Cardinal favours condoms to stop AIDS (leading candidates to succeed Pope John Paul)

The Guardian via SMH ^ | January 14, 2004 | John Hooper in Rome and Andrew Osborn in Brussels

[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.

[sinkspur]

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.

Perhaps it's not so easy to do that, in some cultures. She may be condemning herself to a life of ostracism and starvation.

We're not talking about a "contraceptive" mentality here, Campion. This is about life and death.

[Antoninus]

Danneels is only a "leading candidate for the Papacy" in the wildest fantasies of the most demented, homo-promoting, liturgical dancing, wreckovating, wacked-out liberals. I'd place his chances of being elevated to the papal chair at somewhere between 1,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 and nil.

[johnb2004]

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.

You asked me if Christ would allow a woman to die. I asked you those questions to show you that Christ has a permissive and oradining will.

"I CAN control whether or not a woman is exposed to a deadly virus."

It can be controlled by abstaining and following Christ's will.

[sinkspur]

Do you ever look at actions from the stand point of eternity?

So, let me get this straight, since you've offered nothing but boilerplate here:

You have no problem insisting that a woman expose herself to the AIDS virus when a condom might protect her from it? Especially since her motivation is not to prevent conception, but to prevent DEATH!

[sinkspur]

It can be controlled by abstaining and following Christ's will.

What if she can't? Her husband insists.

You're obfuscating because you don't want to address the issue.

The Church doesn't seem to want to discuss the issue either.

[sinkspur]

It can be controlled by abstaining and following Christ's will.

What if she can't? Her husband insists.

You're obfuscating because you don't want to address the issue.

The Church doesn't seem to want to discuss the issue either.

[johnb2004]

I offer abstaining from sex.

[sinkspur]

You asked me if Christ would allow a woman to die. I asked you those questions to show you that Christ has a permissive and oradining will.

So, if we could have stopped planes from flying into buildings on 9/11, we shouldn't have, so that Christ's permissive will might be fulfilled?

How foolish.

[cajungirl]

Your spouting off your philosophy does not address the issue of whether you think your religion would visit death on a woman rather than her protecting herself with a condom. Apparently you choose death and comfort yourself with vanity.

[Antoninus]

There might be some applicability of the principle of double effect here: the woman uses the condom to save her life. That is the primary use. The fact that it also serves as a contraceptive is a secondary effect.

Oh please. We can always depend on you to uphold the radical position and attack traditional Church teaching. Your animus toward Humanae Vitae is showing, "deacon." Since when do we change Church teaching just to cater to some cultural oddity like wife beating for refusing sex? The traditional way the Church handled this type of situation was to strongly condemn sinner (in this case, the wife-beater), not by altering doctrine.

[johnb2004]

If these men are that evil then much greater intercession is needed than giving out condoms.

[sinkspur]

I offer abstaining from sex.

That's unresponsive. The bishops in Africa are struggling with this, like no other clergymen on earth.

Admonishing couples to avoid sex when you know that the man has no intention of doing so is simply avoiding the issue.

Since the woman will be exposed to death, which will deprive her of life and her four other children of a mother, it seems that the Church ought to be able to offer a little more guidance than "well, unite your sufferings to those of Christ."

[cajungirl]

you offer abstention. Since when did you get to make what are God's offers. I prefer to think that God offered a condom to protect this woman. That seems a whole lot more loving. But who am I to know? And who are you to know? You sir are not religious at heart, you are cold and presumptious to think that you know God.

[Antoninus]

John, you have no answer for this woman, do you? (Platitudes are not an answer).

Your "answer" is to tell her it's ok to commit a mortal sin. Some answer. The wages of sin are death.

The only correct answer to this problem is abstinence and cultural change. Any other "answer", such as the one you propose, will result in more death, and more suffering in both the short and long term.

This whole issue is like the "cases of rape and incest" arguments for abortion. The proponents create "worst case scenarios" to get the nose of the camel under the tent. We know what happens from there.

[johnb2004]

You are the foolish one. You can't even follow moral reasoning. 9/11 was an evil act. Forcing sex on someone is an evil act. Both need to be addressed. Condoms do not address the evil act of the doer. The wife needs to leave if she would be raped.

[johnb2004]

I chose life. Eternal life.

[Fast 1975]

"and has said he advocates women playing a larger role in the church."


1 Timothy 2:11-15: "A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. for Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner." (NIV)

[johnb2004]

God does not offer evil to His children. You are confused.

[sinkspur]

The traditional way the Church handled this type of situation was to strongly condemn sinner (in this case, the wife-beater), not by altering doctrine.

Like others here, you just wash your hands of the problem.

So, a guy who's not Catholic or even Christian is gonna CARE that you condemn him?

No thought or concern for the woman here? She's the one begging for some help.

[BlessedBeGod]

It's okay. He'll never be Pope now -- the Holy Spirit won't allow it. If he was to become Pope he'd be teaching heresy, and as the Pope is infallible when it comes to faith and morals, he will never be allowed to succeed JPII.