The problem with condoms

One can now expect that, after the widely publicized misunderstandings of the Church's position, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), or Pope Benedict himself, will issue in the months ahead a document to clarify the church's teaching. Even before that, however, one can know that the church will not change her constant teaching on the nature of marriage and the marital act, and therefore changes anticipated by some will not materialize.

Based on a leak of part of a preliminary study by the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care, some anticipate that the church will state that condoms may be tolerated as a "lesser evil" in cases in which one spouse is infected with AIDS. The argument some present is that the church can tolerate the lesser evil of contraception to bring about the greater goods of preventing the physical death of a non-infected spouse and enabling a couple to continue fostering their personal union through sexual intimacy.

Some theologians are arguing that the church might even pronounce that the use of condoms by such a couple is morally licit. As John Allen reported recently in the National Catholic Reporter, these theologians "argue that wearing a condom during intercourse cannot have moral value in itself. It's the intent, they say, that matters."

"It's not sex with a condom that's intrinsically evil, but contraception," stated Redemptorist Father Brian Johnstone, a moral theologian at Rome's Alphonsian Academy, in an interview with Allen. "If the purpose is saving life, then we're not talking about contraception anymore," he said. If the new document endorses this view, Father Johnstone added, it would mark an important development in favor of a "non-physicalist" understanding of sexual morality (i.e., a morality that does not unduly emphasize the physical expression of a freely willed act).

However, in brief, the church cannot condone or encourage condoms as a lesser evil, and Father Johnstone departs from definitive church teaching in arguing that condoms can be morally licit when used in the consensual acts of a married couple. Non-consensual acts, on the other hand, are quite different. The church affirms that non-consensual acts and their effects, similar to an act of rape, may be legitimately repelled by the violated spouse, including through the use of a condom.

Toleration of evil

While the church teaches that a lesser evil may be passively tolerated to avoid a greater evil or promote a greater good, it is never permissible to sanction, encourage or do an intrinsically evil act so that good may come from it (CCC, no. 1756), even in cases when "the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general" (Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, no. 14). God designed the marital act so that a couple could become "one flesh," i.e., become spiritually and biologically one by respecting the unbreakable bond the Lord established between the love-giving (unitive) and life-giving (procreative) aspects of conjugal love. Sexual acts that violate this bond, e.g., through the use of a condom, are intrinsically immoral (cf. Humanae Vitae, no. 12).

Indeed, irrespective of whether a married couple can conceive a child, their marital relations are designed not only to signify but concretely express total and mutual self-giving (cf. CCC, nos. 2360-71). In other words, because marriage is a two-in-one-flesh communion (cf. Gen. 2:23-24, Mt. 19:5-6), the marital act has an essential, bodily aspect to it. To suggest otherwise is to commit the error of dualism, as if a husband and wife are not truly human, are not body-soul composites (cf. CCC, nos. 362-66), and that the bodily expression of human choices is irrelevant in considering the morality of human actions.

It is true that condom use to prevent disease is not contraception. Nevertheless, such an act is still intrinsically immoral because a married couple cannot, as indicated, truly become one flesh. A couple's participating in such an act is morally tantamount to their engaging in mutual masturbation to completion, as distinguished from morally licit foreplay. Yet, a common misunderstanding among the faithful is that sex involving the use of a condom is an authentic expression of marital love, apparently because it shares superficial similarities with a genuine marital act.

In short, the church cannot condone or encourage a couple's decision to use a condom to prevent the transmission of AIDS. Not only would such ecclesiastical action aid and abet the violation of the moral principle never to choose evil, it would also mislead couples into thinking that physical death is worse than the much more serious moral fallout that can accompany immoral sexual acts. The moral way for such couples to prevent the transmission of AIDS is by abstaining from the marital act, and the faithful should support them in taking advantage of God's abundant grace to do so.

The nature of a moral act

It is the object chosen that fundamentally determines the morality of an act, not the intention or circumstances (CCC, nos. 1751, 1756). One's intention or end, however noble, cannot make a fundamentally immoral act morally good (e.g., stealing, fornication, blasphemy). As Pope John Paul II reaffirmed, "If acts are intrinsically evil, a good intention or particular circumstances can diminish their evil, but they cannot remove it. They remain 'irremediably' evil acts; per se and in themselves they are not capable of being ordered to God and to the good of the person.... Consequently, circumstances or intentions can never transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its object into an act 'subjectively' good or defensible as a choice" (Veritatis Splendor, no. 81).

Furthermore, if one argues that sexual relations between husband and wife need not involve an authentic marital act, one opens the door to other intrinsically immoral acts. For example, one could justify homosexual acts because they are, strictly speaking, not contraceptive, nor do they involve a two-in-one-flesh communion. In addition, some argue that homosexual acts also foster the personal union of two human persons.

Non-consensual relations

Finally, the church shows herself once again to be truly "non-physicalistic" in distinguishing between consensual and non-consensual relations between husband and wife. Both involve the physical components of sexual intercourse, but the choice of the will is gravely different. That is, similar to rape, a wife who is forcibly required to engage in sexual relations, particularly one whose husband has AIDS, may defend herself against such an attack, whether persuading her scoundrel husband to wear a condom, or using post-coital remedies that would reduce the likelihood of AIDS transmission, provided they are not chosen to abort a child who may have been conceived (cf. U.S. Bishops, "Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services," Fourth Edition, no. 36; CCC, no. 2356).

In summary, the Catholic Church cannot condone, let alone sanction, the use of condoms among married couples, even if one spouse has AIDS. Regardless of one's intention, condoms invariably render immoral the consensual relations between husband and wife. In the decidedly different case of non-consensual acts, wives have a right to defend themselves against such unjust acts, and the faithful have an obligation to admonish offending husbands toward repentance, whether or not they go to jail for their wrongdoing.

- - -

Thomas J. Nash is the director of special projects for Catholics United for the Faith.

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