VATICAN CITY, Dec 1 (LSN.ca) – Archbishop Javier Barragan, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Workers, was speaking on the opening of a two-day symposium at the Vatican on AIDS yesterday. During his press briefing he stressed that the “best prevention” against the deadly disease “is chastity, both within and outside of marriage, even if that means going against the “pan-sexual and permissive” trends that have given rise to the AIDS epidemic.
Addressing the recent controversy which pretended that the Vatican was soon to change its stance on condoms, Barragan said, “We are opposed to the use of condoms because they do not respect the absolute dignity of the human person.” Father Bonifacio Honings, a Dutch moral theologian who advises the Vatican stressed that “From the moral point of view they (condoms) are not a lesser evil (to AIDS) and are absolutely not legitimate.” Father Felice Ruffini, undersecretary of the Vatican department hosting the AIDS conference added that “For too many years now, we have been hearing criticism of the Church because it opposes the use of condoms. . . The laws of Christ are difficult to accept and there is compassion and understanding for those who are weak, but no exceptions to moral laws can be made.”
See the VIS and Reuters coverage at: https://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=9956 https://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20001130/wl/vatican_condoms_dc_1.html