New Orleans archbishop says Catholic church still views condoms as birth control as immoral
Published: Saturday, November 27, 2010, 5:00 AM Updated: Saturday, November 27, 2010
Bruce Nolan, The Times-Picayune
In New Orleans, Archbishop Gregory Aymond has been following the global dustup over what Pope Benedict XVI said — or is thought to have said, in German, Italian and English — about the Catholic church’s view on the use of condoms to protect people from AIDS and other diseases.
Archbishop Gregory Aymond is sure of this: The pope cannot and has not reversed the Catholic church’s traditional teaching that condoms are immoral as a contraception technique.
Whatever the confusion, Aymond is sure of this: Benedict cannot and has not reversed the Catholic church’s traditional teaching that condoms are immoral as a contraception technique.
Beyond that, Aymond said Benedict may be inviting the church to step up its conversation on whether condoms might be appropriate as a health measure in a marriage in which one spouse is infected with a dangerous disease like AIDS.
“My read is that he’s inviting us as a faith community to do further prayer, theological reflection and study on that issue,” Aymond said.
The issue has special relevance in places like Africa, ravaged by AIDS, where Catholic relief workers confront the disease and counsel people on prevention. Their church has been heavily criticized for taking a different view from other health organizations on the appropriateness of condoms.
The Catholic church’s position is that AIDS prevention campaigns relying principally on condom distribution are insufficient — that because sex outside of marriage is not only immoral but unsafe, the best solution involves persuading people to limit themselves to monogamous sexual behavior.
Beyond that, the Catholic church has long opposed use of condoms on moral grounds.
The confusion began last week when the Vatican's Italian-language newspaper translated from Benedict's German a discussion of condoms in the context of AIDS and Africa. Benedict said that in an extreme case, in the case of an infected male prostitute, using a condom might be laudable as the first stirring of a moral responsibility, even within an immoral act, if the intent is to protect the partner from disease.
In Catholic philosophy, condoms thwart the design of sex by blunting its reproductive potential, and thus are always wrong when used to prevent conception.
But the church has no definitive teaching on the use of condoms within a marriage solely to prevent disease like AIDS — although the Rev. Jose Lavastida, a moral theologian and the rector of Notre Dame Seminary, said the prevailing logic of Catholic moral theology comes down heavily against it.
Whether Benedict, a renowned theologian himself, offered a provocative personal opinion on that narrow question, or whether his observations to a German journalist were muddled by Vatican mistranslations, further muddled by a Vatican clarification — and from the outset misinterpreted by some elements of the secular press, is still not entirely clear.
The confusion began last week when the Vatican’s Italian-language newspaper translated from Benedict’s German an excerpt of his conversation with journalist Peter Seewald, with whom Benedict had collaborated on Benedict’s new book, “Light of the World.”
Discussing condoms in the context of AIDS and Africa, Benedict told Seewald that in an extreme case, in the case of an infected male prostitute, using a condom might be laudable as the first stirring of a moral responsibility, even within an immoral act, if the intent is to protect the partner from disease.
Much of the worldwide secular press at first incorrectly reported that the church had reversed its traditional opposition to condom use generally.
Aymond and other church spokesmen vigorously denied that.
Asked later whether the original German accurately limited Benedict’s observation strictly to homosexual sex, where contraception is not an issue, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi’s clarification seemed to enlarge Benedict’s observation beyond the exotic example of male prostitution.
“I personally asked the pope if there was a serious, important problem in the choice of the masculine over the feminine,” Lombardi said. “He told me no. The problem is this: It’s the first step of taking responsibility, of taking into consideration the risk of the life of another with whom you have a relationship.”
Some Catholic writers and commentators saw the reference to “relationship” as an indication that Benedict was talking about a married couple’s use of condoms to keep one partner with AIDS from infecting another.
If so, “this is something of a game-changer,” wrote the Rev. James Martin in the Jesuit magazine, America. Other Catholic writers and commentators picked up the same thread.
That’s because that debate had been going on inside the church for some time, driven largely by its anti-AIDS work. Some Catholic theologians have supported the limited use of condoms for disease prevention within marriage as morally permissible, if not the ideal.
But the church as a whole has never come to a conclusion. And according to Lavastida, the weight of current theological opinion runs against condom use, even in those cases.
“If that question were to be answered today, what would be looked at is the integrity of the marital act. And the marital act with the use of condoms (violates) the integrity of what the act should be,” he said.
For his part, Lavastida said he doubts that Benedict was even gesturing toward a limited re-thinking involving condoms and AIDS in marriage.
Aymond said it seemed possible that Benedict was, in fact, addressing that possibility, although only as a personal opinion.
In his own remarks in a pre-Thanksgiving video on the archdiocese’s website, Aymond cited Benedict’s first-version example of male prostitution, which Catholic teaching views as clearly immoral.
Aymond said Benedict’s remarks had changed nothing in the church’s prohibition of condoms as contraceptives. “He’s simply saying that if a person chooses not to follow the way of Jesus ... and they have AIDS, that they at least should think about protecting the person that they are engaging with,” he said.
Moreover, Aymond said, the stark right-vs.-wrong tone of the media discussion thus far does not capture the way Catholic theology gives pastors room to try to apply general principles to real cases on the ground.
More likely, he said, if the church were to offer some guidance on the use of condoms within marriage to prevent disease, it would not likely be a blanket statement, but would express an ideal packaged with a recommendation that couples consult with a confessor or spiritual advisor.
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