AIDS, the wrath of God and the condom debate

MAY, I have the opportunity to respond to a couple of points which have arisen in the letters' column following my article on AIDS (Catholic Herald, October 31)?
Fr Marsden (November 14) challenges my comments regarding God's wrath. My primary intention may be found in a preceding sentence: "God does not punish through disease." Hence my use of the Johannine text (Jn 9:1-3).
In going on to comment about God's wrath, I was not suggesting that such a phenomenon does not exist. I think we have to be very careful about reading back into scriptural texts things which are not there. The quotation from Ephesians refers, as do many of the Pauline texts regarding sexual behaviour, to a context of idolatry in which the sexual acting out is seen in false cultic observance, often with cultic prostitutes, male or female.
It is acknowledged that the New and Old Testament writers appear to have had no conception of homosexuality as an orientation, let alone as part of the spectrum of human sexuality. For whatever reasons, their experience as written down and passed on seems only to comment on those who normally being heterosexual engage in acts which are beyond their heterosexual nature, and this as expressions of commitment to a false deity. However, the main plank of my statement about God's wrath is found in looking at the Old Testament, since in fact this concept appears generally foreign to the NT Greek mind and much more common in OT writings.
In Exodus, 22:21-24 there is mention of God's wrath. It is a passage where there are three words used for oppression. It is only here in the entire Book of the Covenant that God's wrath threatens the guilty parties in their punishment, ie those who "wrong" or "oppress".
Other crimes are punishable by death, but only when the poor suffer oppression does God declare that the death penalty definitely expresses his wrath. It is useful to compare this with Jesus' teaching in Mt 25:31-46.
I do not believe that medical conditions, no matter how they are contracted, can be considered as God's punishment. This is to end up with a magical concept of God who is playing some cruel game with a covenanted people. Neither does it do justice to the redemptive nature of Christian suffering nor the Johannine text already quoted that in the case of the blind man "God's power might be displayed in curing him."
Mr Hindmarsh (December 5) suggests some reluctance on my behalf to advocate a change from a "brazen, anti-life, promiscuous, deviant lifestyle." While people have to be responsible in the expression of their sexuality, I think it is entirely false to home in on promiscuous behaviour as the cause of AIDS. It is the most common means of transmission, but promiscuity is not the cause.
I have been deeply impressed by the number of people with AIDS who adopt a celibate lifestyle, but not everybody is able to do this for a variety of reasons, and not simply because they wish to play safe, with one foot in the fast lane.
On the matter of condoms, yes there is concern about the effectiveness of certain condoms currently on the market. However, production companies have been looking at the use of stronger material and some research has recently been reported in the British Medical Journal which concludes that there is enough evidence to justify the promotion of condoms as a public health measure. (AIDS and the Condom, K Wellings, BMJ 1986, 293, 1259-60).
While Cardinal Hume's statement recently was obviously carefully worded, I feel the bishops and the moral theologians need to see this as new situation. Given that the "morning after pill" is now acceptable in situations of rape, based presumably on the principle of double effect, cannot the use of protectives be considered as acceptable in certain circumstances when they are being used to prevent death? Martin Pendergast Hornsey