AmericanPapist Comments
Well it will be interesting to see if you find anything -- I wouldn't put too much stock in just one story. Reporting can be a lot more, umm, flexible that one is used to in the West. "Church sources" could be just some random priest.
I did a Google News search on "catholic church india condoms" and the only story that came up was the DNA one you linked above (and, right now, DNA's website is down).
Here's a piece on the pledge mentioned above, from The Indian Catholic, an online e-zine run by the Indian Bishops. Nothing mentioned there about condoms.
Nothing at all of this nature on the CBCI site either.
Thanks for the research, GG. I'm not expecting to find anything either, I was more hoping to find an article on the same story that might fill-in/clear up the situation.
I did find this on the CBCI website:
6. On the occasion of World AIDS Day-2007, the Catholic Church in India, with active participation of youth, has planned on-going programmes, which I strongly feel would help us to have a focused-approach in our interventions. These include the following:
i. Pledge by One Million Youth: 1000 youth in each of the 1000 places will take an oath to educate themselves and others with accurate information on HIV, to be personally responsible not to spread the virus, to avoid discrimination against people living with HIV and to care for all those affected and infected. This pledge has to be an expression of a genuine inner conviction, an act of well formed conscience, `that echoes in their depths’ (GS, 16). Therefore, this commitment, formally taken in schools, colleges, parishes and communities, is to be organized with meaningful in-put sessions, and is to be followed up with youth leadership programmes, which can be taken as a special activity in the year 2008. As the World AIDS Campaign reminds us, each one should `take the lead - To stop AIDS. Keep the promise’.
The above can be found
here
As you can see there is no mention of condoms but there is mention of the 1 Million (1000 X 1000) and there are 4 pledges (almost 5). Of course, I bet these Church sources are unnamed priests or lay people giving them the condom message.
Don't think this is a sinners only area. Nurses and police and prison guards are in danger of this all the time either through a badly passed needle (nurses) or a bite from a criminal (cops and guards). Or if you yourselves were on vacation in the third world and received a bad blood transfusion after an auto accident.
You will notice that this linked 2001 South African Bishops Conference statement could be the precedent....scroll down to the statement to married couples and read attentively..but notice first the warnings against condoms for others:
http://www.oikoumene.org/en/reso...ca-
bishops.html
Another report I saw on this interpreted it to mean condoms on the infertile days which would mean that the procreative/unitive would not be affected since the days involved were not procreative by nature....
then abstinence on the fertile days to protect from AIDS. The report did not note if that was a later Bishops clarification.
I wonder if the MSM will ever get the hint that sexual promiscuity or sex education is part of the cause for the AIDS epidemic?
"Will Vatican review stand on condoms?"
That's the code word for "the Church's teachings are debatable."
Thanks for writing the "Catholic Church in India" and not the "Indian Catholic Church," as the article does. Aside from being inaccurate, it sends the wrong (somewhat subtle perhaps) message about the nature of the Church. And it just bothers me.
I just tried to find something on that recently. Reasoning from principles - the necessity to maintain the openness of each sexual act to procreation - it seems to me that the use of condom should be, catholically speaking of course, banned even from married couples of which one is seropositive (of subject to another sexually tranmissive illness). It seems also evident to me that in that case the attained spouse can't force his partner to have intercourse.
So I did research and the only thing I found (but I did only some web research : looking in moral catholic publications you'll certainly find things on that - I once heard that I was indeed heavily debated) was a statement of the Episcopal conference of Congo, at the beginning of 2007, saying that the only solution in such cases is abstinence.
Here's the link.
downloads.dcms.kirchenserver.org/22/2172/1/
49539953466271389396.doc
Oliver
If an NFP couple with AIDS in one person know the infertile days with moral certitude, how is it separating the unitive from the procreative if they use a condom or two at once for safety on the non fertile days and abstain on the fertile days since the procreative is not present at all on the non fertile days just as it is not present in the elderly who post date the bible (the OT miracles around this issue were meant to prepare the Jews to accept the Virgin Birth...a still greater miracle than Sarah and Samson's mother giving birth after menapause).
Oddly enough, the accuracy of NFP which did not obtain at the time prior to Humanae Vitae...now that very accuracy rationally determines the non fertile days. Rome would look non rational if Rome says that the procreative is present in the act on non fertile days and a theme of this Pope has been the meeting of faith and reason both at Regensburg and in the new encyclical.
I think the dilemna Rome is in is that it knows that the South African precedent makes sense on the non fertile days but for Rome to say it out loud would be to have every fornicator worldwide edit what they say to mean total license in the area of fornication. Rome knows that things are better accepted with time and that if Bishops conferences do this option first, it might be more orderly than if Rome was forced to announce something that would be immediately distorted both in the media and in countless fornicators as their now having a rationale for what they would do anyway. The Josephite marriage has problems...we have produced no books on it despite the touting of it as viable/ Mary according to Aquinas had no concupiscence at all after the Incarnation which is untrue of all other women/ and Joseph seems to have been aged anyway since he vanishes after Jesus is 12 in the gospel accounts. So Mary and Joseph were not sorely tempted and I Corinthians 7 tells couples not to separate for long and only for prayer but to return together again lest the devil enter in. Certainly couples wherein one has been disabled thoroughly by a car accident receive grace in proportion to their dilemna....but does that mean that non disabled couples with AIDS receive the identical help. To believe so would be to assume what has to be proved.
