Vatican said to be rethinking condoms

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Specializes in Critical Care.

After decades of opposition, Vatican view on condoms begins to shift | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

"Cardinal Barragán noted a passage from a 1981 document issued by the late Pope John Paul II. This said that "every conjugal act must be open to life".

Until now, this has been interpreted as an injunction against contraception. But it could also be used to support an argument in favour of the preservation of life by the use of barrier methods.

The cardinal said some 40 million people were reckoned to be HIV positive and Aids was claiming around 8,000 lives a day. "The disease is not retreating. On the contrary, its aggressiveness seems to be increasing, even though in the more developed countries the strength of the increase is noticed less," he said."

~faith,

Timothy.

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Could this be related to the fact that the Pope is also considering priests to marry?

Approving use of condoms could cut down on the money the Church would have to pay to support all those extra family members.

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How very enlightened of the Catholic church.

I wonder how they are going to go about retracting what they said about condoms having microscopic holes in them that the AIDS virus can get through.

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Specializes in disability.

Wonderfull the church is finally seeing the light! Condoms are effective in preventing STIs and besides a comon illness women present with within thier lives is CHILDREN. Gee can it be said children are akin to parasities sucking out nutrients & returning wastes to the host. Come to think of it children growing up still cost us in $ & emotional stress - lol just bigger parasities Yah for the santioned CONDOME Its a blessing

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Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.

This said that "every conjugal act must be open to life".

Ah yes, life. Children, herpes, chlamydia, hepatitis, HIV, trich......

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Specializes in EC, IMU, LTAC.
Wonderfull the church is finally seeing the light! Condoms are effective in preventing STIs and besides a comon illness women present with within thier lives is CHILDREN. Gee can it be said children are akin to parasities sucking out nutrients & returning wastes to the host. Come to think of it children growing up still cost us in $ & emotional stress - lol just bigger parasities Yah for the santioned CONDOME Its a blessing

Actually, kids are more like cancer. In pharmacology, the instructor gave a very amusing lecture on why chemotherapeutic drugs are teratogenic. Chemotherapeutic drugs attack highly mitotic cells. Fetuses are rapidly dividing balls of cells. In short, they are tumors that eventually break off, become autonomous, and leech at your wallet for 18 years.

It's about time that the Catholic Church realized that we are no longer in times of high infant mortality. Honestly, the Catholic Church can tell me not to use birth control after raising 4 kids on minimum wage.

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Specializes in Critical Care.

I wanted to point out that I posted this in the nursing forum and not current events because it relates to WHY the Vatican is reconsidering this issue and that is for health reasons.

Because of the forum this thread is posted in, the focus should probably be on the health implications of this decision. Bashing Catholics wasn't really the point.

It would be a timely recognition that while 'every sperm is sacred', the ones that actually bound with ovum years ago are probably worth a second thought, as well.

This should really have been reconsidered when JPII made his comments quoted in the article on the issue, in 1981, at the outset of the discovery of the HIV virus.

In the meantime, millions have died of AIDS, many Catholic. I wonder how many died because they felt it was an abomination to use a condom?

It's easy to say just don't have sex. We aren't designed that way, and the Catholic church, of ALL organizations, should fully understand the implications of abstinence. It's difficult enough to impose on the fully committed, much less the lay public.

The difficulties of abstinence, combined with a killer disease, should never have been allowed to become a recipe for making sex a Capital sin.

~faith,

Timothy.

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Well..my daughter isn't cancer..she wasn't a parasite, and I'm Roman Catholic. Never had to use a condom, and "yes" abstinence is possible, and Natural Family Planning does work when done correctly. I was NEVER taught sex was a sin, just an act between a man and woman who were married before God, and that birth control matters should be left up to God, with minimal intervention on the human part. NFP is accepted by the Roman Catholic Church. On the flip side, I don't believe in sex before marriage, and thank God, neither did DH.

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

I'm not Catholic, so it doesn't hurt my feelings to bash Catholicism. Because of the forum this thread is posted in, the focus should probably be on the health implications of this decision.

It's easy to say just don't have sex. We aren't designed that way, and the Catholic church, of ALL organizations, should fully understand the implications of abstinence. It's difficult enough to impose on the fully committed, much less the lay public.

The difficulties of abstinence, combined with a killer disease, should never have been allowed to become a recipe for making sex a Capital sin.

~faith,

Timothy.

Excuse me, Tim, but your post troubles me. Over the years, you have made it quite clear that you consider yourself a Christian, yet you seem to have no problem "bashing" another Christian faith tradition.

