Vatican cleric fuels condom row

[Guest guest]

Dear FORUM,

I thought that the following news item would interest those of us debating

abstinence vs condoms. Does this mean that there are more " condom converts "

within the catholic church too.

Sunita Abraham

Community Health Department

Christian Medical Association of India.

E-mail: <sunita.abraham@...>

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Vatican cleric fuels condom row

By Willey

BBC News, Rome

A senior Vatican cardinal has joined the growing number of influential Catholic

Church figures questioning the official Vatican ban on condom use.

Cardinal s Cottier is one of Pope II's preferred theologians.

So eyebrows were raised this week when he was quoted as saying the use of

condoms may be legitimate to stop the spread of Aids in poor countries. The

cardinal said there was moral justification for condom use under certain

circumstances to counter AIDS.

Churchmen are arguing with increasing frequency that the traditional blanket ban

on the use of condoms is no longer valid.

Cardinal Cottier said it was no longer a question only of allowing the

transmission of life, but of actively preventing the transmission of death to a

sexual partner. This argument - of adopting the lesser of two evils - has also

been proposed by bishops in France and Spain.

Spanish bishops however were forced by the Vatican to row back on a statement

similar to that now made by Cardinal Cottier that they issued in Madrid last

month.

The point is that the Vatican is slowly being forced to admit by some of its

most authoritative churchmen that this is a complex moral argument which does

not allow for a simple overall ban on the use of condoms.

In a nuanced Vatican statement to be put out later this month on the World Day

of the Sick, the Pope himself has not ruled out the adoption of less desirable

strategies in fighting Aids than those that the Church traditionally teaches.