Is this a rational area or one simply of a pre-rational command despite any new developments.
until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned . . .
until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned
Bill
NFP can't be used with condoms since the condoms disturb the accuracy of the determination of the infertile vs. fertile times. Mucus patches can be confused with semen and thus important clues about the time of fertility/infertility can be missed.
Condoms fail in preventing the transmission of the AIDs virus at least 15% of the time. How is it loving your spouse to give them a lethal disease? The non-affected spouse is being used by the infected spouse for their gratification. That is not love, that is exploitation. Again, the martial act is not the be- all end-all of married life. People with a secular mentality need to realize this. The Church is never going to approve condoms for married couples.
I have a book, by Prof. Dr.Ferdinand Holböck, prelate and capitular priest and former member of the Papal Theological Academy on saintly and blessed married couples, called "Heilige Eheleute". It is interesting to see how many lived as brother and sister, either from the beginning or after a certain time in their married life and they achieved holiness.
Condoms fail in preventing the transmission of the AIDs virus at least 15% of the time. How is it loving your spouse to give them a lethal disease? The non-affected spouse is being used by the infected spouse for their gratification.
Two comments: The NIH statement of effectiveness of condoms is that their use reduces the risk of transmission 85% from the risk without the use -- that doesn't mean there's an 15% risk of transmission in condom-protected intercourse. I'm not saying that you say that but I think there's a danger a quick reader may draw that conclusion.
Second, the statement that "the non-affected spouse is being used by the infected spouse for their gratification" assumes that the desire for intercourse is that of the infected person only. It's quite possible for me to imagine that the non-affected spouse could be at least as interested in the gratification of the marital act as the affected spouse, perhaps more so. It's clear that the Church has recognized the great benefits of the marital act --- if the risk of transmission with condoms is not so high as to be suicidal, it seems there is an argument for allowing their use under that circumstance.
If AIDs is not lethal...?
Yes, the non-infected spouse may want to be intimate and wishes to risk being infected with AIDs. Fine, but don't complain about the fact that condoms are not allowed for married couples or that in spite of them, the non-infected spouse will eventually become infected. Maybe they want to die together?
Condoms interfere with the practice of NFP. Also a barrier is introduced between the spouses. Every act is to be open to life whether it occurs in the infertile or fertile time. I suppose the two could climb into big protective suits. But it makes no sense. Intimacy and love are deliberately limited. This is not the marital act, but mutual masturbation.
And this is definitely exploitation and not marital love.
LvB
If mucus patches can be confused with semen, why did the South African bishops not catch that and you did.... or are you overstating something physical herein in order to safeguard your defensive position (how did semen escape the condom if the condom was properly used and not casually put on; and where would this casualness arise in the context of AIDS within a married Catholic couple?)
And if Rome does change on this by letting bishops conferences allow it unfettered by Rome, will you schism in your heart though not in the outside forum? I would caution against it because the area you are discussing does not even fall under infallibility; that's why Archbishop Amato of the CDF at the Rahner Conference in 2002 could note to John Allen that Rahner had been an "orthodox theologian" and Rahner openly not privately dissented from HV along with Bernard Haring both of whom knew their dogmatics since Rahner edited the Enchiridion Symbolorum for years and Haring was one of the most prominent defenders of Rome's position as a moral theologian until he ran into a number of extreme cases in real life in the pastoral setting...one involving a nervous breakdown of a woman with too many children in the days when the natural methods were not accurate at all. Remember this is an area wherein I doubt that you yourself could cite more than 8 Popes who have said a thing about this area and there have been 265 Popes with only the modern ones writing about it while we have sentences at most from several other Popes. In the main, there were fragments on this topic from saints and from the didache and from several early councils in a world wherein contraception was strongly linked in the Christian mind to bizarre Roman empire cults like the one Augustine belonged to for ten years in which he practiced natural rythmn to avoid all children but had a son, Adeodatus, since classical rythmn was scientifically incorrect.
Latter in the baroque period, a Catholic moral theologian, Tomas Sanchez, was to permit parents to sell their children into servitude without sin only if it became necessary to feed the other children in the family. In the 19th century when the natural rythmns were being discovered scientifically, clergy sent dubia..questions...to Rome asking if Catholics could use the natural rythmns....wherein several times Rome assented.....all of which means that Catholics now are very unaware of how recent even the permission for natural methods is in catholic history. Arthur Vermeesch, the chief moral theologian of the early 20th century saw the natural methods as a lesser evil for onanists and the local bishops conference of Malines warned that it would lead to abortions. The modern Popes had all they could do to permit it without once again being faced with schism on the right. If you are familiar with right wing schismatics who have left the Church, some of them argue for no use of natural rythmns.
The protective rates of condoms
The protective rates of condoms are 100% if used with extreme caution.
The act is not open to the transmission of life on the infertile days....that is a non rational statement and you now have a Pope who lectured islam that religion and rationality should meet. Sterile couples and the elderly are allowed to marry in the church and their marriage is not open to the transmission of life.
Greatly truncated post above....I should have copied it first.
Sex education encourages AIDS?
Sigh. Such statements.
The South Aftrican Bishops and you do not seem to have much more than a superficial knowledge of the modern practice of NFP. NFP cannot determine in advance the fertile time. One determines it day-by-day. And yes every act must remain open to life, whether it appears that the infertile time is at hand or one is elderly or whatever. How is protecting yourself during the act from some aspect or consequence of it giving yourself totally body and soul to the spouse? It can't be because you are withholding from the spouse and putting conditions on your intimacy.
