RELIGION CATHOLICS : Bishops Retrench on Condom Use

Countering a controversial earlier position, a committee of Roman Catholic bishops Thursday issued a draft of a new policy paper on the AIDS crisis that strongly rejects any use of condoms to prevent the spread of the fatal disease.

The document, which says sexual abstinence outside marriage is the only moral and practical solution, also condemns programs in which sterile needles are dispersed to drug addicts to dissuade them from placing themselves at even greater risk of infection by sharing contaminated needles.

Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony, chairman of the five-member committee, was one of several bishops who had objected to the earlier statement that gave implicit permission to church hospitals and agencies to provide information on condoms as a potential safeguard against acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Mahony called the first statement “terribly confusing” to Catholics. Compromising on Catholic teaching in order to be more influential in public policy “has never been our role,” he said. “Even to start down that road is fraught with difficulties.”

Diocese of Orange Bishop Norman F. McFarland said he had not read the draft statement, which came in Thursday’s mail, but restated his support for the teaching of chastity as the only moral way to prevent AIDS and his opposition to the use of condoms.

“It gives a false sense of security for one thing,” he said, “because condoms are not a sure (preventive response to) AIDS. But even if they were, they couldn’t be used for that purpose because it would be an immoral act.”

Soon after the first statement was approved by the U.S. bishops’ 50-member administrative board in December, 1987, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, joined in the criticism and admonished the U.S. bishops for not consulting with Rome.

Mahony, adapting the statement for his own archdiocese, revised five sentences to flatly prohibit the endorsement of public health recommendations on condoms.

The nation’s 300 bishops reached a compromise at a June, 1988, national meeting by letting stand the 1987 AIDS statement, while at the same time commissioning a second, possibly broader, statement.

The new draft was commissioned “to carry the discussion further and . . . have behind it the weight of the entire American hierarchy,” Bill Ryan, a spokesman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, said Thursday.

The 68-page statement, “Called to Compassion: A Response to the HIV/AIDS Crisis,” will probably be approved by the full body of bishops next month. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.

“HIV/AIDS must be opposed with education, counseling and persuasion,” the new document said. But it charged that promoting condom use is a “quick-fix tactic” doomed to failure in the long run.” Although some studies have shown condoms are not a foolproof method of preventing infection, health officials advocate their use as one way of stemming the spread of AIDS.

“The safe-sex approach to preventing HIV/AIDS, though frequently advocated, compromises human sexuality and can lead to promiscuous sexual behavior,” the document said. “Not only is the use of prophylactics in an attempt to halt the spread of HIV technically unreliable; promoting this approach means, in effect, promoting behavior which is morally unacceptable.

“We fault these programs for another reason as well. Recognizing that casual sex is a risk to health, (these programs) consistently advise the use of condoms in order to eliminate the risk. This is poor and inadequate advice.”

The official Catholic teaching against using contraceptive devices--even within marriage--is disregarded by a large majority of the nation’s Catholics, according to the preponderance of surveys taken during the last two decades.

And the Catholic prohibition against using condoms to stem the AIDS epidemic runs counter to the policies of most mainline Protestant churches and Jewish agencies, which generally follow recommendations by the U.S. surgeon general’s office.

The Rev. Albert Ogle, an Episcopal priest who directs the All Saints AIDS Service Center in Pasadena, criticized the new bishops’ statement for “not addressing what is really happening in their communities.

“The reality,” Ogle said, “is that young people in our parishes are being infected by the virus and will get sick and die and infect others because the (Roman Catholic) church has painted itself in a corner over birth control. . . . The church is killing young people, and that is not a pro-life stance.”

Ogle said he had worked with Mahony in founding the Interfaith AIDS Council of Southern California. He said he believes that the Roman Catholic Church could prevent the spread of AIDS in the Latino community by realistically addressing the problem.

“I believe there is moral judgment upon the church” to respond, Ogle said.

Retired United Methodist Bishop Melvin Wheatley called it “totally irrational” to think that providing condoms to people who are sexually active will undermine the church’s teachings on abstinence. Wheatley, of Laguna Hills, will be the featured speaker Oct. 27 at a conference of the AIDS Interfaith Council of Southern California.