Last month, media reports falsely suggested the Holy Father approved the use of condoms in some cases.
L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s semi-official newspaper, sparked off media interest when it published a number of excerpts from the book-interview with Pope Benedict XVI, entitled Light of the World: The Pope, The Church and the Signs of The Times.
Towards the end of the tenth chapter of the book, the German journalist Peter Seewald asked the Pope on the use of condoms in combating AIDS, a clear reference to the Pontiff’s comment on this topic when he was aboard the plane on his way to Cameroon and Angola in March, 2009.
To the statement that it is “madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms,” Benedict XVI replied: “There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralisation, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way towards recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanisation of sexuality.”
Mr Seewald then asked the Holy Father: “Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?”
The Pope answered: “She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement towards a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.”
So it is clear that in his answer the Holy Father is in no way saying that the use of condoms as a contraceptive method is morally good, but only describing as a responsible step their use by those involved in the habitual sin of prostitution.
Prostitution is a grave sin whether condoms are used or not, so at least using condoms to reduce infection is advisable.
But nowhere has the Pope asserted that condoms or any other form of contraception is ever morally good. Besides, the Pope has no power to change God’s law as found in the sixth and ninth commandments.
The Church has always infallibly taught that every sexual act must be open to life and that sexual union within a marriage is between one man and one woman.
This teaching has not changed nor can it ever be altered. This applies also if the wife is old and cannot beget offspring.
If a husband intends to ejaculate into a condom and not inside his wife, the act does consummate their marital love because it becomes a masturbatory act.
Par.2399 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church runs: “The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilisation or contraception)”.
And in par.2370 the Catholic Church teaches that any form of contraception (of course, condoms included) are always in-trinsically evil and cannot be resorted to for any reason whatsoever.
When the sexual act cannot be carried out completely according to God’s loving plan for us, there is the ABC solution: abstain, be faithful and chaste!