Condoms ‘not justified in fight against Aids’

Doctors’ journal points to ‘user error’
BY DAN FRANK
ARESPECTED Catholic group has published an article critical of claims that condoms are justified in the fight against Aids.
Writing in Catholic Medical Quarterly, the journal of the Guild of Catholic Doctors, Hugh Henry forcefully argued that condoms are not only an ineffective method of preventing Aids transmission but are also wholly incompatible with Catholic moral teaching.
“The critics have simply failed to show that the Church’s view of sexual ethics as intimately – though often subtly – related to parenthood is inferior to rival views which recognise no such connection,” he wrote.
The issue of condom use in the fight against Aids is not addressed in the Catechism and it has divided the Church.
Cafod was attacked last week by the newly formed Catholic Action Group, which bitterly criticised the development agency for allegedly supporting condom campaigns. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, who has signalled his support for condom use in the fight against Aids, came to Cafod’s defence. He sent a letter to Chris Bain, the agency’s director, in which he praised it for its work.
Other prelates, including Cardinal Godfried Daneels of Belgium, have argued that it is better that an HIV carrier use a condom with their partner than infect them with the virus. “The condom cannot just be seen as a birth control measure,” Cardinal Daneels said.
But Mr Henry, formerly Education Officer at the Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics, a London-based institute funded by the Catholic bishops, set out arguments against condoms, only one of which addressed the capacity of the devices to stem HIV transmission.
Firstly, he said, it is not certain that the promotion of condoms leads to a reduction in the spread of Aids. Cardinal Alfonso Trujillo, the Prefect of the Pontifical Council for the Family and a vocal proponent of abstinence campaigns, has claimed in the past that condoms can be permeable to HIV up to 20 per cent of the time and that condom programmes encourage promiscuity.
Cardinal Trujillo’s claims have been publicly contested, but Mr Henry noted that labo ratory conditions were unlikely to reflect “spontaneous sexual behaviour” and that “user error” presented a far higher risk of infection than condom failure.
Mr Henry also argued that, independently of the ethics of contraception, condoms prevented couples from engaging in true, unconditional Christian love. “It is simply impossible for a couple to give themselves completely to each other while a condom vitiates the fertile structure of their union,” he wrote. Sex, he said, is not just a “neutral bodily activity” but the physical manifestation of the “one-flesh union of the married couple”.
He argued that the Catholic Church was not guilty of “placing morality over mortality” by teaching abstinence instead of contraception, an accusation levelled by some critics of the Church. Proponents of condoms also uphold ethical principles, he argued, by favouring condom use over adultery when one partner in a marriage is infected with HIV. Committing adultery with an uninfected person would be the safest option from the “point of view of physical health alone” but no one advocates such a position, he said.
BY STEPHEN BOURKE
ARCHAEOLOGISTS working on the site of a Bristol bus station have uncovered part of a cloister and other remains of a medieval Benedictine monastery.
The site, being redeveloped by Mowlem plc, unearthed the remains of the Priory of St James. Founded in 1129 by Robert, Earl of Gloucester, a son of Henry I, the Priory is almost as old as the city itself and appears in the earliest maps of “Brigstowe”. Robert came to Bristol from Tewkes bury and after building Bristol Castle he commenced on the Priory which was to serve as a Benedictine cell of Tewkesbury Abbey.
St James’ Priory was last excavated in 1995. Then, part of the east end of the church was revealed along with more than 200 human remains from the adjoining burial ground. This area is now covered by an office block.
Already the current excavations have uncovered the remains of at least six individuals, including those of an adult female found in a shal low grave.
The Priory thrived until it was sacked by Henry VIII during the Reformation. Its lands were given to Henry Bayne who converted the buildings into a manor house.
Before this chapter in English history St James’was one of numerous Catholic institutions to be found in and around Bristol. These included the Dominican Friary founded in Broadmead in 1227, St Mark’s Hospital opposite College Green in 1230, St Bartholomew’s Hospital founded between 1231 and 1234, the Franciscan Friary (Lewins Mead) founded before 1250, the Carmelite Friary founded in 1256, St Augustine’s Abbey in 1140 and St Mary Magdalene founded around 1170.
The dig, conducted by the city’s archaeological unit, has uncovered some fine artefacts, including a complete medieval jug and cooking pot dating from the 13th century. Hundreds of people braved the pouring rain to visit the site when it was opened to the public for a day.