AIDS, Condoms and Church Teaching

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - May 12, 2006

In recent weeks, there has been widespread speculation that the Church was about to revise her teaching on the immorality of condoms in order to prevent the transmission of HIV and AIDS. Articles and television news clips cited various Cardinals, inside and outside the Vatican Curia, who mentioned that the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care, at Pope Benedict's request, was preparing a study investigating the permissibility of condoms to halt the spread of the disease.

Many of the headlines condescendingly suggested that the Church's leaders were now recognizing what many secular pundits and large segments of the sexual education establishment had long ago concluded: that the Church's teachings with respect to abstinence and the immorality of birth control were failing, and that the only effective way to stop the spread of AIDS was through condoms and "safe sex" practices.

But these articles and news stories completely missed the point both of the concrete moral issue to which the Vatican is trying to respond and of the way by which the Church's teaching on sexual morality, rather than being weakened, is actually being reinforced.

The central contextual issue is a particularly heinous one, emanating mainly, but not exclusively, from certain African countries where the Gospel has been only partially assimilated: what to do when husbands infected with HIV or AIDS continue to insist on their marital "right" to intercourse with their wife or wives. In this situation, which is tantamount to marital rape, is it moral for the woman to ask her husband to use a condom to prevent her from contracting this deadly disease?

The answer, as the interviewed Cardinals have stated, is yes. That this has caused so much surprise — and led to headlines that the Church might be "changing her teaching" on condoms — shows how little most people really know the doctrine contained in Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. The pope focused on the conditions for the morality of the conjugal act. Against ideas prevalent at the time, he emphasized that the conjugal act has an intrinsic two-fold meaning, unity and procreation. In order for spouses truly to "make love," he wrote, they needed to be open to God and to the life he might want to enflesh as a natural fruit of their one-flesh marital union.

The situation of marital rape is already a sinful act of violence of the husband against the wife. But when the husband has AIDS, it is also potentially homicidal. The woman's asking her husband to use a condom in those circumstances would not be a violation of the teaching of the Church. She would not be voluntarily trying to separate love from life and to evict God from the conjugal act — her husband, by his actions, has already done this — but to try to limit the evil effects of her husband's unloving deed.

More complicated is the situation — which the Pontifical Council is also expected to address — when the spouses, one of whom has HIV or AIDS, wish to engage in consensual marital relations. Is it possible for them morally to use a condom to prevent the transmission of the disease while tolerating, but not desiring, the contraceptive impact of such an action? A few Catholic moral theologians have been trying to make the case that it would be licit in those circumstances under the traditional principle of double-effect. But their argument is not convincing.

The main question that would need to be asked is a simple one that does not require a doctorate in moral theology to answer. Could an action in which a person risks the life of his or her spouse ever be truly loving? Could a couple in such circumstances "make love" when there would be a real danger that the uninfected spouse may contract a deadly disease? As sexual education instructors admit, condoms are only about 81% effective in preventing pregnancy; the rates for preventing the transmission of the AIDS virus, which is much smaller than sperm, are obviously lower. Even if an intact condom were capable of being 100% effective, however, there would always be the chance that the condom could break during intercourse. Could a couple that truly loved each other — in other words, that was truly willing the other's good — ever morally engage in the conjugal equivalent of Russian roulette?

That's the question that the Pontifical Council is presently studying and preparing to answer. Stay tuned.

A Mother's Hand

Twenty-five years ago tomorrow, Pope John Paul II was shot in St. Peter's Square by Mehmet Ali Agca. The sight of this vigorous leader collapsed in the arms of his priest secretary and his white cassock bathed in crimson is one most Catholics will never forget. The bullet, fired by a trained assassin at close range, pierced five vital organs, but failed to kill him. Pope John Paul II would later say that "it was a mother's hand that guided the bullet's path." He was referring, of course, to Mary, under the title of Our Lady of Fatima, who appeared to the three shepherd children in Fatima 89 years ago tomorrow. Through that same mother's intercession, let us pray for the protection of John Paul II's successor and for all who boldly preach the truth of her Son.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.