Condom Ban Divides Catholic Clergy as Health Concerns Grow

A recent furor over what appeared to be rebellious Spanish bishops approving the use of condoms -- and the stern Vatican response that forced a quick retreat -- highlighted a quiet but intense debate within the Roman Catholic Church.

When, if ever, is it permissible to use condoms to prevent death?

Because of its rejection of prophylactics, the church has frequently been called insensitive to the pandemic spread of AIDS, more interested in religious dogma than preserving the lives of tens of millions of people.

Contrary to popular belief, however, the Vatican has never issued a formal ban on the use of condoms to prevent HIV infection.

What the church does advocate, as Pope John Paul II reiterated recently (without mentioning condoms), is abstinence and fidelity as the best ways to combat the disease. It teaches that in general the only acceptable sex is between a man and a woman who are married to each other and intend to procreate. It prohibits the use of all artificial contraception.

This doctrine is enshrined in the 1968 encyclical titled “Humanae Vitae,” issued by Pope Paul VI, but church historians say the pope and his advisors at the time did not have disease in mind when they dictated this proscription.

Official doctrine on these matters has not wavered, yet several senior leaders have explicitly or implicitly sanctioned the use of condoms for cases in which life is at stake. They have done so with a tacit acknowledgment that there are legitimate arguments that morally justify the apparent contravention of a church rule.

“The question is what to do when what should not happen does happen,” said Father Brian Johnstone, a moral theologian at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome.

In some cases, he and other theologians argue, a woman is justified in protecting her life by using a condom if she must have sex with a man who is infected with HIV, the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

For example, Johnstone noted, in some societies it is almost impossible for a woman to refuse sex with her husband. If he is infected, she has the absolute right to protect herself by demanding he wear a condom.

By extension, some theologians argue, if a woman is a prostitute, she could be justified in protecting herself from deadly disease by having her partner use a condom.

There is a perhaps surprising acceptance of these real-world scenarios by many in the church, although they may not acknowledge it publicly. Nor do these exceptions rise to a level of acceptance, theologians stress, that would permit the advocacy of condom use in forums such as schools.

The issue reveals a contrast between theology and pastoral application of the church’s teachings amid present-day complexities, Johnstone said. The thinking is also embodied in the principle of double effect, a doctrine espoused most famously by St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. The principle condones certain actions that can be foreseen to have bad results in the interest of a greater good.

Yet there is no consensus within the church leadership. Echoing numerous conservative prelates, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, speaking in a BBC documentary in October 2003, said sperm could penetrate the walls of a condom, so their use might in fact increase rather than hinder the spread of AIDS.

That same year, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Family, over which Trujillo presides, issued a nearly 900-page Lexicon on issues that included human sexuality. It stated that there is no evidence that condoms prevent HIV infection.

But Mexican Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the Vatican’s top health official, has repeatedly spoken of exceptions.

“If an infected husband wants to have sex with his wife who isn’t infected, then she must defend herself by whatever means necessary,” Lozano Barragan, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care, told the National Catholic Reporter late last year. “If a wife can defend herself from having sex by whatever means necessary, why not with a condom?”

And Italian Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, often mentioned as a possible candidate to become pope, has for years tolerated the fact that priests in his home parish of Genoa distribute condoms to prostitutes (even though he has spoken and written against using condoms).

The recent controversy involving the Spanish bishops is the latest manifestation of the debate, which simmers behind church walls.

It began when Bishop Juan Antonio Martinez Camino, spokesman for the Spanish Bishops Conference, emerged from a meeting last month with the Spanish health minister and, in response to reporters’ questions, said condoms could have a place in the global war on AIDS.

Although the comments were refuted the next day when the Bishops Conference issued a statement reiterating its opposition to condoms, Martinez Camino apparently was doing little more than giving a nod to the exceptions that many moral theologians say are justified.

Quickly, however, the comments were caught up in a highly unusual political storm between the Vatican and Madrid’s Socialist government, which, to the church’s horror, has proposed legalizing gay marriage and liberalizing divorce and abortion laws.

Six days after Martinez Camino’s statement, the pope lectured a group of visiting Spanish bishops on Spain’s “deep Christian roots” that “cannot be ripped up,” and he warned them against a surge in “moral permissiveness.”

The comments were seen as directed at Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

The government shot back, summoning the Vatican’s ambassador in Madrid to receive a complaint expressing surprise at the pope’s criticism.

The Vatican stood firm. Amid local headlines such as “Spain Against the Pope,” the pontiff’s spokesman responded huffily, telling the Spanish government to read the pope’s “entire speech” more carefully.