Vatican Re-Examines Ban on Contraception

AP ^ | May 3, 2006 | Brian Murphy

[siunevada]

I think they will not be able to get past the problem of the failure rate for condoms. It then becomes a matter of delaying infection, or perhaps not if you are unlucky and your first condom fails. Prevention isn't really in the cards.

Lots of wishful thinking. I wouldn't expect any pronouncement of major changes out of the Vatican.

[last american]

A Vatican study on whether it could permit condoms to battle AIDS has a very narrow scope: married Roman Catholic couples in which one partner has the virus.

And how pray tell short of the 0.0000001% that get aids from transfusions do all of these "catholics" get aids?

This is CLEARLY pandering to certain continents/countries where it is considered normal for a married man to visit a hooker while wifey is swinging the mortar to make corn meal... Absolutely pathetic.

[markomalley]

ping.

I haven't heard about a cold wave in hell recently, have you?

[Nihil Obstat]

They spelled "Re-Affirms" wrong in the title.

[Salvation]

 

 

2399 The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception).

---

 

2370 Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, "every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil:

Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. . . . The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle . . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality.

[retMD]

Even if they're not perfect, correctly and consistently using condoms will decrease the risk of getting AIDs. From a public health perspective, this would be a good thing to reduce transmission rates in Africa.

[Tax-chick]

Nope.

[siunevada]

Even if they're not perfect, correctly and consistently using condoms will decrease the risk of getting AIDs.

I take it from your screen name you've got some scientific perspective on this question. Is it correct to say that even with correct and consistent use the device itself will have a certain level of failure?

If the answer is affirmative, then that will be the insurmountable hurdle for any examination from the ethical perspective of the Church. There will be, in fact, no "lesser evil" to consider. Only the greater evil of transmission of a potentially fatal disease delayed. (Unless you have the statistical bad luck to have your first use be a failure. Then there will be no delay.)

[annalex]

There is a way to reduce the rate of AIDS transmission to virtual zero: abstinence outside of marriage. This is what the Church teaches. Any sideline allowing condoms where abstinence is the moral answer would be a moral wrong and the Church is not going to teach that.

Now, inlike fornication, sex inside a marriage is good. This is why it is proper for the Church to examine the use of condoms in this narrow case, where sex itself would have been salutary but for the AIDS infection of one spouse. Whichever way the Church goes in that narrow case is not going to have any implication to the broad condemnation of contraception in any other case, even for the purposes of AIDS prevention.

[retMD]

I take it from your screen name you've got some scientific perspective on this question. Is it correct to say that even with correct and consistent use the device itself will have a certain level of failure?

The answer to your question is yes; no barrier is 100% foolproof, and people won't always use it correctly.

I'm on the medical perspective end of this, and lacking on the theology end. I don't really understand how any degree of failure makes an insurmountable hurdle - but I welcome the education.

[RobbyS]

A condom is a birth control devise, not a sufficent barrier against AIDS. The crux of the matter is sexual practices. If the guy can commit to having sex with one woman it probably would have more effect than using condoms.

[Flavius Josephus]

MArried couple or not, a woman would have to be INSANE to place only a few microns of cheap rubber between herself and the HIV virus. This is a Trojan horse argument.

[Flavius Josephus]

(we come from the land of the ice and snow...)

[annalex]

condom is a birth control devise, not a sufficent barrier against AIDS

We keep forgetting that. The issue in the case of marital act when one spouse is infected is using the condom in its secondary purpose, as a barrier for viruses. I wonder if the Church would not encourage the development of a non-contraceptive condom, that only prevents the infection. I do not see why such a device would be morally questionable between spouses, as it becomes merely a medical device.

[Flavius Josephus]

If you're only looking at it from a medical perspective, you probably don't take abstinence seriously as a preventive measure. Therefore, it's doubtful that you're open to being educated on anything. Few MDs are. But we don't have a particularly high regard for "experts" around here. If you have an argument to make, please post statistics and sources. Because, "I'm a doctor" won't do.

[Flavius Josephus]

It's a lousy b/c device too.

[verity]

"I think they will not be able to get past the problem of the failure rate for condoms"

Are you not implying that the failure rate is not 100%?

[RobbyS]

Maybe if we are dealing with a hypothetical question, but the practical effect is (1) it will be more effective as a BC devise than as a barrier and (2) The average Joe will make no such distinction. It will be the annulment question all over again, the same kind of Jesuitical sophistry that Pascal exposed so well.

[annalex]

Yes. Something like this happened before, I believe, in Spain: a Catholic cleric, when pressed about the two evils of protected and unprotected fornication admitted that yes, of the two evils protected fornication is a lesser evil. The headlines were, of course, "Vatican Approves Contraception".

Plus, I doubt a non-contraceptive condom that is even marginally useful in preventing AIDS is possible. But this is the only corner case that I think makes sense theologically.