Vatican may relax rules on condoms

Pope Benedict XVI is considering concessions over the use of condoms to fight Aids — but the Vatican’s overall ban on condoms will almost certainly remain intact despite the relentless rise in deaths from Aids in Africa, Vatican sources say.

Medical and theological experts advising the Pope have suggested that married couples could be allowed to use condoms when one of the spouses is HIV-positive or a drug user. Vatican watchers said that this would “open a small chink” in the Vatican’s uncompromising opposition to condoms.

There was no question of reversing the basic doctrine laid down in Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical in which Pope Paul VI rejected any relaxation of church rules on birth control. The policy was reiterated by Pope John Paul II and by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then his head of doctrine and now the pontiff.

According to the annual UN report on Aids, released yesterday before World Aids Day on December 1, there are almost 40 million people living with HIV. The most alarming increase was in Uganda, which experienced a rise from a 5.6 per cent infection rate among men and 6.9 per cent among women in 2000 to 6.5 per cent and 8.8 per cent respectively.

In a speech to African bishops last year Pope Benedict blamed contraception for a breakdown of sexual morality and said that abstinence and marital fidelity were the only effective way to prevent the spread of HIV.

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, head of the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care, said this week that a 200-page study on the spread of infectious diseases commissioned by the Pope in April had been completed. The cardinal said that the spread of Aids is something that worries the Pope a lot, but added that “no response from the Church can be one that encourages a libertine sexual attitude”.

Some leading Catholic liberals have advocated a policy change, describing condoms as the lesser evil in situations where there is “widespread misery, promiscuity or use of drugs”. These include Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the former Archbishop of Milan and once a contender for Pope, Monsignor George Cottier, a papal theologian, and Cardinal Godfried Danneels, of Belgium. Such voices are in a minority, however, in the current conservative Vatican climate.

Pope Benedict will meet the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, today before his controversial trip to Turkey next week. Yesterday the Pope announced that he would release the first volume of a study entitled Jesus of Nazareth early next year, saying: “I do not know how much time and strength remain to me.”

He said that the book was not a magisterial statement but a personal reflection, and readers were therefore at liberty to contradict him. The Pope, who will turn 80 next April, was the oldest cardinal to be made Pope for 275 years when elected in April last year.

"I hope this applies to the glow-in-the-dark ones, Night Light, because those are really cool."

Petronius!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To tell you the truth, I have to wonder if this is an appropriate situation for economia. My gut says no, though perhaps in the case of a marriage where one of the partners already is HIV + at the time of the marriage it could be considered. Otherwise, well it could certainly be seen as condoning sex outside of marriage, wrongly for sure but still seen that way. I do have to wonder, however, if the Vatican's ban on condom use really has anything to do with the AIDS problem (again except in the case of an HIV+ spouse). If people are going to have sex outside of marriage, which is pretty clearly forbidden by the Church, why would they scruple about using a condom if they were so motivated?

From 'The Meaning of Life'(1983 Monty Python)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085959/quotes

Harry Blackitt: Look at them, bloody Catholics, filling the bloody world up with bloody people they can't afford to bloody feed.
Mrs. Blackitt: What are we dear?
Harry Blackitt: Protestant, and fiercely proud of it.
Mrs. Blackitt: Hmm. Well, why do they have so many children?
Harry Blackitt: Because... every time they have sexual intercourse, they have to have a baby.
Mrs. Blackitt: But it's the same with us, Harry.
Harry Blackitt: What do you mean?
Mrs. Blackitt: Well, I mean, we've got two children, and we've had sexual intercourse twice.
Harry Blackitt: That's not the point. We could have it any time we wanted.
Mrs. Blackitt: Really?
Harry Blackitt: Oh, yes, and, what's more, because we don't believe in all that Papist claptrap, we can take precautions.
Mrs. Blackitt: What, you mean... lock the door?
Harry Blackitt: No, no. I mean, because we are members of the Protestant Reformed Church, which successfully challenged the autocratic power of the Papacy in the mid-sixteenth century, we can wear little rubber devices to prevent issue.
Mrs. Blackitt: What d'you mean?
Harry Blackitt: I could, if I wanted, have sexual intercourse with you...
Mrs. Blackitt: Oh, yes, Harry.
Harry Blackitt: ...and, by wearing a rubber sheath over my old feller, I could insure... that, when I came off, you would not be impregnated.
Mrs. Blackitt: Ooh.
Harry Blackitt: That's what being a Protestant's all about. That's why it's the church for me. That's why it's the church for anyone who respects the individual and the individual's right to decide for him or herself. When Martin Luther nailed his protest up to the church door in fifteen-seventeen, he may not have realised the full significance of what he was doing, but four hundred years later, thanks to him, my dear, I can wear whatever I want on my John Thomas...
[sniff]
Harry Blackitt: ... and, Protestantism doesn't stop at the simple condom. Oh, no. I can wear French Ticklers if I want.
Mrs. Blackitt: You what?
Harry Blackitt: French Ticklers. Black Mambos. Crocodile Ribs. Sheaths that are designed not only to protect, but also to enhance the stimulation of sexual congress.
Mrs. Blackitt: Have you got one?
Harry Blackitt: Have I got one? Uh, well, no, but I can go down the road any time I want and walk into Harry's and hold my head up high and say in a loud, steady voice, 'Harry, I want you to sell me a condom. In fact, today, I think I'll have a French Tickler, for I am a Protestant.'
Mrs. Blackitt: Well, why don't you?
Harry Blackitt: But they - Well, they cannot, 'cause their church never made the great leap out of the Middle Ages and the domination of alien Episcopal supremacy.

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