The periodic abstinence of NFP does not guarantee non-pregnancy, like castration does. Sometimes things happen so that pregnancy does occur even in times thought to be infertile or to couples who were thought to be physically infertile. The body has an amazing power to heal itself, given the proper nutrition and circumstances.
Yes, condoms do break. Condoms have naturally-occuring voids many times larger than the AIDS virus in them which is why transmission of AIDS and of semen can still occur. Do you believe all that guff about how contraception prevents pregnancy all the time? Only abstinence and castration are 100%. That is why, according to Kate Michelman, the former head of NOW, abortion is the heart of family planning.
Yes, and condoms do interfere with the reading of the mucus sign of fertility by confusing it with semen.
I would suggest you take an NFP class, by contacting NFPandmore.org.
Let's talk the facts and not go off on tangents like you seem wont to do. You are ignorant of how NFP works and the bishops had bad advisors who were also equally uniformed about NFP and condoms. Bishops are not known for their infallibility in matters of faith and morals. Only the Holy Father is.
Jesus calls everyone to take up their cross and follow him. Continence for the sake of love and the kingdom of God is a very noble thing.
How do priests and religious and singles manage to do without the marital act? They are not called to it. Accepting God's will and calling is the only answer. If the marital act could be lethal to your spouse, out of love, you abstain. That is God speaking to the couple. God always forgives, man sometimes forgives, but nature never forgives.
God is not going to reverse the law of gravity when you are pushed off a building just because it is an injustice or unfair to you. The bishops can't reverse the law of gravity, nor can they reverse the laws of the marital act.
"Sterile couples and the elderly are allowed to marry in the church and their marriage is not open to the transmission of life."
Bill, there is a difference between a marital act that is not likely to result in a pregnancy and a marital act that is not open to resulting in a pregnancy, and that difference is important. Surely you understand this.
LvB
NFP has an exceptionally high rate of non pregnancy when that is the intention for serious reasons....more so than other forms of contraception.... but you have herein morphed that record into an amorphous paradigm in which anything can happen
at any time during NFP and one has no idea from day to day if this is the infertile part of the month or not. Time becomes amorphous in your post above and thus every day of the month is a total giving because one can get pregnant apparently any day of the month. Thanks but you have a tendency to sell.
To another aspect of your selling process: the New England Journal of Medicine August 11, 1994 author A. Saracco, et al., "Man-to-Woman Sexual Transmission of HIV: Longitudinal Study of 343 Steady Partners of Infected Men,"..... results 130 couples wherein one partner was HIV positive using condoms perfectly for 20 months....not one case of transmission.
Perhaps those stats were available to the Bishops in South Africa since the Journal has an international reputation.
Mike
The male is constantly open to the transmission of life; the act is not....that is why NFP works. It's accuracy and dependability are touted when the issue of dependability is at hand. And suddenly that touting of dependability vanishes when the same debaters need each act to be a total giving of self. Two contradictory stories going on at the same time.
NFP is not contraception. Contraception deliberately frustrates a part of the act. Abstaining is not frustrating the act. Contraception leads to pregnancies, too, since only abstinence and castration are 100 %.
The nature of modern NFP is day-to-day obsevation. It is not calendar rhythm. And it is the Church, (read Humanae Vitae) who says that each and every act must be open to life, even if God wants to perform a miracle during the infertile time. And when you reflect on the nature of the act, you can't be totally self-giving wearing a condom. There is a physical barrier.
Also, there are other studies which show that HIV transmission occurs between spouses using condoms. There was a Brazilian study which showed that HIV transmission was delayed, but it still inevitably happened between spouses where one was initially infection-free. And considering that the voids, i.e. holes are many times larger than the AIDS vrus, it is not surprising.
And again the South African bishops had bad advisors. Their statements are no more authoritative than yours or mine for the Church.
Your figures about effectiveness of condom use as 100% are incorrect for pregnancy and AIDs.
LvB
I suggest asking your pastor about when infallibility occurs and he will note to you that it is rarer than you inferred in several places. That is why Pope John Paul II prosecuted not one theologian on the birth control issue itself alone though there were hundreds who publically dissented from Humanae Vitae. Had any of them dissented from the Immaculate Conception or Assumption encyclicals, he would have justly prosecuted every last one of them because both those encyclicals were infallible and stated within their texts that what was being said was proposed by God.
We needed dissenting theologians in the centuries in which five Popes pressured secular rulers to burn heretics or be excommunicated themselves. No dissenters were heard audibly. We needed dissenting theologians while just titled slavery due to being born to a slave mother was in canon law as a good thing from Aquinas noting of it onward. There were few dissenters...yet we needed them. That's what you mean by my going off on a tangent because you do not want to find out about a reality of the Church that contradicts your Hall Mark card version. Tough. Vatican II said that the Church will not be perfect until the end of time and that she herself follows the path of repentance til then.
The holes...voids in condoms... actually are a factor in the lambskin condoms which no one with HIV should use and were not used in the New England Journal of Medicine study I'm sure....the study that you dismissed since you are above the New England Jourmal of Medicine though you then cite an entirely unnamed study in Brazil....that is selling, sales, marketing by assertions in sheer bulk.