While I myself have many political disagreements with my church, I do not appreciate seeing it 'bashed', and I take exception to your thinly-veiled inference that celibacy causes priests to become homosexuals.......or pedophiles! Every religion has its problem members; seems to me there was a VERY recent gay-sex scandal involving a prominent Evangelical preacher who had to resign in disgrace. Does that mean the entire church is rotten? I wouldn't think so, and I doubt you do either.

I'm disappointed. :stone

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Specializes in Critical Care.
Excuse me, Tim, but your post troubles me. Over the years, you have made it quite clear that you consider yourself a Christian, yet you seem to have no problem "bashing" another Christian faith tradition.

While I myself have many political disagreements with my church, I do not appreciate seeing it 'bashed', and I take exception to your thinly-veiled inference that celibacy causes priests to become homosexuals.......or pedophiles! Every religion has its problem members; seems to me there was a VERY recent gay-sex scandal involving a prominent Evangelical preacher who had to resign in disgrace. Does that mean the entire church is rotten? I wouldn't think so, and I doubt you do either.

I'm disappointed. :stone

You misunderstood me if you thought I was making a reference to the recent scandals in the church.

I made no such reference, or even inference.

The Apostle Paul said in 1 Cor 7 that he wished that all could be like him (celibate) but since he KNEW how difficult that would be, then he conceded that most should have spouses.

Being celibate is very difficult, and intentionally so. It runs counter to our basic programmings. The whole POINT of remaining celibate is to prove a greater testament to God by the very effort of the act.

What I said was that the leadership of the Catholic church, all celibate, should understand more than most the difficulties of remaining celibate and should have considered the consequences of trying to impose that very high standard on the lay members of the church. My inference was regarding those lay members that have HIV. The leadership should have known that the continuation of banning condoms could lead to very unhealthy sexual practices, either in those that are single or those HIV catholics married to someone NOT HIV.

Indeed, they are rethinking the issue. I understand fully that the use of condoms runs afoul of basic pro-creation Catholic beliefs. I wouldn't expect the Catholic church to suddenly reverse it's decisions on say, birth control pills. But, condoms are different because the implications for their use go beyond birth control.

If you re-read the post you quoted, I think you will find that my intent in the first part of the post was to re-direct the thread away from bashing Catholics and back on the issue. (I edited that part of my previous point to try to make that more clear.)

But let me re-emphasize something: I made no thinly-veiled reference to celibacy and the recent problems in the church. I simply stated a fact: the Catholic celibate leadership should understand, more than most, how difficult it is to BE celibate. Indeed, they should.

~faith,

Timothy.

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Well..my daughter isn't cancer..she wasn't a parasite, and I'm Roman Catholic. Never had to use a condom, and "yes" abstinence is possible, and Natural Family Planning does work when done correctly. I was NEVER taught sex was a sin, just an act between a man and woman who were married before God, and that birth control matters should be left up to God, with minimal intervention on the human part. NFP is accepted by the Roman Catholic Church. On the flip side, I don't believe in sex before marriage, and thank God, neither did DH.

I'm not Roman Catholic but I do agree with you about NFP. When I was first married, back in the 1970's I was a typical hippie thinking girl and refused to put chemical (bcp's) or foreign objects (IUD's/diaphrams) into my body. At my college in a women's reproduction class (put on by the crowd promoting "Our Bodies, Ourselves") I learned the NFP method and loved it. I learned more about how my body worked than any class in high school had ever taught me and much more than my parents ever told me. I never got pregnant either. I went on to use other birth control methods, mostly the diaphragm and/or condom and had 4 children. :coollook:

As to condom use and the Catholic Church, I am interested to see how this will play out. There are areas where I disagree, biblically, with Catholicism and a celibate priesthood is one and not using condoms is another.

I do believe abstinence can work.

Interesting discussion Tim.

steph

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Specializes in Maternal - Child Health.

I think it is cricial to understand the reason why the Vatican is considering the condom issue at this time: For the protection of a married person whose spouse is infected with HIV.

The Catholic Church is not "rethinking" its stance on contraception or its stance on sexual relationships between unmarried and/or homosexual couples. Those behaviors are considered sinful, and the Church's view of them will not change.

The only situation in which the Church is considering "allowing" the use of condoms is within a marital relationship in which one spouse is HIV (+) and the other is not, as a means of protecting the uninfected spouse from exposure to a fatal illness. The justification for this consideration comes from the Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill."

I would like to see reliable statistics backing the claim that millions have contracted HIV because of the Catholic Church's ban on condom use. I am certain that the percentage of HIV cases contracted within monogamous married relationships is near zero. Therefore, most of those who have contracted the disease (other than thru accidental healthcare-related exposure, also a small percentage) were already violating Church law in some way unrelated to condom use such as drug use, or unmarried sex. If they were willing to violate Church law on these issues, why would they then stop short of using a condom in order to comply with the Church's stance on contraception? Makes no sense.

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