Bishops Oppose Condoms, Favor Palestine Homeland

In two major policy statements on widely disparate issues, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops Thursday firmly rejected the use of condoms as a means of fighting the spread of AIDS and called for an independent Palestinian homeland that would recognize Israel’s right to exist and safeguard its borders.

Grappling with the complex and divisive issues during the final hours of their four-day meeting here, the 300 members of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued definitive statements on both subjects that go well beyond their earlier pronouncements.

On the AIDS question, the bishops said the church’s moral teachings should dictate public health and education policies, a controversial position even among Catholics.

The statement was immediately condemned by AIDS activists.

In promulgating their position on the Middle East, the bishops said they expect it will refocus attention on the issues and stimulate high-level dialogue.

Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony chaired the committees that drafted both papers.

While urging compassion for AIDS sufferers, the bishops’ statement, approved by a 219-4 vote, said chastity is the only “morally correct and medically sure way” to prevent the fatal disease.

Young people should avoid “being trapped into the ‘safe-sex’ myth, which is both a lie and a fraud,” Mahony said in presenting the paper.

“Not only is the use of prophylactics in an attempt to halt the spread of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus, which leads to AIDS) technically unreliable; promoting this approach means, in effect, promoting behavior which is morally unacceptable,” said the 55-page statement, “Called to Compassion and Responsibility.”

The AIDS statement essentially slammed the door to one interpretation of a 1987 AIDS paper by a bishops’ panel that seemingly allowed conditional support for condom education in schools.

The new document also condemned programs in which sterile needles are dispersed to drug addicts to lessen the risk of infection by sharing contaminated ones. Such measures could encourage greater drug abuse and “send the message that intravenous drug use can be made safe,” the bishops said.

AIDS activists criticized the bishops for venturing into the public health arena.

Not giving young people information about condoms is “abandoning them to death,” declared Jay Blotcher, a spokesman for the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power in New York.

The bishops’ paper is “absolutely irresponsible,” said Pat Roche, president of Dignity/USA, a Seattle-based national organization of about 5,000 gay and lesbian Catholics.

“If the bishops are the pharmacists, young people are the patients and chastity the only prescription, then there will be a lot of unfilled prescriptions and a lot of needless deaths,” Roche said in a telephone interview.

“Virtually all medical experts agree that condoms can play a valuable life-saving role in eliminating the spread of AIDS and HIV,” Roche added.

Experts generally say the best way to avoid transmission of HIV is to avoid sex. But most of them recommend that people engaging in sex should indeed use condoms.

Much of the 40-minute debate Thursday on the AIDS document centered on whether the disease in some cases could be considered an act of God’s vengeance or wrath against those who engage in promiscuous sex.

Archbishop John Quinn of San Francisco argued that such perceptions “are seized upon by those who use violence against gays.” In its final version, the statement says, “Without condoning self-destructive behavior or denying personal responsibility, we must reject the idea that this illness is a direct punishment by God.”

The wide-ranging paper has the weight of “great moral authority” for the nation’s 55 million Roman Catholics, according to the bishops’ outgoing president, Archbishop John May of St. Louis.

Polls have shown, however, that the church’s sexual teachings are widely ignored even by those who consider themselves good Catholics.

Among other points, the statement opposes universal mandatory AIDS testing, calls for increasing federal funds for AIDS research and denounces violence and discrimination against people with the virus.

The 50-page Middle East policy statement, “Toward Peace in the Middle East,” was unanimously approved. It said Palestinians have a right to “participate as equals” in negotiations affecting their destiny and should have clear title to their own homeland.

“The conclusion which follows from these assertions,” the statement continued, “is as clear as it has been controversial: Palestinian representation in Middle East negotiations leading to Palestinian territorial and political sovereignty.”

Salam Al-Marayati, director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles, called the statement “a dramatic positive step in the policy-making process.”

“It finally acknowledges the existence and the necessary participation of the Palestinian people,” he said Thursday.

Although Jewish groups were generally pleased with some aspects of the statement, many objected to the document’s emphasis on Palestinian sovereignty and territory.

Gunther Lawrence, director of information for the Synagogue Council of America in New York, an umbrella group of Conservative, Orthodox and Reform congregations and rabbis, said his organization’s differences with the bishops represented “a disagreement between close friends . . . rather than a rift.”

In a prepared statement, the Synagogue Council said the document “is not helpful to the peace process because it tends to favor those elements in the Palestinian community and the Arab world which have not yet rescinded their call for Israel’s destruction.”

Nevertheless, Gunther said publicity surrounding the paper had “sensitized Jewish leadership to the needs of Arab-Palestinians.”

Asked what impact he thought the statement would have, Mahony said, “I think it will be looked at very, very carefully by leaders of all the groups. . . . And I think it will be very helpful in Jewish-Catholic dialogue.”

Rabbi Harvey Fields of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, a leader of a Jewish delegation that met with Mahony during the formulation of the document, praised “the process and the dialogue” that the paper had stimulated. It is the first major policy statement on the Middle East that the U.S. bishops have issued in more than a decade.

In the document, the bishops urged Arab states to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, a step that the Vatican has itself not yet taken.

Calling on the United States to press for the removal of all foreign troops from Lebanon, the bishops also said the Bush Administration “is positioned to help break the political impasse in the Middle East. It cannot substitute for others, but it can assist them.”

The U.S. State Department said Thursday that it had no reaction to the bishops’ statement, and a White House spokesman said the Administration would have no comment.