Will the Vatican change course on condoms?

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Although recent speculation has focused on whether the pope will allow condoms in cases of HIV, the result can only be a resounding NO.

This is part of the faith of the Church, it cannot be changed.

Peace and God Bless.
 
Magicsilence said:
Although recent speculation has focused on whether the pope will allow condoms in cases of HIV, the result can only be a resounding NO.

This is part of the faith of the Church, it cannot be changed.
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This is a good illustration of how faith develops.
Contraception was fairly casually dismissed as obviously corrupt, liable to lead to adultery, and so forth, until the eugenics and sexual health movements of the early twentieth century, when it suddenly started to be promoted.
By the sixties it was very fashionable, all the Protestant denominations had accepted it, and the church was forced to think how to respond.
The developing consensus is that the sexual act must be open to the transmission of life. It is becoming more and more obvious that the secular position, that contracpetion is a good technical fix to the problems of unwanted pregnacy, is simply inadequate. Why, when condom machines are available in every pub, is one in three babies aborted?

However there is still room for fluidity in the church’s position. Rejecting the idea that sex education consists mainly of telling young people to make love with condoms on doesn’t mean that you necessarily ban all condom use, in all circumstances, and for all time. Until it is more widely accepted that contraceptives are part of the problem, and not part of the solution, however I cannot see the pastoral sense in any compromise on the no condoms, ever, rule.
 
Malcolm_McLean said:
However there is still room for fluidity in the church’s position. Rejecting the idea that sex education consists mainly of telling young people to make love with condoms on doesn’t mean that you necessarily ban all condom use, in all circumstances, and for all time.
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It does mean all contraceptive acts are always evil. A condom frustrates the act no matter the intention. An evil means make the act evil.
 
I am usually quite impressed with the intelligent well thought out answers, but so far I am left waiting. I co-lead a mens group at IHM Church and would like to bring to the table some statments from others beside myself. Except for Mclean’s response the others seem flat. I intend to use this thread as a teaching tool please do better. And, for the next person to post; of course, I use the catechism, scripture, and a host of other resources, yet I am always impressed with the thoughtful replies of this community.
 
I wonder if you would do better to re-cast the question. People who pose a question in this way usually do not understand the deep, underlying issues.

It is very likely that your Catholic men’s group have very little understanding of why the Church has spoken as she has on this issue. It only takes a couple of weeks to build your resources. Go for it!

One point you can make is that engaging sexual intercourse is not a life-or-death requirement. That is to say, you do not die if you abstain. You may grieve. You may rage. You may whine. But you will not die.

A person with HIV is a walking death weapon. Condoms are not a guarantee that the disease will not be passed along. WWJD?
 
ichabode said:
I am usually quite impressed with the intelligent well thought out answers, but so far I am left waiting. I co-lead a mens group at IHM Church and would like to bring to the table some statments from others beside myself. Except for Mclean’s response the others seem flat. I intend to use this thread as a teaching tool please do better. And, for the next person to post; of course, I use the catechism, scripture, and a host of other resources, yet I am always impressed with the thoughtful replies of this community.
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What did you want, an essay?

You asked a yes/no question.

The answer is … 😃 no!
 
I think we have to remember what a previous poster has said, sex is not a right, but a privelage (ulike what Planned Parenthood wants us to believe). Many times, this is from poor choices although a few people sadly contract diseases through no fault of their own. Either way, God has allowed this cross for a greater good and the person may have to abstain from sex the rest of their life for the sake of others (condoms are not a 100%, the only 100% is abstaining… unless you do not have a STD), but this does not make their life meaningless or useless (how sad if our life was whether we could have sex or not). You may be called to single life and can help people in a wonderful way and God will reward you with Heaven which is better than sex and is for eternity… I think a small trade-off if any for being called to abstain the rest of your life (like religious who are celibate… think of the 100 fold reward!). Hope that helps!
Peace in Christ!
 
