By Hilary White
MANILA, July 15, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An official of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has told media, in defiance of established Catholic teaching, that the use of condoms by HIV and AIDS-infected spouses is morally permissible.
The Philippine Star reports that Fr. Edwin Corros, executive secretary of the CBCP-Episcopal Commission for Pastoral Care for Migrants and Itinerant People (ECMI) said that condom-use should be a “last resort” only after fidelity and abstinence have failed. “But you see by using that (condom) we are not actually endorsing condom use. We would like to prevent deaths in the family.”
“I also think that the person also has the right to express the love to his or her partner. So this is practical. You cannot also be sure that using condom would be 100-percent proof,” Corros said.
Fr. Corros’ position was soundly trounced, however, in an article in the Vatican Newspaper L’Osservatore Romano in 2000 by a member of the Pontifical Council on the Family. Msgr. Jacques Suaudeau slammed the idea of condoms for AIDS prevention, saying it “cannot be proposed as a model of humanization and development.” Msgr. Suaudeau also pointed out the danger of relying upon latex condoms to prevent the transmission of the AIDS virus: “We are asked to believe that the HIV virus, 450 times smaller than spermatozoa, can almost always be magically blocked by a condom, without taking into account that spermatozoa themselves can pass through the latex barrier in 15 out of 100 completed sexual acts.”
The condom-for-AIDS theory, while directly contradicting the teaching of the Catholic Church as repeatedly reiterated by Vatican officials, also flies in the face of recent statistics showing a correlation between increasing rates of AIDS infection and the spread of condom use in the Philippines.
In 2006, the Philippine Health Secretary reported that the number of HIV/AIDS cases almost doubled in three years from about 6000 in 2002 to 11,168 in 2006. This was the same period in which private companies and UN-funded international NGOs began bringing condoms into the country. In 2004 alone, DKT, a private organization run by a well-known US pornographer, with the support of the Packard Foundation, distributed 27.8 million condoms as well as chemical abortifacients and contraceptives in the Philippines.
Indeed, in many countries, statistics have shown that far from reducing the transmission of AIDS, the use of condoms has greatly exacerbated the problem. The relentless push by foreign “experts” for condoms is being increasingly condemned by local governments in the developing world who have seen successful AIDS prevention programmes undermined by the western obsession with latex.
The first lady of Kenya said in 2006 that the western programmes pushing condoms in her country were the primary culprits in the spread of AIDS. Lucy Kibaki spoke to Kenyan schoolgirls at an awards ceremony, telling them, “The condom … is causing the spread of AIDS in this country.” Mrs Kibaki said the rapid spread of AIDS in Kenya could be put down to pressure from abroad to use condoms instead of practising self-control. “I am not telling you to use condoms. I am not in favour of condoms.”
Officials in charge of the most successful AIDS prevention programme in Africa have recently condemned the efforts by western advisors to undermine their programmes promoting abstinence and marital fidelity. A Ugandan official wrote a piece last week for the Washington Post, saying that the western obsession with casual sex was killing the people of his country.
The spread of artificial methods of contraception in the Philippines has long been one of the major goals of the international population control movement, funded through agencies like International Planned Parenthood and the United Nations Population Fund.
The Philippines was one of the countries specified in a 1974 US government document, the National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM), authored by Henry Kissinger, that re-directed the work of such international organisations as UNICEF into population control in order to protect US economic interests by lowering fertility rates in the developing world.
In 2002, the Catholic bishops conference of the Philippines issued a statement condemning the attempts by various international organisations to implement the NSSM 200 programme by pushing artificial contraceptives. Currently the attempt has been made again and the Church is vehemently opposing two pending pieces of legislation in the Senate and House of Representatives that will allow “family planning” organisations to begin their contraceptive programmes in the strongly Catholic country.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Philippine Politician and Bishops Slam America for NSSM 200 Population Control Agenda
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/dec/02120201.html
Philippine AIDS Rate Has Doubled Coinciding with Increase of Condom Use
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/feb/06020308.html
US Bishops AID Organization Encourages Condom Use through “Information”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/mar/08032805.html
Read the LifeSiteNews.com special reports on NSSM 200:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/waronfamily/nssm200/index.html