SIR: Bishop Emmanuel Badejo’s article: “The condoms on our minds” (November 30, 2010) refers. I have read all of the church’s documents on sexuality ranging from Pope Pius XI’s Casti Connubi (1932), to Pope Paul VI’s Humane Vitae (1968) and Pope Paul II’sEvangelium Vitae (1995) even down to instructions issued by the then Cardinal Ratzinger’s Congregatio pro Doctrina Fide (CDF). While some arguments are brilliant on what goes on in millions of bedrooms, others are founded on paranoia and alarming misreading of human sexuality.
The Catholic Church is not against birth control of course; only the artificial methods. Even she is against coitus interruptus because the intention is contraceptive. The problem with the use of condoms is that condoms are both preventers of HIV transmission and contraceptives. And the church is not eager to separate the two. The church has no problem in unequivocally dismissing other forms of contraception because none of them combine HIV combat duties. In the interview with Peter Seeweld that raised global eyebrows, the Pope was boxed by logic into making exception for male prostitutes because their gay sex has no risk of conception, only HIV transmission. So there is no sin of contraception.
The condom question became more complicated because when this current Pope as Cardinal Ratzinger was head of CDF, the Pontifical Biblical Commission and the International Theological Commission, he cast the opposition to the use of condoms as part of the infallible teachings of the magisterium that requires the full assent of faith.
However, Catholics of goodwill should go ahead and use condoms both for birth control and HIV prevention as they deem fit because for over 900 years they were made to believe that there is a place called Limbo (where unbaptized infants go after death). It is only of recent that the Pope bravely abolished that doctrine. Maybe it is going to take another 900 years before the church authorities see the light we have seen now about condoms.
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