Ichabode, the article you linked is interesting, but I find some of his opinions unpersuasive. For example,
If in fact Benedict moves away from the absolute prohibition against condoms, it likely will be a very measured step; for instance, he might allow their use only in developing countries, where there is little stigma attached to husbands’ infidelity, a factor that increases the risk of infection for innocent wives.
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I agree that if the rule against condoms is relaxed it will be a very measured relaxation. But rather than the slippery example he provided, I think it would be more likely that condoms would only be permitted to married couples in which one spouse has HIV.

The Pope is not going to endorse sex outside of marriage, nor is he going to relax rules which might encourage it. But he might very well allow condoms as a life-saving method when one spouse is infected and the well-being of the entire family depends on the other spouse from getting infected.

The author’s final paragraph, and summary of the whole article, seems unwarranted once his slippery example is removed.
Benedict’s choice is a difficult one: Retain Humanae Vitae’s absolute no-never and preserve the traditional ban on contraception, or shift to a relative yes-sometimes policy that gives us an effective weapon against AIDS — but opens up church policy on contraception, abortion and infallibility to new challenges.
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If condoms are greenlighted, they will be as a necessary evil that prevents a greater evil. Doing so would be consistent with the Chuch’s emphasis on promoting the Culture of Life. As such it would not change, or open to challenge, Church teaching on contraception, abortion and infallibility.
 
Contraception is immoral in-and-of itself. The only way I’m aware of in which contraception could be justified under any circumstances is through the double effect principle:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_effect

To my untrained eye, it looks like the use of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS blatantly fails on two of the four criteria. For one thing, the act itself is not good or at least neutral: the act itself is “interrupting a natural cycle,” immoral in-and-of itself. For another, contracepted sex is not the only way to stop the spread of AIDS; abstinence does that without the evil effect of contraception.

If the Vatican does allow condom use in limited circumstances, I have no idea how they will justify it.
 
Of course not, and especially not for AIDS prevention. From a technical standpoint, the condom has naturally occuring voids which render it permeable to the AIDS virus, which is many times smaller then the voids.

I have a copy of an article from the Journal of Rubber Chemistry discussing these voids. I have another article which studied the effectiveness of AIDS prevention using condoms among couples where only one partner had AIDS. The condom use merely dalayed the transmission by a year or so. All previously non-infected partners became infected.
So do you think it would be loving for an infected husband to be intimate with his uninfected wife using a condom? I’d call that using the wife to gratify himself without regard for her well-being.
Is that an example of the behavior which should be exhibited in a Catholic marriage? I thought the husband was to lay his own life down for his wife.
So aside from contraception, it would be a most despicable act of selfishness on the part of the husband. Everyone has crosses to bear, some are more onerous than others. In the past many married couples voluntarily lived lives of continency, in order to devote themselves more wholly to God. So if one is sick in this way, it looks like God is calling a couple to this kind of life-of continency.
Why would the Church say that using ones wife for self-gratification is suddenly licit?
Also, why would seeking to prevent the union of sperm and egg with a condom be suddenly any different from any other act of contraception merely because one partner has a disease?
In sickness and in health, til death do us part…
 
I also take everything written by an ex-religious in the LA Times with more than one grain of salt.
 
I do not believe the Pope would permit the use of condoms under any circumstances because it reduces the marital act to “scratching an itch”.

That unmarried couple should not engage in any sexual contact is a given so I will not address it. All my references are to married couples.

If one of people is infected with a deadly disease, like HIV/ADIS, then the proper thing to do is to abstain. I am sorry, but condoms are no guarantee. I study in 2004 shows the lack of condom effectiveness. African monogamous couples where one was HIV positive were studies. After one year, a group that had among the group that had unprotected sex 7% of the partners tested positive for HIV. Among those that always used a condom 1% of the previously HIV-negative partners tested positive. While a significant drop, it demonstrates that even “protected” sex is not really safe.

Science aside, what about the dignity of persons? Condoms render, or at least they try, to render the marital act “safe” from the dangers of both disease and unwanted pregnancy. You cannot have one without the other. In the case of HIV sufferers, that means the marriage is sterile, no possibility for the transmission life, ever. Thus, the intimate relationship of self-donating love between husband and wife degenerates into nothing more than an act of self-gratification; using and exploiting the other person for personal pleasure while simultaneously risking the life of the other person.

