CHRISTIAN MORALITY

The Signs of the Times

by Mark Brumley

What should the Church do about the spread of AIDS? Some people have tried to map out a new course for the Catholic Church by advocating condoms as a means of "safe sex" for homosexuals. Given the penchant of many Catholics today for acquiescing to the spirit of the age in the name of reading the "signs of the times," that is entirely predictable.

Equally predictable, in another sense, but less politically correct is the Pontifical Council for the Family's recent document, The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality. Pushing condoms to promote "safe sex" is "a dangerous and immoral policy, based on the illusory theory that a condom can provide sufficient protection against AIDS," it declares.

That not everyone who calls himself a Catholic agrees with the Vatican should not startle us, anymore than it should surprise us that not every Catholic agrees that greed is bad and chastity good. Some Catholics argue, more or less along the lines of the surrounding "post-Christian" culture, that homosexuals will "do it anyway," so better that they "do it" with condoms. Condoms do not thwart the meaning of the sex act between homosexuals, say the Catholic condom supporters, since the act itself is already contrary to the God-given meaning of sexual intercourse. So, they conclude, one may counsel homosexuals to use condoms to reduce the risk of a physical evil - sexually transmitted disease - without increasing the moral evil of the situation.

But it is not at all clear that condoms do not, in fact, make an already evil act - homosexual activity - worse. One's motive for using a condom may be good - to prevent spreading disease. But using a condom can still be seen as yet another massive attack on the beauty and goodness of sexual intercourse, a further mutilation of the marital act. Like slashing up a man's corpse after you have brutally stabbed him to death.

And the pro-condom argument assumes what is by no means certain: that a given homosexual is, in fact, "going to do it anyway." Homosexual activity, with or without condoms, is a risky business, one which an informed homosexual won't take lightly. But condom use seems to eliminate reasonable risk - at least that is what many people want you to think. It might, therefore, actually increase homosexual activity.

Consider this: a homosexual man who might otherwise prudently avoid something he perceives to be dangerous -homosexual activity - may be lulled into thinking that condoms will protect him. Or perhaps he struggles against homosexual temptation yet still occasionally succumbs. Thinking the physical dangers have been eliminated by latex, he may "act out" more frequently. Thus, allowing condom use can actually foster immoral activity that might not have occurred "anyway" or might have occurred less frequently. That poses increased moral, if not physical, dangers.

Furthermore, the sense of physical security that condoms foster is largely false. Condoms do not prevent the spread of many sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and are notoriously precarious, especially in homosexual activity. Rather than reducing the physical evil of STDs which often accompany the moral evil of homosexual activity, condoms may, in fact, heighten the danger of infection for people by encouraging them to be more sexually active than otherwise.

Nor should we miss the larger social consequences of promoting condom use. "Baptizing" condoms to prevent AIDS among homosexuals can easily be extended to the much larger population of heterosexuals who are also supposedly "going to do it anyway." The social drive to push condoms, not merely to tolerate them, will be overwhelming, especially since the pro-condom message is trumpeted everywhere by the secular culture.

The experience of Humanae vitae proves that when pastoral ministry turns a blind eye in one area of the moral life, this invariably leads to widespread license and immorality in other areas as well. Many pastors "looked the other way" on contraception. The result: well-over half of American Catholics ignore the Church's teaching on the subject, when a mere forty years ago they embraced it. Worst still, dissent on contraception has led to dissent elsewhere, notably on abortion, in vitro fertilization and homosexual activity. Tolerating condoms to prevent AIDS amounts to letting the camel park his proverbial nose in the tent; soon the rest of the beast will take up permanent residence inside and he will likely bring his friends along, too. Cardinal Ratzinger had it right when, in 1988, he responded to a point about condoms in the U.S. bishops' statement, The Many Faces of AIDS. He noted that allowing condoms to prevent AIDS is "a kind of behavior which would result in at least the facilitation of evil," not merely its toleration.

Catholic moral teaching sometimes permits a person to tolerate a lesser evil that one cannot eradicate without causing a greater one. But, argued Cardinal Ratzinger, promoting condom use as a way of preventing AIDS does not simply tolerate an existing evil, it facilitates evil. That a Christian may not do, even for a good end, as Pope John Paul II reminds us in Veritatis splendor.

All roads do not necessarily lead to Rome on this issue. There is a deep divergence between those Catholics who advocate condoms to reduce the spread of AIDS and those who embrace the Vatican's The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality. It remains to be seen how many of those engaged in pastoral ministry in this country will side with the pro-condom camp rather than with Rome. But, given the pro-condom crowd's obvious difficulty in accurately reading "the signs of the times," the ordinary Catholic-in-the-pew will be pardoned if he questions just which road, narrow or broad, they are really recommending and exactly where it leads.

Mark Brumley is the Managing Editor of The Catholic Faith magazine.