If you read further than the remarks of a Roman Cardinal from years ago, you might learn about polyurethane and latex and frankly there are no such large holes there but one could wear two condoms anyway in order to protect against breakage itself.
You have zero regard for what God said about sexual abstinence in I Corinthians 7 where He noted that couples should not abstain for long except for prayer and then return to each other lest the devil enter in. Given that Christians are divided by Paul (and God therefore) into the mature and the infants...the spiritual and the carnal, we can assume that God was principally speaking to the majority who are carnal and that they are not to abstain for long per God..lest the devil enter in and they are then unfaithful. If a Pope likewise has no regard to that passage due to tradition, then that tradition of his will end one day as the Catholic tradition on usury and just titled slavery ended even though each lasted over a millenium.
You have zero interest in what God said there just as a recent Pope had zero interest in the 5 passages wherein wives are told to obey their husbands. Ergo the catechism no longer mentions wifely obedience. It is a Catholic disease of the modern times only. Centuries ago Catholics would not simply
contiunued
It is a Catholic disease of the modern times only. Centuries ago Catholics would not simply ignore what God said. Now they do and prefer non infallible encyclicals of Popes to what God actually said inerrantly.
Kenya cannot afford preferring papal writings to what God said on this issue having 12 million HIV orphans...wherein both parents are dead. Mozambique is similar. Christiane Amapour did a special on it last night and 62 year old grandmothers are taking care of 9 slowly starving children in the one case...children who live only by UN donated food supplements that are mixed with water. So Africa needs still more mothers dying from HIV so that Rome can keep a non infallible position. Here is an idea. Let a Pope step forward and use the wording of the Assumption encyclical and do an ex cathedra enecyclicl on birth control. Not one has done so. John Paul had the time and rather spent it on travel and TOB which he knew as a talk did not have historical cache as to document level.
Total giving of self? A Catholic waitress and her husband, a car mechanic who have low income and one child with recurring and expensive medical bills which they will never be able to pay for the rest of their lives....can use NFP to avoid all future children and they pray constantly that they are ascertaining precisely those days of the month in which the act is not open to the transmission of life. Are they giving totally of each other as they pray for no more pregnancies and pray that they have no more children? Yes they are. It has to do with carrying a large burden and debt till they die within elder years that allow for no restaurants or travel or even living in a good neighborhood. What they are thinking during sex is the hope that they will not get pregnant again.....and yet they are heroes of giving....but it has nothing to do with the act which they are hoping is not fecund and not open to the transmission of life.
"The protective rates of condoms are 100% if used with extreme caution.
The act is not open to the transmission of life on the infertile days....that is a non rational statement and you now have a Pope who lectured islam that religion and rationality should meet. Sterile couples and the elderly are allowed to marry in the church and their marriage is not open to the transmission of life.
Greatly truncated post above....I should have copied it first."
Is that right?! If a 15-percent risk doesn't sound too bad, consider this: If you put one bullet in a six-shot revolver, spin the chamber, put the gun to your head and pull the trigger, the chance of killing yourself is 16.7 percent.
Bannon, has it ever occurred to you that sexual promiscuity or sex education are possible are reasons for the AIDS epidemic?!
Bannon, condoms don't prevent the spread of HIV. Condoms have pores much larger than a virus.
Warrior
Perhaps repetition for emphasis is needed to burrow through.
100% protection if user use is cautious and precise.... results: 130 couples wherein one partner was HIV positive using condoms perfectly for 20 months....not one case of transmission.
source:
New England Journal of Medicine August 11, 1994 author A. Saracco, et al., "Man-to-Woman Sexual Transmission of HIV: Longitudinal Study of 343 Steady Partners of Infected Men
Results again: 130 couples using condoms cautiously wherein one partner was HIV positive...20 months...not one transmission of HIV.
What was the source again:
source:
New England Journal of Medicine August 11, 1994 author A. Saracco, et al., "Man-to-Woman Sexual Transmission of HIV: Longitudinal Study of 343 Steady Partners of Infected Men
Bannon,
I'm not sure what you're smoking. But the average hole size is 5 microns. A sperm is only 2.5 microns. An HIV virus that causes AIDS is only .1 micron. (1) In one test, 33% (1/3) of the latex condoms leaked HIV sized particles! (2) The diagram at above shows these sizes to scale.
1. Roland, C.M. and Sobieski, J.W. (1989) Rubber Chemistry and Technology vol. 62, 683
2. Sexually Transmitted Diseases vol. 19, 230 -234 (1992
http://www.abortionfacts.com/
lit....ure_9331cd.asp
By the way Bill, here's another one for you.
Why is HIV more widespread in Africa than elsewhere in the world?
No-one really knows the full answer to this question. However we do know there are many factors that influence the rate at which HIV is transmitted. Such factors include poverty; social instability; gender inequality; patterns of sexual networking (especially the prevalence of concurrent relationships); sexual violence; other sexually transmitted infections (which facilitate HIV transmission); lack of male circumcision; high mobility; rapid urbanisation and modernisation; and ineffective leadership during critical periods in the epidemic’s spread. Some scientists believe that differences between HIV subtypes also have an effect on transmission rates.4, 5
http://www.avert.org/aids-africa...stions-
1.htm#q5
From The Case Against Comdoms by Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo and Brian Clowes, Ph.D.:
"The Philippines and Thailand
The second real-life example of how condoms fail to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS is presented by the Philippines and Thailand, two Southeastern Asian nations with approximately the same populations.
