Condoms Can't Be Right

Great media criticism has been erupting over the Holy Father's 17 March statement that condoms cannot solve but rather contribute to the AIDS problem. In light of Pope Benedict's statement and the ensuing controversy I was very surprised to find The Catholic Advocate (with a Catholic News Service article) speculating about "the specific question of whether, in certain circumstances, condom use was morally licit in AIDS prevention..." which the article claims the Pope did not address and that that question "...is under study by Vatican theologians." (The Catholic Advocate 25 March 2009)



The implication is that condom use might be permissible. That position has always been categorically condemned by Sacred Scripture, by the Tradition of the Church and by the Magisterium. Condom use is intrinsically immoral in that it separates the two intrinsic meanings of the marital act (procreative and unitive). Condom use will never be permissible as long as it directly impedes the proper giving over and the proper receiving of the sperm into the vagina, which is the ultimate material purpose of the conjugal act. Any altering of that life giving aspect of the act is a mortal sin and a form of adultery, the improper use of the sexual power. cf. Genesis 38:8, Humanae Vitae 14, The Catechism of the Catholic Church 2362-2367. As recently as the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2006) Pope Benedict reiterated this constant and unchangeable teaching of God: "The conjugal act has a twofold meaning: unitive (the mutual self-giving of the spouses) and procreative (an openness to the transmission of life). No one may break the inseparable connection which God has established between these two meanings of the conjugal act by excluding one or the other of them." (Compendium 496)



Rather, it is precisely the type of sexual immorality represented by condom use (typically used for fornication, adultery and sodomy) that causes and fosters sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS. The diseases are symptoms of the sexual sins that cause them. The behavior needs to change, first of all. The only clean sex is the holy act of marriage. All else is dirty and necessarily kills (the soul and the body, cf. Proverbs 5:3-6). That is the truth and no "Vatican theologian" authorized by Pope Benedict is studying any loopholes to that.



For the Archdiocese of Newark official newspaper to misrepresent these fundamental Catholic truths in reprinting an article twisting the Holy Father's statement is at best sloppy and devious and betrays an ignorance and or opposition to the ordinary Magisterium of the Catholic Church in her consistent moral teaching. I suggest that the paper consult the Archbishop John Joseph Myers on how to rectify this doctrinal error published by his newspaper. And for the future I would recommend that the Catholic Advocate stop getting its news from CNS which apparently composed the heretical article. A heretical news agency should not even go by the name Catholic. I would recommend the Catholic News Agency (CNA) http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/ as a reliable and really Catholic news source.