by Hilary White
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ROME May 23, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An article in “La Civiltà Cattolica,” the quasi-official Vatican journal by the Jesuits of Rome has confirmed that there can be no change in “policy” on the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases, despite widespread rumours in the press to the contrary.
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Rome journalist and Vatican commentator Sandro Magister says the article points the entire debate in a different direction, namely, towards the Christian teaching on chastity and the moral law regarding sexuality. The Vatican has maintained that encouraging the use of condoms gives a green light to immoral sexual behaviour and that only adherence to chaste behaviour will stop the spread of AIDS.
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The article by Michael F. Czerny, S.J., available on La Civiltà Cattolica’s website in Italian, says that the African cultural attitudes are more conducive to sexual abstinence and fidelity than current western values. “There are taboos that encourage self-control in sexual matters. Some of the traditions are opposed to sexual relations during pregnancy and lactation, and in cases of adultery.’
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“In many ethnic groups,” Czerny writes, “virginity before marriage is obligatory. Instead of considering such behaviours out of fashion, as is the case in the West…In Africa, fertility is a primary value, because it generates life, and chastity is a value insofar as it protects life and the quality of life.”
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Czerny denounces the excessive individualism of the sexual revolution in the west that is “being exported all over the world under the impulse of globalization.” He writes that those concerned with the spread of AIDS in Africa would do well to encourage these traditional cultural attitudes, “acknowledging the value of these positive elements in African culture.”
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The article backs up previous assertions from Vatican officials that no change or study of the question will be ordered by the Pope. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, told the Catholic News Agency earlier this month that no change was forthcoming. “As a dicastery we do not have any instruction or any indication to the contrary, to carry out a study about something new with regards to condoms,” he said.
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The flap over condoms continues to be a headache for the Vatican after retired Italian Cardinal Maria Martini in April told an Italian journalist that condom use was the “lesser of two evils.” News media around the world immediately reported that a change in the Vatican’s position was expected.
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Numerous groups funded by and acting on behalf of the Catholic Church, such as CAFOD, the aid organization of the English Catholic bishops, argue that distribution of condoms is only a practical measure since African people cannot accept the Church’s teaching on chastity. Some have counter argued that it is the staff of such western aid organizations that has the greatest difficulty with Catholic teaching.
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The Anglican Archbishop and Primate of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, has accused such organizations and those funded through the United Nations of a kind of latter day imperialism in trying to impose western mores of sexual licentiousness on Africans.
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Increasingly at international meetings of Christian organizations, both Catholic and Protestant, the African and Asian representatives are the more socially and theologically “conservative” and are standing up against incursions of foreign attitudes into their own cultures.
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Read coverage at WWW.Chiesa:
https://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=58722&eng=y
Related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Pro-Abortion ‘Catholics’ Applaud Cardinal Martini and Talk of Vatican Altering Condom Stand
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/apr/06042501.html