The Angry Fag

News and Views from a Man Who Likes Men

Pope Commissions Study on Morality of Condom Use for Spouses with HIV

Posted on | May 2, 2006

I guess logic and reason are still missing in the Vatican these days. Apparently Pope Benedict XVI, aka Joseph Ratzinger, needs a study in order to determine if it is morally acceptable for the Catholic Church to condone the use of condoms in marriage where one partner has HIV. They actually have to study whether or not it is moral to help protect someone from HIV.

Naturally the conservatives in the church are against such a move and want the Humanae Vitae, a 1968 encyclical written by Pope Paul VI, to remain the standard for Catholic doctrine in regards to abortion, birth control, and other matters of human life. This document forbids the practice of abortion even if it is medically necessary, sterilization procedures unless they are secondary effects of a procedure such as a woman needing to get a hysterectomy due to cancer, any kind of artificial birth control such as condoms. AIDS came into the spotlight roughly ten years later and has become a world-wide problem with over forty million infected and a death toll of twenty-five million since 1981.

But I will give credit where credit is due. Even though a lot of the AIDS care in Africa, which unarguably has the worst AIDS problem in the world, is provided by Catholic charities and their workers are forbidden from distributing condoms, the Catholic Church is at least trying to look into the issue albeit twenty-five years too late.

Note: I apologize for the poor performance of this site earlier. My hosts’ data center had some network issues….

Filed Under Religion, Sex |

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