In 1984, the first case of HIV was detected in both these nations. By 1987, Thailand had 112 cases of AIDS, and the Philippines had 135 cases. In 1991, The World Health Organization predicted that, by 1999, Thailand would have suffered 70,000 deaths from the disease, and the Philippines would have lost 85,000 people.
In 1991, both nations took concrete and comprehensive measures against the spread of the HIV virus - but in completely different directions.
The Thai Minister of Health eneacted a '100% Condom Use Program.' All brothels were required to have supplies of comdoms, and condom vending machines were installed in all supermarkets, bars, restaurants, and other public gathering places. This program was widely accepted and implemented by the people of Thailand.
Two years later, Rene Bullecer, M.D. received authorization from the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Phlippines (CBCP) to establish the organization AIDS-Free Philippines as its official program to combat HIV/AIDS nationwide. The government signed on to this effort as well.
By the end of 2003, the disparity in the effectiveness of both types of programs had become glaringly obvious as shown in this table: [46]
Adults and Children Living with HIV
Thailand 570,000
Philippines 9,000
AIDS Deaths in 2003
Thailand 58,000
Philippines 500
Population
Thailand 62,8333,000
Philippines 79,999,000
HIV Infection Rates Per Million
Thailand 9,072
Philppines 113
This table shows that the Thai HIV infection rate is eighty times higher than the Filipino HIV infection rate.
The current rate of HIV infection in the United States, with all of our sex education, all of our sexual freedom, all of our advanced antiviral drugs, and all of our billions of condoms, is 3,900 per million, thirty times higher than in the Philippines[47].
What lesson does this teach us?
USAID has concluded that the reason that the Philippines has such a low incidence of HIV/AIDS is that youth have a very high rate of abstinence and married people largely remain faithful to their spouses. the USAID report grudgingly admitted that 'The Catholic Church must be credited with influencing sexual behavior.' [48]"
You can purchase a copy of this book from Human Life International @ www.hli.org or click here: http://tinyurl.com/t8z72
It's a real eye-opener for anyone who believes that condoms are a safe measure in preventing HIV infection. They're not. Often they're not stored properly, often they're not used properly, this on top of the fact they have allowable failure rates, so right now on a grocery store shelf near you is a condom that will not do what it's supposed to do.
Warrior
I think you should begin smoking.
Cardinal Trujillo believes and has stated that marrieds with HIV present should either abstain for life or have sex bare and risk death.... because he wants to preserve a doctrine that no Pope will step forward on and do an ex cathedra encyclical on. Why not? Because Vatican II noted that in such cases they have to study the matter entirely and each of them knows that that is a total mess in the sexual area.
You have one source as being St. Jerome who stated he was not a virgin and then after converting, he saw the Stoic Seneca as an expert on sex and Seneca saw all sex as wrong unless you intended children each and every time. Jerome referred to Seneca as "our Seneca". And he spoke of how he had gotten many ideas on marriage from him and would get more. The trouble with that scenario is that Seneca wrote in favor of infanticide also so Jerome was getting key ideas from the culture of death....and being stoic, Seneca was trying to avoid feelings of love because the Stoics hated the changeable feeling level and defined real love as a judgement.
Augustine too is one of the saint experts on sex and also was not a virgin and thanks to both of them and later to Aquinas for copying them verbatim at times...love is never a topic of the saints while talking about sex. They saw sex as not about love but about either of two things: procreation or concupiscence....period.
Only with Dietrich von Hildebrand in modern times does a Catholic link real deep love to the actual act and once he does so, the Popes do so without mentioning that he was the first to do so and only in the 20th century.
There is more but why fill in what you should be reading on your own.
Here...again...attempts to burrow through...
Perhaps repetition for emphasis is needed to burrow through.
100% protection if user use is cautious and precise.... results: 130 couples wherein one partner was HIV positive using condoms perfectly for 20 months....not one case of transmission.
source:
New England Journal of Medicine August 11, 1994 author A. Saracco, et al., "Man-to-Woman Sexual Transmission of HIV: Longitudinal Study of 343 Steady Partners of Infected Men
The New England Journal of Medicine is the most reputable journal in that field. It's dry reading, but the findings that make it in that publication are quite sound. Good find, Bill.
Bill,
You say: "Sterile couples and the elderly are allowed to marry in the church and their marriage is not open to the transmission of life."
Notwithstanding your 11:49 response, I still do not understand why sterile or elderly couples are not open to life when they have sex. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you.
Nathan,
Link follows. If you register, you can read for free anything older than 6 months.
http://content.nejm.org/content/...ue6/
index.shtml
Had author name wrong. First article.
"Because Vatican II noted that in such cases they have to study the matter entirely and each of them knows that that is a total mess in the sexual area."
Bill,
Please link to a reputable source that says the Church allows condom use..becuase last time i checked THEY DO NOT!
The Church has NOT stated that condom use is ok....so please do not post your opinion as Church doctirine as it IS NOT!
Yet the most successful campaign in Africa against HIV was abstinence.
When you teach people the facts rather than just handing out condoms and telling them that they are ok to have sex with them.
It is irresponsible to tell people that sex with condoms is safe because it is a fact that it isn't.
It is unethical and immoral to do so.
I took a crack at a definition of "open to life" which may be helpful to the discussion.
Mike
You wrote: "I still do not understand why sterile or elderly couples are not open to life when they have sex. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you."
