tolerate this name-calling and will report you if you do it again.

 

[nerfherder]

Excuse me? You stated that there are only two things one can do when they have HIV…be saved with condoms or transmit the disease. I refuted it. I’m sorry you find abstinence “not conducive to productive thinking.”

I also find no reason to call me a bag lady when I like to pray to saints. I will not tolerate this name-calling and will report you if you do it again.

Pray that our actions be in Love, our thoughts in Prayer, and our words in Truth.
Amen. :dancing: :extrahappy: :clapping: :bowdown: :newidea: :harp: :console:

 

[LJN21]

Sorry,

(1) I am not sure what you have provided me with. Can you brief me?

Nope not going to repeat myself yet again, besides you seem persistent in your idea that the only way to save these people is condoms. Go back and reread the thread or try reading the Traditional teaching of the Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church might be a good start.

(2) I am not aware of having ignored anything you have said, because I have been concerned that you and several others are derailing what used to be a purposeful, thoughtful, insightful and somewhat useful discussion of one of the world’s really important issues…

I’m sorry I didn’t know the teaching of the church was derailing the thread.

(3) Coming to a Catholic forum has nothing to do with anything: I have every right to do so, according to a number of criteria.

Then why do you continue to ignore the teaching of the Church?

(4) I have not said that the UN is an absolute moral authority, and have made a statement to that effect.

Yet you constantly quote there views on condoms as if it overrides the Church

(5) I do not believe that every moral statement that is antithetical to the policy of the Catholic Church is immoral or amoral wrt all of humanity, if that is what you are implying.

The Catholic Church is the moral authority.

(6) I would like to know why you use the term ‘UN drivel’. Do you have evidence, or a personal experience, that would cause you to diss them like this? Or are you just trying to reduce the discussion to this low level?

UN has a very long history of corruption. Oil for food anyone?

(7) ‘find me one study in which condoms have show over several years have a high success rate in getting AID/HIV’: this sentence is unintelligible, and I cannot answer.

Find me one study that documents the use of condoms over a period of several years that show there constant high success rate in preventing AIDS/HIV. Some blanket statement by the UN isn’t going to work either.

I do not know what you have against me, or against the questions, but you are certainly very angry and confrontational. It doesn’t help anyone, and is having an exceedingly negative effect on some of us.

I don’t have anything against you personal. I do find it extremely frustrating you choice to completely ignore the actually teaching of the Church. The Jesuit you keep quoting does not reflect reflect the actual teaching.

 

[LJN21]

Pray that our actions be in Love, our thoughts in Prayer, and our words in Truth.
Amen. :dancing: :extrahappy: :clapping: :bowdown: :newidea: :harp: :console:

Thats a funny thing to say. Since you keep avoiding the truth.

 

[TheApologist]

Pray that our actions be in Love, our thoughts in Prayer, and our words in Truth.
Amen. :dancing: :extrahappy: :clapping: :bowdown: :newidea: :harp: :console:

This is highly offensive and I am now reporting you.

 

[vern_humphrey]

No. For women, there is one chance in 100 in being infected with the virus; for men the figure is 1 in 1000.

There is a very small chance of transmission.

So if a woman has sex twice a week with an infected partner who uses a condom, how long can she expect to remain AIDS-free?

Perhaps that is what you think, and lots of other students in the US. But you see, that is only a one-sided image of the causes of virus transmission. It assumes that you have a choice about having anal, oral or vaginal intercourse. And as we have discussed earlier, many people - men and women - do not have a choice, for a variety of reasons. So handing out condoms is not simply a license to have roaring sex. In fact there are many who would prefer to be abstinent, but have no choice.

And the solution is to hope the rapist is nice and wears a condom?

No wonder your philosophy failed in Botswana.

Your assumptions are unhappily incorrect. I think if you get information from some of the websites (I cannot do it for you as it is now past 1 am here in South Africa) you will find that as I have said, there is no 10 per cent chance of getting HIV in one act of intercourse without a condom, nor is there a 10 per cent chance of getting HIV in one act of intercourse using a condom.

But when one has sex over and over with an infected partner (or partners), the odds are pretty strong that one will get AIDS.

Yes, prostitutes and truck drivers who are prone to passing sex with different people, and in greater numbers are at greater risk than others of being infected, and passing the virus to others. But that is not reflected in your logic.

But it is reflected in the actual experience in Botswana. And as I said, if it had a chance of working anywhere, it would have worked in Botswana.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

Thats a funny thing to say. Since you keep avoiding the truth.

Which truth would that be?

 

[Carol_Coombe]

This is highly offensive and I am now reporting you.

It’s OK. I have kept my composure for 400+ postings and a lot of garbage, including a perfectly good discussion derailed by people who have targetted it.

I thought you were going to work. I agreed with you about the Double Effect Principle, and hoped you would find someone to debate about it with.

