Many who would not take issue with the Roman Catholic Church’s stance on abortion find its unrelenting opposition to birth control inhumane.Particularly in the Aids-ridden developing world, where a condom can mean the difference between life and death, the refusal to relent appears unjustifiable, even by faith.
Soon after the turn of the millennium, the Roman Catholic Church was thought to be on the verge of relaxing its absolute prohibition on artificial birth control to allow limited condom use in HIV and Aids prevention.
The ban had been enforced in the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which stated that every marital act must retain its “intrinsic relationship” to procreation.
A majority on the commission set up to examine the issue wanted the ban to be rescinded, but the death in 1963 of Pope John XXIII, who was succeeded by the more conservative Pope Paul VI, meant that their majority report was ignored.
The minority report was instead the line that the encyclical took when it was published in 1968.
Thousands left the Catholic Church.
Many theologians and clergy argue now that this issue has done more than any other to undermine the authority of the Holy See. Most Catholics in the developed world not only use contraception but also see no need to own up to it in the confessional.
With the devastation of Aids, and as the 26-year reign of Pope John Paul II drew to its close, there seemed to be indications that a relaxation might be on the agenda.
In 2004 the British Catholic development agency Cafod appeared to argue for the use of condoms as a lesser evil, and the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, said: “While we can say that, objectively, the use of condoms is wrong, there are places where it might be licit, or allowable, as when there’s a danger of intercourse leading to death.”
However, when the ultra-conservative head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was elected Pope all hopes of change vanished. The Church has, if anything, become more conservative, lobbying governmental organisations – particularly in the US – in pursuit of its goal of unlinking family planning from Aids prevention.
In an interview last month with The Times, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said: “It is quite ridiculous to go on about Aids in Africa and condoms, and the Catholic Church. I talk to priests who say, ‘My diocese is flooded with condoms and there is more Aids because of them.’ Education, healthcare and abstinence are much more important.”
Pro-choice Catholics in the US see signs of hope in President Obama’s intervention to remove barriers to stem-cell research, fiercely resisted by the Catholic Church.
They are also taking heart from international outrage over an incident in Brazil when the Church excommunicated the doctors and mother who allowed an abortion for a girl aged 9 who had been raped by her stepfather.
He was not excommunicated.
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(Source: RNCH)