MADRID, January 20, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Newspaper and online news services around the world trumpeted the news that the Catholic bishops of Spain had broken with the Catholic Church on the issue of using condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS. A spokesman for the bishops’ conference appeared to suggest that the use of condoms can be morally licit as a last resort when moral sexual behavior fails.
The Spanish bishops’ conference today has issued what it is calling a clarification saying that the Church in Spain still adheres to Catholic teaching on birth control and sexuality. The statement declared, “It’s not true that the church has changed its doctrine on condoms.”
The bishops’ statement, however still holds back from full agreement with the Catholic teaching. It says that responsible and moral sexual activity is the only “advisable” – in Spanish “aconsejable,”- way to avoid disease. The statement stops short of the Catholic teaching which is that sexual abstinence and faithfulness within marriage is the only permissible and moral means of avoiding the disease.
The statement said, “Condom use implies immoral sexual conduct.” The teaching of the Catholic Church, however, is not that the use of a condom ‘implies’ immoral sexual conduct, but that it is, in itself, a “gravely immoral,” that is, mortally sinful, act. The Church teaches that the use of artificial contraceptives separates the sexual act from its purpose and reduces it to an act of selfish pleasure-seeking. The bishops’ statement ends with the ambiguous note, “it is not certain that the teaching of the Church has changed regarding prophylactics.”
The assumption made by many that the Spanish episcopal conference was defying the Vatican on condom use had more to support it than a simple misquote however. While Catholic moral teaching rejects the rationalization that condoms must be allowed because virtue is an impossible standard, it has been accepted by the bishops of England. The Catholic Primate of England, Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, said, “While we can say that, objectively, the use of condoms is wrong, there are places where it might be licit, or allowable, as when there’s a danger of intercourse leading to death.”
Previous LifeSiteNews.com coverage of Spanish episcopal conference:
Spanish Bishops Sanction Use of Embryo Cells from Frozen Embryos for Research
Spain’s Bishops Willing to Pay the Price to Give Catholic Teaching on Homosexuality