POPE Benedict XVI has issued a call to conversion in his recently published comments on the use of condoms. He has not sought to alter the Church’s attitude to condoms as a preventive measure for HIV/AIDS, according to Archbishop Barry Hickey.
“The Church’s business is to call people to conversion, not to minimise the immorality of certain acts,” Archbishop Hickey said yesterday when commenting on the news flurry that followed certain comments by Pope Benedict XVI in his latest book.
“Only a change of behaviour to self-control, chastity, or fidelity to one married partner, will ensure that HIV is not transmitted,” he said.
“This is what the Church has to offer in the fight against AIDS.
“This is what the Pope has advocated and it is what the promoters of condoms should also be doing.
“Instead, they seem intent on doing everything possible to encourage sexual freedom and are very reluctant to promote the obvious human solution of self-control.”
The Pope’s words in his book created confusion as the world erupted with a rush of questions: Has the Pope changed his mind on condoms and now approves them? Is he advocating condoms as a good way of preventing the transmission of HIV?
Is he encouraging homosexual prostitutes (or any prostitutes) to use a condom? Will he now approve condoms as a legitimate contraceptive?
Archbishop Hickey said he had closely examined the words of the Holy Father and read what many other commentators had said.
“The Pope has said nothing to change the official policy on the use of condoms in the matter of HIV, and certainly nothing to change the teaching of the Church on contraception. The Pope is a successor of St Peter, the Rock. He, too, is a rock in the leadership of the Church. There is not the slightest reason to doubt it.”
The Archbishop said that the Pope had referred to a hypothetical homosexual prostitute with AIDS who wore a condom out of concern for the safety of the other person. He said this concern might lead to a further awakening of his moral sense, enough perhaps to cause him to turn his life around.
Elsewhere, the Holy Father had made his opposition to condoms as a prevention of disease very clear and had said that they might make the situation worse.
The reasons why condoms might make AIDS transmission worse are:
– They give a false sense of security to those engaged in sexual acts because condoms have a high failure rate.
– Continued use over even a short time will guarantee the transmission of HIV or any other sexually transmitted disease.
– Condoms do not encourage a change of behaviour, and only a change of behaviour in terms of self-control, chastity or fidelity to one married partner will ensure that HIV is not transmitted.
On his trip to Africa last year, the Pope said that only responsible human behaviour could overcome HIV/AIDS transmission, and that barriers like condoms only made matters worse because they did not require any change to a more moral lifestyle.
Health authorities whose only solution to HIV/AIDS is the condom should look again at its inadequacy as a policy and try to understand the Church’s opposition to it.