Spain Catholic Church Retracts Condom Use as Anti-AIDS Strategy

The Spanish Bishops’ Conference spokesman Juan Antonio Martinez Camino said that "condoms have a place in a global approach to tackling AIDS" after a meeting with Spain's health minister on Tuesday. While the world has been surprised by the liberation of the traditional Catholic Church on the use of condoms, the Spanish Catholic Church publicly retracted the declaration on Wednesday night after intervention from the Vatican.

The Roman Catholic Church has a very conservative stance on issues concerning life and family. While the Catholic Church holds the Pope's words as true and incontrovertible as the teachings in the Bible, the use of condoms is forbidden because it blocks the possible transmission of life in heterosexual activity, according to the Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humane Vitae.

Also, the Pope Paul VI said that "each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relation to the procreation of human life."

Based on such doctrine in the Church, the Spanish Bishops’ Conference yesterday reversed its previous claim, "It is impossible to advise the use of condoms, because according to Catholic teaching, condom use implies immoral sexual conduct."

The Conference emphasised, "It's not true that the Church has changed its doctrine on condoms."

The Catholic Church promotes education in favour of "faithful conjugal love" in order to avoid "risky situations", the statement continued.

The Vatican officials also responded. Bishop Jose Luis Redrado Machite, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers, asserted that use of condoms was "contrary to Catholic morality."

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the President of the Vatican department for health morals, in an interview published by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica echoed, "The use of prophylactics is unacceptable even as a solution to the problem of AIDS, because the objective is the fight against fornication."

He said anti-AIDS campaigns should not be "based on policies that foster immoral and hedonistic lifestyles...favouring the spread of the evil." Vatican officials have said they fear distributing condoms could worsen the situation by "institutionalising promiscuity."

In 2003, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo once stated that the AIDS virus could sometimes slip through condoms.

Nevertheless, some theologians argued that in fact, there is no definitive Church position or doctrines on condoms relating to their use to prevent AIDS.

Father Brian Johnstone, moral theology professor at the Alphonsian Academy, a branch of the Pontifical Lateran University told Reuters, "There is no blanket ban...The Church has never said that it is wrong in all possible situations. The complexity of the problem has to be taken into consideration, sometimes at a very local and personal level."

The conservative viewpoint of the Catholics has sparked criticism from health groups, left-wing politicians and progressive Christians, "What is truly immoral is the Church's rejection of a method that saves human lives." Condom use is part of an anti-AIDS strategy promoted by the World Health Organisation.

Miquel Iceta, spokesman for the Catalan Socialist Party, urged the Vatican to reflect on what he called an inhuman position, "Even bishops must be aware of the weakness of human nature and must know that it does not attain divine perfection."