Abstinence in these cases demonstrates the love that one would expect when the dignity of persons is truly respected.

No. Condom use, even in the case of an HIV infected married person, can never be mitigate the grave the sins of stopping the transmissions of life, exploiting another for personal pleasure and endangering the life of another person. The theological principal of double effect does not permit a person to do this.
 
ichabode said:
I am usually quite impressed with the intelligent well thought out answers, but so far I am left waiting. I co-lead a mens group at IHM Church and would like to bring to the table some statments from others beside myself. Except for Mclean’s response the others seem flat. I intend to use this thread as a teaching tool please do better. And, for the next person to post; of course, I use the catechism, scripture, and a host of other resources, yet I am always impressed with the thoughtful replies of this community.
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Condoms can’t be licit because they alter the nature of the marital act. An act needs a good intention, a good means and a good end. If any of these parts are evil then the entire act is illicit.

As I said the means, that is the use of a condom, renders the act illicit no matter the intention of the user.
** Catholic Moral Teaching **
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  • The nature of an act (its object) determines its morality. Intercourse with a condom is intrinsically disordered, evil in and of itself.
  • The intention of the acting person is important, but it cannot change the nature of the act of intercourse with a condom. It remains an intrinsic evil.
  • The reason why a good intention is not in itself sufficient, but a correct choice of actions is needed, is that the human act depends on its object, whether that object is capable or not of being ordered to God - thus bringing about the perfection of the person. (Veritatis Splendor, n.80). “…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 ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances.” (VS, n.80).
  • The law of “double effect” requires that if an action has two effects, the action itself must be morally good or indifferent. Since intercourse with a condom is intrinsically evil, the law of double effect does not apply.
  • “Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser evil to avoid a greater moral evil or in order to promote a greater moral good, it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it.” (Humanae Vitae, n. 14, cf. Rom. 3:8). When comparing greater or lesser evils, the comparison must be between evils of a similar nature. Risk of disease is a physical and not a moral evil, whereas intercourse with a condom is a moral evil. Some theologians hold that the risk of HIV infection is more evil than the use of a condom to reduce that risk. This statement is not doctrinally sound.
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                     To advise or suggest evil is to induce evil and that is always a scandal.[1                     ](http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/she/she_11condom.html#a1)
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lifeissues.net/writers/she/she_11condom.html
 
Ichabode,

There are a couple of red flags in your opening post for me. The first one is that the LA Times story is by “a former religious brother.” If he had taken his final vows and then left the order, he is in the position of a divorced husband writing about his ex-wife. I would be EXTREMELY skeptical of anything the article says about the Church’s teachings or possible teachings; pretty much, if the article says that Jesus rose from the dead, I would check the Catechism just to make sure.
  • Liberian
 
Liberian said:
Ichabode,

There are a couple of red flags in your opening post for me. The first one is that the LA Times story is by “a former religious brother.” If he had taken his final vows and then left the order, he is in the position of a divorced husband writing about his ex-wife. I would be EXTREMELY skeptical of anything the article says about the Church’s teachings or possible teachings; pretty much, if the article says that Jesus rose from the dead, I would check the Catechism just to make sure.
  • Liberian
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I am with you on this. Some of worst junk that passes for “analysis” in the secular media comes from sources similar to these. Like they think and ex-priest can talk about the cnurch the same way a retired Army general can talk about the armed forces.
 
Genesis315 said:
I also take everything written by an ex-religious in the LA Times with more than one grain of salt.
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Several people echoed the above response. I have a problem with it. While it is true that a person who left his order, or the Church altogether, might have a motive to decieve, that is in itself no proof that what he says is false. The truth or falsity of a charge is what it is regardless of the motive of the person making it.
(Conversely, a person may have pure motives and still be wrong. Motive and truth are separate issues.)
 
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