Misunderstanding Aids in Africa

Telling children that with condoms they will be safe shows a horrendous lack
of moral leadership; it is also a blatant lie, argues Fr Oskar Wermter, Si IT IS AMAZING how Catholics in Europe aim with such enormous intellectual firepower at our African problems, and yet seem to be off target. The most striking example is the role of condoms in fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
They also manage to turn it into ammunition for their never-ending skirmishes with Rome. The Bishops of Zimbabwe said in 1991, "We do not deny that, speaking on the level of sheer mechanics, condoms, if used correctly and regularly, reduce the risk of HIV infection to some extent (but by no means completely).
"But we do deny that the widespread use of such or similar devices is the answer to the deep moral crisis which has caused the rapid spread of AIDS in our country. In fact, pmpagating condoms is tantamount to admitting moral defeat, and, worse than that, it positively encourages promiscuity, especially when they are made available to the young." (Save Our Families, Pastoral Letter on Marriage, Sexuality and the Aids Epidemic by the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference, Easter 1991).
Tns STATEMENT is still essentially true. Western technological civilisation wants for every problem a technical solution, even if it is a human and moral problem, and trusts technology more than people who might never do the right thing.
Condoms, as technical devices, may well play a certain mle in reducing the spread of the HIV virus. It may well be one option depending on the circumstances. But it will not be the patent recipe solving the problem as by a magic wand. It can certainly be argued that condoms might be the only protection a wife may have at her disposal (If she can convince her husband to use condoms; female condoms am hard to come by, expensive and even less effective).
But she will remain at risk even if the husband is cooperative, which is not to be taken for granted: "You face an extremely difficult situation if the sick person is your spouse. By continuing to have marital intercourse you may risk being infected as well. Even when using a condom, the risk is merely reduced, not eliminated. Or else you abstain from marital intercourse altogether which may put your mutual fidelity at risk. You will have to have a completely open dialogue with your spouse about this mortal danger to yourselves and your family.....The two of you will have to make a very difficult joint decision..." (Save Our Families, 7.2) In other words, there is no clearcut solution. Whatever you do you run a risk. I have known wives who decided to stop having mariml intercourse with their clearly unfaithful husbands altogether even at the least one of us must survive for the sake of said. A very courageous decision, but not do not use condoms when you are sexually risk of a complete marital breakdown. "At the children," one such wife and mother for everyone. The Church does not say: promiscuous. The Church says: do not be sexually promiscuous, period. If someone insists, against all reason and all the evidence, on continuing with promiscuous behaviour (and very many do!), then of course it is the lesser evil, if they use condoms and reduce the risk that remains
But that can hardly be the first message of the Church which must lead people to human and moral growth, mature relation• ships and personal integrity. However, that is the first message of the Zimbabwean pro-condom advertising campaign with its countless posters, billboards and radioanti TV messages directed primarily at tht young, in fact school children am teenagers, with the full backing of ou. Ministry of Health.
A lovely young couple assures our chil dren that once they use "protector" (sic!) condoms they will be "safe". This is ti blatant lie. They will die befire they are 30 Telling children that with condoms they will be "safe" shows a horrendous lack of the moral leadership which young peoplt are entitled to receive from their elders, II "small print" it says somewhere also that "abstinence" and "faithfulness" are even better than condoms. But that is not when the emphasis is placed. It is no more that a "fig leaf an excuse to be able to say a church people, "You see how good an moral we are!"
ON A RECENT BBC programme fo. Africa someone said that "chastit! was now an obsolete virtue". Wha. absolute rot! If ever there was a time when chastity was needed it is now, here in the Aids heartland of Africa, Southern Africa (Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa). There is absolutely no doubt that if traditional Judaeo-Christian morality and also African traditional morality ("boring, unexciting, conventional") had been observed we would not now see our young p(u-en! generation being wiped out leaving millions of orphans.
In the meantime groups like Youth Alive, the Jesuit Aids Project (promoting peer education), the education department or the Bishops' Conference and others arc trying to help our young people become the first "Aids free generation". .
Incidentally, is there perhaps someone out there who, instead of arguing the finer points of a theology of the condom, would be interested in doing something for our Aids orphans? I would be glad to get in touch with them.
Fr Wermter can be contacted a, Campion House, Box 54, Harare, Zimbabwe.
(e-mail : ctlt;[email protected])