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

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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.

[johnb2004]

Do you think it is better for the wife to contract AIDS,(a death sentence) than for a married couple to use condoms if the husband is HIV+?


I think they should absatin. How many times can I say it to you. No one dies from lack of sex.

[FlatLandBeer]

If yor going sin ...do it right...

[Jorge]

Jorge"Do you think it is better for the wife to contract AIDS,(a death sentence) than for a married couple to use condoms if the husband is HIV+?"

johnb2004I think they should abstain. How many times can I say it to you.

Actually you only have to say it once.
This is the FIRST time said "abstain" in any of your posts to me.
Nor did it appear anywhere in your initial response to cajungirl which began this dialogue.

Though I think it unreasonable to tell married couples that they must abstain from normal relations, and it is not Biblical, you are free to take this position if you want.

But this was not one of the two options you were given.

The question was whether a married couple who chooses to have normal relations (as Paul says they should) is given the choice of using condoms as protection against the wife contracting HIV (a death sentence)...or not, which do you think is right?

Personally I believe homosexuality is a sin according to the Bible. But I would still prefer they use condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.
Why? Because anybody who cares about people doesn't want to see them die in sin but would prefer they be given more time in the hope they will repent and be saved.

And I believe those who say otherwise should remember that Jesus said "let he who is without sin cast the first stone".

Those who promote the idea that people should die rather than commit the "sin" of condom use should remember that if not for the mercy of God, they would be dead and in Hell for their own sins already.

[johnb2004]

My position has always begin the Church's postion. Abstain. I made that clear in many posts on this thread and I have made clear that I accept the Church's teaching which is to abstain.

Using any contraceptive device during the marital embrace renders the act a sham. It is not true intercourse, rather it is mutual masturbation.