Pope sows doubt on condom use

IS there about to be a major rethink within the Vatican on contraception?

It is far too early to answer this in the affirmative, though speculation has been prompted by Pope Benedict XVI’s surprising statement on condoms.

Context is everything here. A moral principle is one thing; the application of that principle in a pastoral setting is something else. But the Pope’s admission that condom use may be a morally responsible act in certain circumstances is significant.

Just how significant remains to be seen. Benedict XVI talked in the very narrow context of a male prostitute using a condom to guard against the spread of HIV/AIDS, while going on to reiterate the Catholic Church’s opposition to the widespread availability and use of condoms.

He made his surprising statement in the course of interviews for a new book given to a German journalist. The book is entitled The Light of the World: The Pope, The Church and The Signs of the Times, and the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano ran excerpts of the interviews on Saturday.

The logic of the Pope’s latest comment would appear to imply that in a marriage situation, it would be morally acceptable for a husband, infected with HIV/AIDS, to use condoms to safeguard his wife.

However, from what we know at this stage, the interviews, conducted by German journalist Peter Seewald, did not extend to the example of a married couple.

If that were the case, then it would add far greater significance to Benedict XVI’s remarks, opening the way for a reappraisal of the vexed question of the morality of condom use and other forms of contraception, not just in the specific context of preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS, but within marriage itself.

Given what we know just now, it would be very unwise to conclude the Pope is on the threshold of any such major reappraisal. At the same time, given the controversy caused by Benedict XVI in 2008, when he said that AIDS “cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even aggravate the problem”, we are undoubtedly witnessing a rethink of sorts.

The Pope made the 2008 remarks while on a flight to Africa, the worst-hit continent for HIV/AIDS.

“By saying that condoms exacerbate the problems of HIV/AIDS, the Pope has publicly distorted scientific evidence to promote Catholic doctrine on this issue,” the London-based medical journal, The Lancet, said in a stinging attack in its editorial.

The papal comments added to the widespread perception that the Catholic Church’s attitude to sexuality in general, and contraception in particular, was hopelessly out-of-date, and out-of-touch with modern developments and philosophical thinking.

It has been apparent since the 1960s that nowhere has the Catholic Church suffered such a catastrophic loss of authority than in the area of human sexuality. As far back as 1977, the Catholic psychiatrist Dr Jack Dominian was warning about “worldwide disenchantment and concern regarding the Church’s attitude to sexuality”.

Writing after the publication of two Vatican documents – Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae on July 25, 1968, and the Declaration on Sexual Ethics from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith on December 29, 1975 – he said these had left “most Roman Catholics, particularly the young, puzzled and frustrated”.

In his 1977 book Proposals for a New Sexual Ethic, he said many people believed “that the whole basis of Christian thinking on sexual morality needs fundamental reconstruction”. The sad reality, more than three decades later, is that the need for this reconstruction is greater than ever.

For many Catholics, 1968 was something of a watershed. The decision by Pope Paul VI to publish Humanae Vitae on July 25, 1968 (reaffirming the ban on contraception) shocked many Catholic couples around the world, and called into question the very credibility of the papacy.

Many still wonder why Pope Paul VI felt it necessary to countermand the clear conclusions of the Vatican’s own commission of experts, which had recommended a change. Just as puzzling today is the fact that, despite the views of most Catholics, and the fact that for many of them the method of birth regulation has ceased to be an issue at all, Pope Paul’s successor, Benedict XVI (just like Pope John Paul II before him), continues to maintain the old position?

The crucial vote by the commission of experts was taken in June 1966, and it showed that nine members of the commission said contraception was not intrinsically evil, three said it was, and the remaining three abstained. Among the three who said contraception was evil was the only Irish member of the commission – Archbishop Thomas Morris of Cashel.

The insistence on the old position – first formally enunciated by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Casti Connubii (published in December 1930) – was and remains deeply puzzling and hurtful to many Catholics. Equally puzzling is the way in which the present pope continues to make “orthodoxy” on birth control a touchstone of loyalty to Rome.

The divisions caused by Humanae Vitae ran very deep and continue to fester to this day. And, indeed, Paul VI was so shocked by the hostile reaction to the encyclical around the world that for the remaining 10 years of his pontificate he never issued another one.

None of this seemed to matter in Rome, at least up to this weekend. There was no recognition the Catholic Church’s attitude to sexuality was hopelessly outdated. Old hardline views still prevailed. The latest proof is the Vatican ban imposed on an Irish priest, following his article on homosexuality.

Fr Owen O’Sullivan, a Capuchin, wrote an article in The Furrow magazine in which he suggested that homosexuality was “simply a facet of the human condition”. If it’s not that, then what is it? Against this background, and despite the latest comments from Benedict XVI, it would be very premature to see short extracts from a new collection of interviews with the 83-year-old pope as signalling a major shift towards the formulation of a new sexual ethic on the part of the Vatican.