It seems only yesterday that conservative Christians were telling us all about the ‘ABC’ method that was successfully reducing HIV AIDS infections in the African nation of Uganda. The ‘A’ stood for ‘abstinence’, as in total sexual abstinence for unmarried people. If you were married, however, you were covered by ‘B’, as in ‘be completely faithful’ to your spouse (or, in the picturesque Ugandan phrase, ‘zero grazing’). Now, as a person has to be either married or unmarried, ‘A’ and ‘B’ would seem to cover the field, so what about ‘C’? ‘C’ stood for ‘condom’ - ‘[F]or those who are foolish enough to not abstain or zero graze, then use condoms. But we hasten to say - condoms are NOT 100% safe.‘ (Dr Edward Muhima, African Enterprise Uganda, as quoted in Elizabeth Kendal ‘Christian morality key to Ugandan AIDS success’, New Life, 18 Apr. 2002, 7)

Good news being at a premium in these days of unbridled lust and evolution, evangelical editors latched on to ‘ABC’ as a drowning man might clutch at the proverbial. As late as last year, Helen Woodall of New Life delivered this version of the latest Christian myth:

Uganda is one of the very few places in the world that is cutting its HIV infection rate … by concentrating on pushing a program of abstinence from sex until marriage and faithfulness within marriage as their primary point of sex education although condoms are available for people who plan to ignore the teaching. (Editorial, 4 Aug. 2005)

Notice how in both these formulations, condoms are very much the non-preferred option. The Pentecostal Australian Prayer Network International Newsletter (24 Apr. 2006) treats ‘C’ even more gingerly:

Condoms are an option only when one member of a couple is unwilling or unable to be abstinent or faithful.

What if they’re both unwilling? And since when is any Christian ‘unable’?

It now seems highly probable that, although the Ugandan HIV AIDS situation is a complex one, condom use (i.e. ‘C’) has played a more significant role in reducing infection than either ‘A’ or ‘B’ (see, for example, Uganda’s HIV rate drops, but not from abstinence, San Francisco Chronicle 24 Feb 2005). Some authorities also give credit to ‘partner reduction’ i.e. having only a few partners instead of a lot, but it seems quite a distance from the ‘Be completely faithful’ maxim.

Anyway, at the request of Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church is now re-examining its policy regarding condoms and AIDS:

Last week, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, a former papal contender, said … that condoms were the ‘lesser evil’ in combating AIDS. He echoed other churchmen in noting that it is one thing to condone a lesser evil in such cases, and quite another for the church to publicly promote condom use. (Vatican re-examines condom use, Melbourne Age, 24 Apr. 2006)

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, head of the Vatican’s health care ministry, has said in the past that condoms can be condoned in some cases, ‘such as when a woman could not refuse her HIV-positive husband’s sexual advances‘. Lozano Barragan also seemed sympathetic to the suggestion that unmarried women could carry previously-frozen embryos to term if the alternative was simply disposing of them:

It is life which must prevail, and we need legislative frameworks which would allow evaluation case by case. (ibid.)

Catholic teaching about the ‘lesser of two evils’ seems to have faded into the background during the last 30 years. Even many Catholics do not realise that this principle comes into play in ‘dying with dignity’ situations, where doctors may ‘morally’ administer potentially lethal doses of drugs if the primary intention is to relieve the patient’s suffering rather than to cause death.

Whatever the outcome of these Catholic deliberations about condoms (and, perhaps later, frozen embryos), surely the demands of solid evidence and common sense can only be resisted for so long. If it’s a simple matter of emphasising one Catholic teaching against another in the interests of saving so much human life - ‘life which must prevail‘ according to Cardinal Lozano Barragan - where is the problem?

Filed in: Catholicism, Sexuality