You will notice the smilies are cheerful ones. You will notice I said I was tired at 0200 in the morning in South Africa. But you will not be mollified by that.

There was no offense meant in any of this, and I am sorry that you took offense. But you are young.

 

[jmcrae]

And as we have discussed earlier, many people - men and women - do not have a choice, for a variety of reasons. So handing out condoms is not simply a license to have roaring sex. In fact there are many who would prefer to be abstinent, but have no choice.

I cannot imagine that a person who is being raped or otherwise coerced into having sex is going to have the opportunity to propose using a condom.

The only circumstance where I can even remotely see that happening is if the rapist himself suspects that the woman or child has HIV, and he does not have it.

But I cannot imagine a man who already has HIV, who already thinks it’s okay to impose himself on a woman or child against her will, thinking to himself, “Oh - hey - I should use a condom and prevent my victim from getting AIDS.”

Why would he bother, since there is nothing to gain on his part? Wearing a condom is not going to cure him of HIV, after all, so what would his motive be to save her life? Since he already does not believe that she is worthy of any human respect?

 

[TheApologist]

Let’s show Double Effect. Okay…the situation is that a married couple has one person who has inadverdently been infected with HIV(let’s say through an open wound on his/her arm). They want to continue sex but don’t want to give HIV to the wife, so they propose using a condom since they think using it would be good use of the Double Effect Principle.

Needs for valid use of Double Effect:

1. that the action in itself from its very object be good or at least indifferent;
2. that the good effect and not the evil effect be intended;
3. that the good effect be not produced by means of the evil effect;
4. that there be a proportionately grave reason for permitting the evil effect” (1949, p. 43).
5. Let’s see…the action of not spreading disease is good. Pass.
6. The married couple honestly doesn’t want the contraceptive angle of it. Pass.
7. Wait! The good effect of not spreading disease is produced by the evil effect of using contraception. Fail.
8. There is legitimate reason. Pass

If even one of the point fails, then the use is invalid.

INVALID. Situation is not moral and should not occur.

Please show me my error.

Since I have now tried to show how this situation is not moral due to invalid use of the Double Effect…could someone with an opinion against this please refute it?

 

[TheApologist]

It’s OK. I have kept my composure for 400+ postings and a lot of garbage, including a perfectly good discussion derailed by people who have targetted it.

I thought you were going to work. I agreed with you about the Double Effect Principle, and hoped you would find someone to debate about it with.

You will notice the smilies are cheerful ones. You will notice I said I was tired at 0200 in the morning in South Africa. But you will not be mollified by that.

There was no offense meant in any of this, and I am sorry that you took offense. But you are young.

The smilies when I looked at them…coupled with the name calling of “bag lady” actually sound pretty mocking. I don’t see how this wasn’t meant to be offense.

 

[mark_a]

You have lost me. I think you have a much stronger case arguing that giving out condoms is intrinsically evil because condoms are intrinsically evil. Arguing that giving out condoms will in and of itself always encourage illicit sex, and that this effect outweighs the lives that might be saved because of condom use, is, I think, a “tough sell,” to use your words.

Edwin

I’m going to have to admit that this subject is out of my league. My own American lower middle class is the only culture I know, and I have no idea how things are in Botswana or anywhere else in Africa.

But its still not the Church’s job to tell people how to sin.

If one wants condom info, there is plenty of info that’s more readily available than the Church’s teachings are.

This whole discussion reminds me of the BET network having Black comediens (the females) doing PSA’s telling young men to “wrap it up”.

 

[Aquinas4ever]

Which truth would that be?

(All passages from Douay Rheims)

Jesus: “…I am the way, and the truth, and the life…” (John 14:6)
Jesus: “…That thou art Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18)

Canon 331—The office uniquely committed by the Lord to Peter, the first of the Apostles, and to be transmitted to his successors, abides in the Bishop of the Church of Rome. He is the head of the College of Bishops, the Vicar of Christ, and the Pastor of the universal Church here on earth. Consequently, by virtue of his office, he has supreme, full, immediate and universal ordinary power in the Church, and he can always freely exercise this power.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH:

88 The Church’s Magisterium exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes, in a form obliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of faith, truths contained in divine Revelation or also when it proposes, in a definitive way, truths having a necessary connection with these.

2366 …So the Church, which is "on the side of life,"151 teaches that "it is necessary that each and every marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life."152 "This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act."153

Using the words of a Vicar of Christ himself, whom you quoted in an earlier post: The Church, nevertheless, …teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life. (12)

Had you moved but a little further, you would have encountered the answer to this entire discussion:

Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one…Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good," it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it (18)

In conclusion, I write that you ask “What is Truth?”. To that I reply, only that which is brought into this world by Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium of the Church.

Jesus: “…I am the way, and the truth, and the life…” (John 14:6)

 

[Ferdinand_Mary]

Thank you to all who participated, this thread is now closed.

Mane Nobiscum Domine,
Ferdinand Mary