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__NEWS__South Africa_________________________
Against the Tide
Under heavy pressure and intense media scrutiny, the South African
bishops uphold the Church teaching on condom use.
By Noel Bruyns
Would you go bungee jumping if the cord protecting you from plummeting to your death had a 31 percent failure rate? Relying on a condom to stop the transmission of AIDS may involve similar odds. The British Medical Journal points out that the condom’s failure rate is an alarming 31 percent.
With these statistics in mind, Auxiliary Bishop Reginald Cawcutt of Cape Town, spokesman for the South African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC), in an interview with CWR on September 7, explained the bishops’ recent comment that the condom is a “misguided or flawed weapon” in the fight against the AIDS pandemic.
The issue came to the fore late in July when the SACBC reiterated the Church’s stance against the use of condoms, explaining that the ban applied even in the age of AIDS.
The bishops had been pressed from within their own ranks to rethink the prohibition on the use of condoms. Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenberg, the South African bishops’ liaison for AIDS programs, was quoted in the local and international press as observing that while bishops emphasized prevention through abstinence before and faithfulness in marriage, “we are in a world where people choose not to live according to these values.” In light of that reality, condom use would “prevent death,” Bishop Dowling said.
While the members of the SACBC were considering the question, the Southern Cross—South Africa’s national Catholic weekly—said in an editorial that Bishop Dowling was making a real contribution to the debate on the use of condoms to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS. His stance, the editorial said, “articulates what many Catholics, including moral theologians, have been reasoning for a long time.” The bishop was “no renegade bent on provocation,” the Southern Cross continued; rather he was speaking out because as a pastor he “has experienced the anguish of witnessing much AIDS-related suffering.”
A real scourge, a false hope
South Africa has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS infection in the world. Twenty percent of women in South Africa are HIV-positive, 4.7 million people (about 10 percent of the total population) are infected with HIV, and statisticians calculate that 60 percent of 15-year-olds may die of AIDS before they reach the age of 32. According to government figures, the epidemic is estimated to have orphaned between 600,000 and 800,000 children already.
The SACBC, however, stood firm on Church teaching. In reaching their decision, they were persuaded not simply by medical evidence on the efficacy of condoms but by the moral risks involved in promoting condom use. The bishops said they regarded “the widespread and indiscriminate promotion of condoms as an immoral and misguided weapon in our battle against HIV/AIDS.” The statement approved by the SACBC explained:
The use of condoms goes against human dignity. Condoms change the beautiful act of love into a selfish search for pleasure—while rejecting responsibility. Condoms do not guarantee protection against HIV/AIDS. Condoms may even be one of the main reasons for the spread of HIV/ AIDS. Apart from the possibility of condoms being faulty or wrongly used, they contribute to the breaking down of self-control and mutual respect.
The promotion and distribution of condoms in an effort to promote the practice of “safe sex” has contributed to the “breakdown of the moral fiber of our nations because it gives a wrong message,” the bishops continued. Such an approach, they argued, was tantamount to saying:
It is all right to sleep around as you like even if you are still young—as long as you do not contract HIV/ AIDS. There is no need for training yourself in self-control. There is no need to prepare yourself to be faithful to a future spouse. It is all right to use another person for selfish pleasure.
The bishops directly addressed their message to young people, urging them to reject such perceptions.
The SACBC did not place a complete ban on condoms, however, leaving a loophole for married couples. In situations in which one spouse is living with AIDS, the use of “appropriate means” to prevent the healthy partner from contracting HIV/AIDS would be acceptable, since “everyone has the right to defend one’s life against mortal danger,” the bishops said. That somewhat ambiguous language could certainly be read as a break from the strict prohibition promoted by the Vatican.
A test case
Bishop Cawcutt disclosed that the Church in many parts of the world had waited expectantly to see how the SACBC would respond to this test case. He reported:
Indeed, Bishop Dowling got out to the whole world. So too did our document. I personally spoke to dozens of international press people, radio and print—the BBC, journalists from the USA, Australia, and Ireland, to say nothing of local radio stations.
The bishops’ discussions on the issue had received 127 minutes of prime-time radio coverage in South Africa, according to one accounting. Eighteen television crews covered the SACBC’s press conference on their response to the call to reconsider condom use.
Reviewing media coverage, Southern Cross editor Gunther Simmermacher wrote that, predictably, the secular press, with few exceptions, had reacted harshly when the bishops did not lift the ban on condoms. The coverage, he said, was often “bordering on the hysterical.”
The Catholic weekly also reported that a group of women religious in Johannesburg had taken the bishops to task. The nuns supported the use of condoms, claiming that “indiscriminate” use was not the issue. Bishop Dowling’s initial call had been informed by “complex, ambiguous, and often unjust socio-economic situations,” they said.
Four male Dominicans in the town of Pietermaritzburg, while professing their support for the bishops’ position, also agreed with the nuns’ viewpoint. They advanced the argument that individuals who have sexual intercourse outside of marriage are not necessarily motivated merely by the selfish pursuit of pleasure. Many victims of South Africa’s endemic poverty are forced into prostitution by economic pressure, they said; and among the black population the system of migrant labor has caused “emotional needs arising from loneliness” while social pressures emphasize sexual prowess.
Bishop Cawcutt told CWR that both he and Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban, the SACBC president, have received “stacks of comments and letters” in response to the decision. “By far, the majority were supportive,” he said.
To illustrate the reaction, the bishop described a recent experience:
I had a very interesting meeting with the youth of our archdiocese two weeks ago: 600 of them at a Youth Sunday celebration. They had one hour to question me. Again, most were supportive. Teenagers said, for example: “It is wonderful to know that the bishops even bother about us, when we don’t bother about ourselves.”
Other youngsters had questioned the bishops’ statement, and defended their right to make use of condoms, the bishop conceded. When asked whether the question was closed for the South African bishops, Bishop Cawcutt replied:
The Church is alive, and therefore subject to change where change is possible—except of course in what is defined as de fide. As with Humanae Vitae, the arguments among moral theologians will continue endlessly. Of course the bishops will deal with the issue again.
In fact the question will arise again quite soon, since the South African bishops are now preparing a document on sexual morality, the bishop revealed. “I feel sure that the condom issue will come into that again,” he said, “but this time without the pressure of the press hounding us.”
Editor’s note: Bishop Cawcutt’s role as public spokesman for the SACBC in the bishops’ call for chaste behavior represents a dramatic change from his recent enthusiastic involvement with “St. Sebastian’s Angels,” the Internet site for actively homosexual Catholic clergy (described by CWR
in June 2000). We can hope that this change represents a genuine conversion.
Noel Bruyns is Assistant to the Editor of the Daily Dispatch,
and one of South Africa’s most prominent Catholic journalists.
Back to Catholic World Report October 2001 Table of Contents