Posted on 01/13/2004 6:30:40 AM PST by dead
A Belgian cardinal who is among the leading candidates to succeed Pope John Paul has broken the Catholic church's taboo on the use of condoms, declaring that, in certain circumstances, they should be used to prevent the spread of AIDS.
Godfried Danneels was careful to say he preferred abstinence as a means of prevention, but added that if someone who was HIV-positive did have sex, failing to use a condom would break the sixth commandment, thou shalt not kill.
His comments are a further sign that the ailing Pope may be losing some grip on the more liberal wing of his immense church. Shortly after being named a "prince of the church" last September, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, of Scotland, said the ban on contraception should be debated, along with such issues as priestly celibacy and homosexual clergy.
In an interview with the Dutch Catholic broadcaster RKK, Cardinal Danneels said: "When someone is HIV-positive and his partner says, 'I want to have sexual relations with you', he doesn't have to do that . . . But when he does, he has to use a condom."
He added: "This comes down to protecting yourself in a preventive manner against a disease or death. [It] cannot be entirely morally judged in the same manner as a pure method of birth control."
The cardinal's argument emphasises the importance of human life, the very factor that Pope John Paul has long evinced as justification for a ban on all forms of contraception.
The Catholic church teaches that abstinence, including between married couples, is the only morally acceptable way to prevent the spread of AIDS.
Cardinal Danneels's views clash with those aired last year by Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, the Vatican's top adviser on family questions. The Colombian cardinal claimed that condoms could not halt HIV because it was small enough to pass through them. He said relying on them to prevent infection was like "betting on your own death".
Those remarks were condemned by, among others, the World Health Organisation, which said condoms reduced the risk of infection by 90 per cent.
In 2000, Cardinal Danneels caused consternation in the Vatican by suggesting that popes should not remain in office until they died but have limited terms.
Cardinal Danneels, 70, and Archbishop of Brussels and Mechelen,
has also called for flexibility and leniency for Catholics who divorce and then remarry without obtaining a church-sanctioned annulment, and has said he advocates women playing a larger role in the church.
It comes from thinking with the little head...
I vote moron.
Or a third choice - the man is clearly a Protestant. I vote Protestant (but I reserve the right to vote moron at a later time).
Change a culture? You're asking women to risk death while they wait for authorities, dominated by men, to change a culture?
You offer a hobson's choice. I reject that logic. Condoms are hardly the answer to these issues
Apparently, you have no answer to this "hobson's choice." It's a reality, john, and it is highly likely that priests on the ground are telling these women to use condoms in order to save their lives!
Would Christ condemn these women to death?
This is so much nonsense to a woman who is expected to be submissive to her husband every time he asks for sex, and she knows he has the AIDS virus. Oh, and she has four other children she has to care for, and stay alive for.
And she can't use a condom to save her life?
What incredible foolishness. Married couples in which one spouse is HIV+ should live continently. Don't tell me continence is impossible. Lack of sex has never killed anyone.
If you're telling me the HIV- wives are willing to be continent, but their husbands are forcing themselves on them, then the wives should leave. For an HIV+ man to force his wife to have relations constitutes serious spousal abuse, with or without a condom.
That's not Catholic teaching. I'd hope you know that. Reasonable requests for marital relations must be honored; "I'm HIV+ and I gotta get some, so I'll wear a rubber and lesson your risk of getting a fatal disease a little bit" is not a reasonable request.
If you're saying it's a cultural thing, then I'd tell you that Christians sometimes need to rise above their culture.
You'd tell that to a woman whose husband is not Christian, or a marginal one at best?
What does she do to protect herself from a man who obviously doesn't care if he exposes her to the AIDS virus? I'm serious about this.
Is the Church reduced to just mouthing platitudes, patting the woman on the head, and telling her that "God will provide"?
They offer better protection than nothing at all.
I would ask you a question. Would Christ allow an airplane to fall out of the sky and kill all? Would Christ allow a baby to be born with no arms?
What do these have to do with anything? I can't control what other people do with airplanes, nor the birth of a baby with no arms.
I CAN control whether or not a woman is exposed to a deadly virus.
I would hope they believe there exists an eternal Truth.
In other words, he's full of so-called scriptural hot air and doesn't have an answer one for you.
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