Objectively and subjectively in the case of elderly, they are not open to having children that they will leave orphaned in a number of months. Subjectively...not the body but the mind and emotions...ask any 75 year old couple whether they are open to having an infant and they would think you were off your rocker.
Objectively too, their body is not open to having children.
The elderly or rather post menopausal women in the bible who had children did so by way of miracles that cease when the Bible ceases....just as large bodies of water separating (Red Sea and Jordan)cease after the bible closes. Those miracles regarding post menopausal women were meant to get the Jews ready for a greater miracle...that a Virgin...not just a post menopausal woman....would give birth. Despite those miracles preparing the Jews to believe that when it happened, not all of them believed anyway. Once the preparatory nature of those miracles no longer served a purpose in predicting Mary's virgin birth of Christ....such miracles never again occur. Miracles have no relevance to sexual moral theology.
According to Augustine, Samson was secretly and miraculously moved by God toward suicide which also killed the Phillistines but secondarily and not simultaneously as in double effect. His example of having been told something by God miraculously that went against self murder on the surface... has no relevance for moral theology....just as the miracle of Sarah giving birth has no relevance for openness to life of the normal elderly.
Sterile couples are certainly open subjectively to having children but their bodies objectively are not. One is in my family and they adopted.
And no miracle took place overriding their sterility but they got a wonderful boy by adoption.
Bill: I don't think "open to life" means what you think it means. The post I just linked clarifies my own understanding of the matter, FWIW.
No more elaboration here is needed. It is fact that condoms do not prevent the spread of HIV. So if you are pushing condoms as a way to stop HIV infection then you are pushing death. I don't think that even condom companies say that they prevent anything 100% ..that would be false advertisement.
It is fact that condoms do not prevent the spread of HIV.
It is an empirical fact, yes, but empirical facts can be overtaken by technological change. It seems to me that it is also useful to articulate why condom use ought to be rejected in principle. In my understanding, even if condoms were 100% effective in preventing the spread of HIV it would still be immoral to use them.
The only thing condoms are "highly effective" at doing is giving people a false sense of security. It's bothersome to me that the attitude that people are too animalistic to abstain from sex under pain of death are the same people who are expected to consistently and correctly use a condom to prevent the spread of these deadly diseases. This is an oxymoronic idea. I find many who claim moral complexity in every issue usually are just unprincipled.
Bill, you apparently are not Catholic.
The teaching of Humanae Vitae is infallible teaching regarding the being open to life, each and every act, may not be deliberately hindered or blocked. Pregnancy may be the outcome or it may not. But one may not do anything to render the act sterile, before or after the act. Those who have deliberately sterilized themselves in order not to become pregnant or use chemicals or barriers are doing just that. An elderly person or couples who are naturally infertile are not doing anything to render the act closed to pregnancy.
A teaching is infallible if it is a matter of faith and morals and has been taught by the Church since day one. Thus, stealing is forbidden and it is an infallible teaching. But there are no ex cathedra statements that stealing is sin.
Likewise with contraception. You don't seem to want to read what the Church teaches. So what if your pastor told you otherwise? The pastor's false teaching is not the Church's teaching. You have to go to the Church, not your pastor who is apparently a giving you 'stones instead of the bread' of truth. Don't let him hoodwink you. That is if you are truly interested in the truth. Or are you one who seeks out those who tell you what you want to hear?
20 months is not a long time for the study of the married couples. That is not a long-term study by any means and AIDs has an incubation period like all such diseases. Inevitably transmission will occur.
I read about a survey of sex educators which took place at a convention. All were supportive of abortion, contraception and big advocates of condom distribution programs to prevent pregnancy and to cut down on AIDs transmission.
But when asked if they would personally sleep with someone whom they knew to have AIDS and use a condom, not a single one said they would! Pretty strange, since they advocated that everyone else should just use a condom and everything would be alright.
Continence for married couples has been practiced and sanctioned by the Church in order for the couples to pursue holiness-those Bible verses notwithstanding. Read Holboeck's book.
Zippy
Sorry but your understanding of "openness to life" needs another title rather than "openness to life" and maybe the Pope's does too if he would agree with you.
You write:
" Let me suggest the following understanding: a sexual act is open to life when it is the kind of unmodified behavior in which pregnancy ordinarily occurs, when it does occur, unimpeded."
What you did was to place the label "openness to life" on the outer physical behaviour of totally natural intercourse as an observable physical series of actions with no mention of when it is occuring. You assumed what the Church has not yet proved in the infallible arena....and so lost hundreds of theologians shortly after HV and publically with signed names...a career risk which few clergy would now take I suspect since none of the present crop of stalwarts seem inclined to correct a Pope on anything like wifely obedience or the death penalty both of which have a surer pedigree in the bible than birth control issues.
But "when" is the whole reason for "openness" such that a definition that is immune to the time of month or the age of the person is a sometimes fictional openness that is subconsciously based on maleness.
The male's natural sexual performance is always open to life by nature every minute of the month. The woman's sexual performance is not open to life most of the month and so that most of the time, the meaning of sex for the woman is not centered around being open to life except in those Biblical cases of miracles as in Sarah's case and the case of Elizabeth and the case of Samson's mother all of whom produced heroes by miracle within the sexual process. In the case of Elizabeth, she was both sterile and advanced in years to symbolize that hers was even a greater miracle than the others....and commensurately and inversely, Christ later says of John whom she bore... that
"there was no greater man born of woman". But those miracles are irrelevant and have not happened since the Bible closed though I suspect warrior will dig up a case of delayed menopause in Tierra del Fuego shortly.
