AIDS: Doctrine and compassion

by Editor · February 9, 2005

Recent letters in the secular press have criticised Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference, for voicing opposition to the government’s promotion of condoms in the fight against Aids.

One letter, written by a Christian of an unspecified denomination and published in the Mail & Guardian, goes as far as accusing the Church of substituting form for substance and politics for love, and asks whether the Catholic Church should therefore not be isolated.

It is a source of anguish for the Church when its response to the Aids crisis is so crudely reduced to the question of condoms. Such critics neglect to note that the Church and its agencies provide a quarter of all Aids programmes worldwide, and in South Africa is the biggest non-governmental provider of Aids care.

This response is based on the sound Christian principle of caring for the most vulnerable and the poor.

As we note this week, the Catholic Church in South Africa has launched a comprehensive anti-retroviral programme, saving lives in a domain where the government has failed abysmally.

How can it be in the interest of the struggle against HIV/Aids, or indeed Christianity, to “isolate” a church that is responding so vigorously to this emergency? Do those Catholic health workers who give so much of themselves deserve to be accused by proxy of substituting politics for love? They too are the Church.

However, at a time when the Catholic teachings on sexual morality are often considered archaic, we must understand that secular society will find it difficult to reconcile the position enunciated by Cardinal Napier with a loving and proactive Church.

Many in the Church fear that a doctrinal consent to condom use in preventing infection might legitimise promiscuous behaviour. This position cannot be casually dismissed, but should form part of a wider discourse on HIV/Aids prevention, within and outside the Church.

The Church has not yet formulated a doctrine on the use of condoms in the particular circumstance of HIV/Aids prevention. While the 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae proscribes the use of condoms as a method of preventing conception, this purpose does not apply in HIV/Aids prevention.

The Vatican has not offered official comment as to whether the doctrine of double effect applies to condoms and Aids.

Indeed, the development of a comprehensive theology of Aids is still in its early stages.

The doctrinal dimensions on HIV/Aids will no doubt emanate from the Vatican.

Alas, the pontifical councils for health and the family have not always shown a comprehensive grasp on all the issues surrounding the Aids crisis. Comments on the subject from both councils have at times been of little relevance to the situation in badly affected regions such as Southern Africa.

For example, while it is appropriate to appeal for greater sexual morality in the societies of Europe or the United States where people mostly enjoy primacy over their own sexuality such appeals miss the point entirely in those parts of Africa where a patriarchal society and extreme poverty deny women such sovereignty. There is no point appealing for sexual morality when a person has little choice in the matter.

Moreover, inexorably linking Aids to sexual immorality as the anti-condom argument in the Church seems to suggest helps little in fighting the stigma of Aids, which itself is a stated goal of the SACBC.

Arguably, even if the local bishops wanted to, they could not acquiesce with condom use without the go-ahead of the Vatican although some bishops’ conferences, including that of Southern Africa, have gone further than the Vatican in saying that condom use might be licit within marriage.

Resistance to condoms is not quite as dogmatic among the Church’s Aids workers as the official line would suggest. There are many who believe that sometimes it is good pastoral practice in individual situations to advocate the use of condoms to prevent the spread of infection.

Whether such a pastoral approach can be translated into doctrine, or even policy, is a matter of debate. And this is where we are right now: within a process of finding a response that can reconcile the doctrinal and the compassionate dimensions of the Church.