The Vatican and condoms

NEWS that the Vatican is working on a document intended to clarify the Church’s teaching on the use of condoms in the context Aids prevention must be welcome.

Contrary to a common perception, no clear and universal teaching exists on this difficult subject, only the comments of some curial officials. Until fairly recently, such opinions—which could not be unequivocally interpreted as official policy, but rather as a guide to a certain school of thought within the Vatican—were negative about the morality and value of condom use in Aids prevention.

However, as Pope Benedict opened the windows of dialogue within the Church on several delicate elements of Catholic teaching, Church leaders began to express a wider range of views on the condom question.

The climate change has been dramatic as a number of credible Church leaders, progressive and conservative, outlined theological and doctrinal reasons why condom use in Aids prevention could be morally justifiable in certain circumstances.

Among these leaders are Cardinals Carlo Martini, Christian Wiyghan Tumi, and Godfried Danneels, the Vatican’s quasi health minister Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, and Cardinal Georges Cottier, the long-time papal theologian to Pope John Paul II.

Divergence in curial opinion on the subject is not a new phenomenon. These differences delayed a clear statement from the Vatican for many years.

In the interim, bishops’ conferences formulated their own pastoral positions. The bishops of Southern Africa in their 2001 pastoral letter “A Message of Hope” rightly stressed that abstinence outside marriage and scrupulous fidelity within represent the best form of HIV prevention. But they also left the use of condoms in a marriage where one spouse is infected to the couple’s conscience, effectively sanctioning condom use within marriage for the purpose of preventing infection.

One may reasonably predict that the Vatican document will follow this approach without inviting much controversy. The more complicated question concerns the use of condoms among people who, by choice or by force, entertain sexual relations outside marriage.

Some argue that a teaching that would issue an indiscriminate permission to such condom use might encourage promiscuity, thereby exacerbating the Aids epidemic (especially if, as many in the Church contentiously claim, condoms are a dangerously unsafe method of prevention).

Others invoke the “lesser evil” argument, proposing that people have a right to protect themselves against HIV infection, even if the means in doing so are morally imperfect.

One may expect that the Vatican document will seek to find a compromise between the various positions.

Whichever way the dice may fall, however, the wording of the document will be crucial. It should be conscious of the social conditions in regions where the pandemic is most prevalent, acknowledging that sexual activity is not always a matter of choice for women and girls. In many parts of Africa especially, women do not enjoy the right of primacy over their own sexuality, for reasons of cultural mores and/or poverty.

Reducing the Aids crisis entirely to sexual immorality therefore is an untrue reflection of social realities, and serves only to aggravate the stigmatisation of people living with HIV/Aids. That stigma, in turn, discourages many people from taking HIV tests, with many of these potentially spreading the virus to others.

The Vatican document should seek to reduce, not exacerbate, stigmatisation, and urge Catholics who are at risk of HIV infection to be tested.

It also ought to clarify a position on new innovations in HIV prevention, such as microbiocide creams, which soon may form part of the battle against Aids.