LvB
Try to avoid the manipulation rife on the internet of questioning someone's Catholicism unless they oppose a de fide position and only in that case can one's Catholicism be questioned. God will compare your record and mine in due time. Wait til then.
You are totally wrong on infallibility in general and on HV in particular. You'll notice that no Pope has ever said that simple sentence that you said: Humanae Vitae is infallible....and Lord knows John Paul had 20 odd years in which to say it just like you just did.
Only several well known theologians thought birth control was solved infallibly (but a number of little published ones joined them later...Harrison, May) and the most known was Germain Grisez ( not the deepest end of the pool by a long shot) but even he thought it was not solved in Humanae Vitae at all but in the ordinary magisterium but few agreed including Rahner who edited the Enchiridion Symbolorum and who would know better than Grisez but Grisez does not deal with the fact that Pius XI in "Tuas Libenter" states that something infallible in the ordinary magisterium will be accompanied by the "common consent of theologians" which Humanae Vitae of all things never had by a long shot.
Stealing does not need an encyclical because it comes from the seventh commandment in the Bible which is inerrant which is equivalent to infallible.
Birth control in the Bible???
Try not to write to me about Onan until you find out why God did not kill Judah in the same story for fornication and did not kill Tamar in the same story for incest. Once you can explain that...then we can begin on Onan...but then check the change in translation that it underwent also from it being one act of coitus interruptus to be a series in the new translations which are based now on the Hebrew. In short, had Onan used NFP with Tamar to avoid all childbirth forever....God still would have killed him because God only kills intimately for sacrilege in the Bible not for sexual sins and Onan was risking the non appearance of Christ who had to come from one of 4 men...Er...Onan...Shelah...or Judah.
If God did not kill Onan, Tamar would not have had the right to move on to the other men in the family. Augustine got to the passage and with his sexual guilt thought the passages was about his own past and thus he missed the deeper sacrilege at hand....the risking of Christ never appearing. But for Augustine it was about sex and most of humanity followed him down that personal trail.
God only kills in the Bible intimately for sacrilege. That by the way is why Christ was soft toward sexual sinners and made a whip of cords for the men who were sacriligious in the temple.
"Try not to write to me about Onan until you find out why God did not kill Judah in the same story for fornication and did not kill Tamar in the same story for incest. Once you can explain that...then we can begin on Onan...but then check the change in translation that it underwent also from it being one act of coitus interruptus to be a series in the new translations which are based now on the Hebrew. In short, had Onan used NFP with Tamar to avoid all childbirth forever....God still would have killed him because God only kills intimately for sacrilege in the Bible not for sexual sins and Onan was risking the non appearance of Christ who had to come from one of 4 men...Er...Onan...Shelah...or Judah."
I can see once again Bannon, you love to play God.
"But for Augustine it was about sex and most of humanity followed him down that personal trail.
God only kills in the Bible intimately for sacrilege. That by the way is why Christ was soft toward sexual sinners and made a whip of cords for the men who were sacriligious in the temple."
Backwards thinking. Read the bible again. There's a reason why we have the Catechism.
By the way, bill, you seem to adhere to that "myth" or "legend" theory concerning the "stories" we read in the OT. Remember that the Church's teaching on contraception does not stand or fall on this passage's interpretation. Bannon, the Church's ban on contraception is not based on the story of Onan. It is based on natural law. God designed our bodies to function a certain way for a certain reason, artificial contraception disrespects that design. Conversely, for those with a serious reason for not wanting children at a particular time, the use of abstinence during the fertile period of the woman's cycle shows respect for God's design.
As for the sin of Onan, I think it was actually twofold. Onan acted out of disobedience to his Father Judah who wished for him to preserve the line of his brother Er, Judah's first-born son. Er was killed by the Lord for his wickedness and died childless. The bible explains that it was Onan's duty as the oldest remaining brother to raise up offspring for his older brother (Gen. 38:8). I believe that if Onan had simply refused this duty, he may have been punished by God in some way but would not have been killed. But Onan adds a malicious and defiant twist to his sin. He makes a mockery of this responsibility by engaging in the sexual act with his brother's wife and then deliberately thwarting its ends. So Onan refuses to raise up Er's line yet sleeps with his brother's widow but in a frivolous, unfruitful, and spiteful manner.
The use of mechanical, chemical, or medical procedures to prevent conception from taking place as a result of sexual intercourse; contraception offends against the openness to procreation required of marriage and also the inner truth of conjugal love (2370).
What you did was to place the label "openness to life" on the outer physical behaviour of totally natural intercourse as an observable physical series of actions with no mention of when it is occuring.
Well, I would word it slightly differently: "openness to life" is a characteristic of the specific behavior chosen by the acting subject (the 'object' of the act, referencing the Magisterial understanding of the object as expressed in Veritatis Splendour). This is necessary precisely because contraception - that is, a lack of the characteristic "openness to life" in any sexual act - is intrinsically immoral, so the characteristic "openness to life" must subsist in the object, in the behavior chosen by the acting subject, and not the intentions or consequences of the act.
