It's amazing that some should still be having a debate over the appropriateness of condom use even after so many millions have needlessly succumbed to AIDS, but given the current occupant of the Vatican, the real wonder is that any high-ranking clerics should have the courage to speak out at all.
A senior Vatican cardinal has joined the growing number of influential Catholic Church figures questioning the official Vatican ban on condom use.
Cardinal Georges Cottier is one of Pope John Paul II's preferred theologians.
So eyebrows were raised this week when he was quoted as saying the use of condoms may be legitimate to stop the spread of Aids in poor countries.
The cardinal said there was moral justification for condom use under certain circumstances to counter Aids.
Churchmen are arguing with increasing frequency that the traditional blanket ban on the use of condoms is no longer valid.
Cardinal Cottier said it was no longer a question only of allowing the transmission of life, but of actively preventing the transmission of death to a sexual partner.
This argument - of adopting the lesser of two evils - has also been proposed by bishops in France and Spain.
Spanish bishops however were forced by the Vatican to row back on a statement similar to that now made by Cardinal Cottier that they issued in Madrid last month.
Surely Cardinal Cottier is right - saving lives must come before all else in any system of ethics worth a damn. I know that Judaism upholds said principle, so why can't the Catholic Church?
Comments