Vatican Conference Will Consider AIDS, Condoms

By Francis X. Rocca
Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The morality and effectiveness of using condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS will be on the agenda at a Vatican conference this weekend (May 27-28), six months after comments by Pope Benedict XVI again touched off worldwide controversy.

The conference, which will focus on "the centrality of care" in preventing and treating HIV/AIDS, is sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, and is scheduled to include two dozen speakers from across the globe.

One speaker will be Edward C. Green, former director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard School of Public Health, who in March 2009 defended Benedict's statement that condoms actually "increase the problem" of AIDS in Africa.

"Current empirical evidence supports" the pope, Green wrote in a widely discussed article.

Another talk will address Catholic teaching on HIV/AIDS, a highly sensitive subject that Benedict touched on in a book-length interview published last November.

While noting that condoms are not a "real or moral solution" to the AIDS epidemic, the pope said that their use by someone intending to prevent infection could "be a first step in the direction of a moralization" of sexuality.

The Vatican's doctrinal office later insisted that the pope's words did not mark a change in Catholic moral teaching or "pastoral practice" against the use of condoms for AIDS prevention or contraception.

It is not clear whether the conference will address whether condoms are appropriate for married couples in which only one partner is infected with HIV, a question on which the church has made no definitive pronouncement.

The Wednesday (May 25) edition of the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, included a piece by Spanish theologian Juan Jose Prez-Soba, arguing that couples in such a predicament should abstain from sex, because intercourse performed with a condom is, "from the moral point of view, not a fully conjugal act."

Comments

[Greatest Darthfruit]

05:09 PM on 07/15/2011

they are considering just know?? IDIOTS!!

[graceaustin]

08:49 PM on 06/03/2011

Profoundly ignorant man.

[Peter Double]

08:36 AM on 05/25/2011

My mother says she is a devout catholic... yet she thinks the pope is an idiot... Even though this goes against the catholic doctrine... I know she is a better catholic than those who do follow the poltergeist preacher looking old man.

[ls1z28chris]

07:58 PM on 05/24/2011

I assume this story is about catholic priests using condoms to avoid spreading aids to their alter boys.

[JoeGdr]

07:23 PM on 05/24/2011

I feel sorry for anyone that woud actually rely on this man for approval on ANYTHING.

[DoctorWhoDat]

07:12 PM on 05/24/2011

I hope that priest start using condoms.

[AbstractImp]

07:09 PM on 05/24/2011

20th century's over, yup.
Hurry up, now,
the 21st is already more than a decade gone. . .

[1jurisdiva]

07:03 PM on 05/24/2011

Also on the agenda is the continued debate about the existence of gravity.

[Infoguy323]

06:57 PM on 05/24/2011

Dr. Green, a self-professed liberal from Harvard, acknowldges that the Pope is entirely correct: Condoms do NOT halt the spread of AIDS at the "level of population."

Dr. Green adds: "Major articles published in Science, The Lancet, British Medical Journal, and even Studies in Family Planning have reported this finding since 2004. I first wrote about putting emphasis on fidelity instead of condoms in Africa in 1988."

This is SCIENCE, folks.

In other words, the Pope's position SAVES lives.

Which side are you on now: The Pope and science ... or ... the side of death?

-

[kolach]

07:05 PM on 05/24/2011

lol

[TBrennan]

07:05 PM on 05/24/2011

Someone should put a condom right over your self righteous mouth. I'm not on the Pope's side so therefore I'm a reaper of death? That's a simplistic application of science by a holier than thou simpleton.

[Earl]

06:50 PM on 05/24/2011

I hope the church can convince God to change his mind again.

[scared1234]

06:50 PM on 05/24/2011

Nice to know the Vatican has finally entered into the 19th century.

[chefbob50]

06:48 PM on 05/24/2011

Who cares what a bunch of old men in dresses have to say about anything...

[drmdj]

06:46 PM on 05/24/2011

Can they be anymore out of touch?

[Rubyfoo]

06:45 PM on 05/24/2011

Following this discussion, the Vatican will take up the controversial issue of whether the Earth is flat or globular in shape.

[KMan1]

06:35 PM on 05/24/2011

You know it isn’t complicated. Having unprotected sex is a very bad idea and why anyone would care what supposedly celibate men have to say about the matter is beyond me.