AIDS and the Condom Conundrum

In Italian-Canadian writer Mary Melfi’s novel Infertility Rites, the Catholic protagonist is told by her WASP husband that the Pope “cannot be taken seriously as a religious leader.” The husband goes on to say that the Pope should be tried as a terrorist. Because of the Vatican’s opposition to condoms, millions of people in the Third World will die of AIDS.

Given that Infertility Rites was written in 1991, the Pope to which Melfi’s book is referring is obviously John Paul II. Now the present Pope, Benedict XVI, appears to be following in his predecessor’s footsteps and adding his voice to the chorus of “condomnation.” Benedict stated in his recent visit to Africa that condoms cannot resolve the AIDS crisis on that continent. In fact they could make it worse, in his view.

Benedict’s words sparked a firestorm of controversy. They brought back a piece some years ago in the National Post by Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise, herself a lapsed Catholic. She loudly decried the Catholic Bishops of Botswana’s criticism of a plan by that country’s government to distribute condoms to stem the spread of HIV there. They could have merely remained silent even if they disapproved; instead they chose to open their mouths. She further pointed out that while Thailand had managed to head off a major AIDS crisis through a public health campaign on safe sex, the incidence of HIV infection had increased exponentially in Botswana and other African countries where no such campaign had taken place.

The Catholic Church’s prohibition on condoms sometimes borders on the ludicrous. According to German theologian Uta Ranke-Heinemann, the Church would not even sanction the use of the device by the post-menopausal wife of an HIV-infected haemophiliac, even though in this instance the condom was not meant to prevent conception (the chance of which would be practically zero in a woman after the so-called “change of life,” Sara in the Bible notwithstanding) or encourage promiscuity (since the woman would only be having sex with her husband).

But is it fair to lay the burgeoning of the AIDS epidemic entirely at the feet of the Vatican? Not all individual Catholics share the Pope’s views. Even some members of the Church hierarchy feel that while abstinence and fidelity to one partner are the best defences against contracting the disease, people who can’t or won’t abide by these principles should use condoms to protect themselves against HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. Thailand is a largely Buddhist country with few Christians of any kind. However, similar success in averting an AIDS explosion occurred in Brazil, where most of the population is Catholic. And Catholics are far from a majority in Botswana and the other southern African nations cited by Laframboise. Though of course one can argue that Brazil’s battle against AIDS succeeded in spite rather than because of its Catholicism, it’s unclear whether the Church’s pronouncements have made much difference in the progression of AIDS in any individual country. The same might be said about the Church’s stance on contraception as a whole. In Europe two of the nations with the highest birth rates – France and Ireland – are for the most part Catholic, but so are some of those with the lowest: Italy, Spain and Portugal. Furthermore, it’s doubtful that the French are producing more babies than average out of a desire to keep themselves in line with Vatican teaching (the situation might be somewhat different in Ireland, where until recently the Catholic Church influenced not only citizens’ lives but government policy as well).

Let me be clear that I don’t agree with Pope Benedict’s stance on condoms or birth control in general. I’m heartened that a large of proportion of Catholics, including some priests and higher-ups, don’t either. And I concur with Donna Laframboise that the Bishops of Botswana should have kept their mouths shut. There may be isolated cases where an individual became infected with HIV by declining to use, or make his or her partner use, a condom as a result of the Church’s opposition to the device. But on a large scale the Catholic Church and the incidence of AIDS probably don’t have much to do with one another.