Mahony Will Adopt Clarified Version of Condoms Statement

Catholic Archbishop Roger M. Mahony said Tuesday that he will adopt the controversial AIDS policy paper issued by fellow American bishops but only after substituting “clearer language” in sections that give conditional permission to discuss public health recommendations about condoms.

“Those sections . . . have caused confusion and misunderstanding,” Mahony wrote in a letter to priests, educators and other leaders in the Los Angeles Archdiocese. He said his revised version, expected later this week, will become the official policy direction for the 2.65 million Roman Catholics in the nation’s most populous archdiocese.

Mahony’s comments echoed those of many other theologically conservative bishops who said that some news reports and public misinterpretations gave the erroneous impression that the church had changed its opposition to prophylactics. Some cardinals and archbishops said they would not use the document at all while others praised it.

Mahony, at an impromptu news conference after a Town Hall speech on world peace prospects, indicated that he will eliminate references to people who do not follow Catholic moral teachings. “It is not for me to speculate on what they should do,” Mahony said.

The trouble with the present document, he said, is that it “tries to blend what the Catholic message should be with a speculative look at what public health officials might say about the problem.”

The original document, released Thursday by the 50-member administrative board of the U.S. Catholic Conference, said that in a pluralistic society, not everyone agrees with the Catholic stance that sex should only take place in marriage. In recognizing this, it said that as long as the church’s position is stated, public education efforts against AIDS “could include accurate information about prophylactic devices or other practices proposed by some medical experts as potential means of preventing AIDS.”

Mahony praised most of the 30-page policy paper, “The Many Faces of AIDS: A Gospel Response,” as a “very, very fine document that speaks compassionately and knowledgeably” to the problems AIDS victims face and what church responses should be.

Even the poorly worded sections, “in the total theological context” of the document “could be supported,” he told reporters.

After consulting with his Priests’ Council and moral theologians, Mahony said the revised document will only present what the Catholic position is on the morally and medically correct ways to avoid AIDS. He said the new version will be ready later in the week.

Mahony was evasive on the question of whether the document, as revised, still would permit Catholic hospitals, priests, educators and church agencies to mention the public health recommendations.

But the archbishop did say that Catholics in his archdiocese are already involved in community AIDS education projects. One reason why the archdiocese pulled out of an AIDS Project Los Angeles program one year ago, he said, was because the Spanish-language sessions were being conducted in a Catholic church and many would have thought that the church was giving implicit endorsement to the use of condoms.

Indeed, Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Carl Fisher last week welcomed the statement and said it supported what was already being done in the South Bay and harbor area of the archdiocese that he administers.

Fisher said that when dealing with non-Catholics or anyone at risk of spreading AIDS, the Catholic-run St. Mary’s Hospital in Long Beach informs people over a telephone hot line or in other counseling situations of the public health recommendations. But he said the Catholic position on sexual chastity was always given priority.

“I say a Catholic can share the information from public health services, but at the same time we have to acknowledge and make it clear that some of these methods are in opposition to our own church teachings,” Fisher said.

Bishop Norman McFarland of the Orange County Diocese said Monday that while he is unhappy with the imprecise language in the document, he has “no problem with (condoms) being mentioned in the proper Catholic context.”

In San Diego, Bishop Leo T. Maher said Tuesday that the recent statement “leaves unclear when this (use of condoms) can be taught. My opinion is that this statement is aimed at teaching outside the regular presentation to Catholic audiences; that is, Catholic high schools and colleges. The statement is vague regarding at what audience these educational programs are aimed.”

At any rate, Maher said through a spokesman, he will allow no teaching about condoms to the more than 15,000 students in the 43 elementary and three high schools in the San Diego Diocese.