Madam, – In a recent column David Adams repeated a favourite Catho-phobic mantra: “Millions of... people in developing countries around the world continue to die from Aids as a result of the Catholic Church’s opposition to the use of condoms.”
It is naïve to think that people who are ignoring God’s sixth (or seventh) commandment refrain from using condoms just because the Church tells them not to. However, it doesn’t.
Catholics see a difference between married intercourse and extra-marital sex. In spite of a superficial resemblance they are totally different realities because of the totally different relationships between the partners. They differ from each other as the genuine article from a counterfeit, like real and forged bank notes. If I deface a genuine bank note I commit an offence and may be punished by the law, whereas I can do what I like to a forged note and nobody cares.
So the Church does not concern itself with the morality of interfering with extra-marital sex, except to say that the whole thing is wrong. True, it does reject the condom as a contraceptive in marriage. Some moral theologians, nevertheless, would permit it as a prophylactic when one of the spouses is HIV-positive. Others disagree and think they should show their love by abstinence.
If the Church has said nothing about the morality of using condoms against HIV in extra-marital sex, much less has it “banned” doing so. It simply insists that promoting condoms to make sex “safe” is not the way to deal with the challenge of HIV because it appears to condone the very conduct which spreads HIV.
Moreover, advocating condoms gives people a false sense of security, because they are not safe and have a high failure rate. The US Food and Drug Administration has estimate (December 2003) that 11 out of 100 women relying on a male condom and 21 out of a 100 of those who use a female condom will fall pregnant within the first year. A normal woman can become pregnant during only 24 hours in every four weeks. She can get HIV 24 hours a day. So the risk of relying on a condom to avoid HIV is about 25 times greater.
That is why the fact that HIV infection is growing in spite of increased condom use suggests that the Church’s pragmatic rather than moral judgement is correct.
Scientists are coming around to this point of view. Daniel Halperin, Harvard School of Public Health, Malcolm Potts, Berkeley School of Public Health (not known for his opposition to condoms as contraceptives) and colleagues reported on their research on HIV prevention in Science(May 9th, 2008). They say studies have found no evidence that condom use has played a primary role in HIV decline in generalised, primarily heterosexual epidemics, such as those in southern Africa, and that partner reduction appears to have played a primary role in reducing HIV rates in Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Côte d'Ivoire, and in urban Malawi and Ethiopia.
Ireland, with the highest HIV infection rate in Europe, would do well to pay attention. – Yours, etc,
DICK CREMINS SJ,
Cherryfield Lodge,
Dublin 6.