2. No one needs "permission" from the Church the State or anyone else to use protective body armor. The same applies to a barrier in the vagina. A barrier is not a sin. Choosing contraceptive sex is a sin.
I know you would like to see a more definitive statement. I'm just on my way to Mass and I have my mother-in-law's funeral in the afternoon, so I might not be able to get to it for you. You might try googling Congo 1960 rape Catholic nuns diaphragm
If you find anything interest4ing, pleas post us a link because I'd like to read it, too.
There are serious questions being raised as to whether this discussion (Nuns in the Congo) ever went to the Vatican. The local ordinary seems to be the source of the “permission”.
Mrs. Don-o, I've just spent nearly an hour searching, and everything seems to rest on a 1993 article in the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica. This seems to be the only source for the assertion that the Belgian nuns received permission from somebody. I am not certain who the author of the article is, let alone who allegedly gave the permission, let alone if it was written permission.
Every other justification for using contraceptives without sin if in threat of rape hinges on this article in La Civilta Cattolica.
La Civilta Cattolica does not seem to be available online. I am going to hunt for a copy at a university library.
I had read an essay some years ago where a Catholic ethicist said that nuns in missionary countries had this permission, and I was astonished -- and, frankly, appalled. If memory serves, the ethicist wrote that the nuns were given IUD coils, which I believe fall under the category of abortifacients.
Unfortunately, I did not write down where I'd read it, and later attempt to find that essay were unsuccessful. (And on the rare occasion when I'd remember it, I never thought of searching the topic on the internet.) I never came across the assertion again until Pope Francis brought it up the other day.
So I will try to track down that article, now that I know where to look. But I'm expecting that the Jesuit won't have any documentation, and that we're just supposed to take his word for it.