But basically you are right: I (and the Church) understand intrinsically evil acts (such as contraception) to be characterized as such in their object, that is, in the behavior chosen by the acting subject. This is not something of the purely physical order: only the acting subject knows what behavior he is in fact choosing, because only he knows what he sees, understands, knows, etc. If the sexual act he is choosing lacks the characteristic "openness to life" as a chosen behavior then it is an intrinsically immoral act of contraception, independent of why he is choosing the behavior or what he expects or hopes the consequences of his specific behavior to be.
Again, in a nutshell, "openness to life" simply doesn't mean what you think it means. It doesn't have anything to do with the actual purely physical capacities of any particular act, considered as something merely of the physical order.
("Anonymous" at 7:51 pm was me)
Zippy
"Church" can be used for the writings of John Paul II...erroneously in the long run in some cases. And "Church" can be used for the real de fide dogmas that someone has taken the work to actually define infallibly like the Immaculate Conception.
I use "Church" the latter way since John Paul's list of intrinsically evil acts in section 80 of Splendor of the Truth will never be de fide in a million years since that list includes "slavery" which God allowed to the Jews of both Jewish slaves and foreigners and which the Church supported in its canons in the cases of those born to a slave mother and those captured in war....torture..on his list.... which was allowed to the Jews ("evil is driven out with bloody lashes and a scourging to the inmost being" Proverbs 20:30) and was used in Church courts for years when there were no witnesses....deportation which Paul urged for the man caught in incest amongst the Corinthians and which France used on 13 Imans who were preaching wife beating per the Koran in France...out the door they went and rightly so...need I go on. How long would John Paul have allowed those Imans to live in Vatican City and preach wife beating...about 5 minutes.
God never did really allow true intrinsicallly evil acts like bestiality or sodomy to the Jews nor did the Church ever allow it. John Paul called the death penalty "cruel" and God commanded it in multiple instances in the OT and echoed Genesis 9:5-6 in Romans 13:3-4 which says of the state: "But if you do evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword without purpose; it is the servant of God to inflict wrath on the evildoer." But let's just keep ignoring God and listening uncritically with idolization to even the non infallible level of documents which not even their authors would call infallible.
"I use 'Church' the latter way since John Paul's list of intrinsically evil acts in section 80 of Splendor of the Truth will never be de fide in a million years since that list includes 'slavery' which God allowed to the Jews of both Jewish slaves and foreigners and which the Church supported in its canons in the cases of those born to a slave mother and those captured in war....torture..on his list.... which was allowed to the Jews ("evil is driven out with bloody lashes and a scourging to the inmost being" Proverbs 20:30) and was used in Church courts for years when there were no witnesses....deportation which Paul urged for the man caught in incest amongst the Corinthians and which France used on 13 Imans who were preaching wife beating per the Koran in France...out the door they went and rightly so...need I go on. How long would John Paul have allowed those Imans to live in Vatican City and preach wife beating...about 5 minutes."
We have a thing called prisoners of war Bannon. Look it up.
Um, *no* Catholic *ever* connected sex to love until Dietrich von Hildebrand? I find that a little hard to swallow. But it's an argument I've heard before, so, yawn, out comes the Chrysostom:
"There is no influence more powerful than the bond of love, especially for husband and wife." (Homily on Eph 5:21)
"The power of this love is truly stronger than any passion; other desires may be strong, but this one alone never fades. This love (eros) is deeply planted within our inmost being. Unnoticed by us, it attracts the bodies of men and women to each other... Can you see now how close this union is, and how God providentially created it from a single nature?" (Homily on Marriage)
"St. John Chrysostom suggests that young husbands should say to their wives: I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us.... I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you." (§ 2365 CCC)
He was also quite against Josephite marriage, just in case it might be thought he was meaning "love" in a rarefied spiritual sense. No sirree.
"Do not then, because the body is inferior to the soul, revile it." (Homily on Ephesians)
But there's an even better quote about how the actual marital act binds the couple together and how wonderful that is. Then he fixes his hearers with a stare and demands: "Why do you blush? Is it not pure?"
Why indeed. A minor point in a larger discussion, but this "no Catholic teacher before the 20th century thought sex was any good" business is one of my pet peeves.
Katya
Ohh Katya....Katya... only one of your passages links the sexual act to eros which eros is not exactly the "love" that I meant since English Christianity uses "eros" negatively as here in Vatican II..Lumen Gentium section 49 watch for capitals of LOVE and EROTIC:
"Such LOVE , merging the human with the divine, leads the spouses to a free and mutual gift of themselves, a gift providing itself by gentle affection and by deed, such love pervades the whole of their lives: indeed by its busy generosity it grows better and grows greater. Therefore it far excels mere EROTIC inclination, which, selfishly pursued, soon enough fades wretchedly away."
So Houston...we have a problem of languages. Did Greek have a word for selfish eros and self giving eros separately?
Bill: if you ever decide you want try to make sense of Magisterial documents rather than trying to make nonsense of them, drop me an email. I'm sure we could have an interesting discussion on Humanae Vitae and Veritatis Splendour. In the meantime, the peas and carrots are good; help yourself.
Zippy
Thanks for the invite but just debating on several blogs is costing me too much time and money (free lance investor). Email discussions would be worse. Godspeed.
I would put the emphasis (yours, not LG's) on INCLINATION, not erotic. It's a problem of interpretation, Houston.
Anyway, the discussion seems to have wandered far afield, and I apologize for taking it farther. Mea culpa. I'll bow out now.
Commenting by HaloScan
