Accountable to God alone? : theologising with a hammer : the HIV/AIDS crisis, condoms and Catholicism

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Theological positions are usually considered as coterminous with ethicalconsiderations. That which the Church has earnestly considered in the light of what isbelieved to be God's will, as elucidated in religious texts and through prayerfulcontemplation, are considered to be ethical without contradiction.Recently the Roman Catholic Church adopted a position forbidding the use ofcondoms as protection from contracting HIV/AIDS. Instead, the Church has declaredthat the way to controlling the AIDS pandemic is via sexual abstinence for theunmarried and sexual faithfulness within marriage.It is acknowledged that it is not possible for all the church's theological positions to bedriven by pragmatic concerns within society. Nor can a church easily be seen to bepromoting sex outside of marriage by recommending the indiscriminate use ofcondoms. However, the Roman Catholic Church, by forbidding the use ofcontraception, puts itself in an ethically questionable light relative to other Christianchurches.The Catholic Church needs to reconsider its stance on contraception from firstprinciples, divorced from dogmatic beliefs and practices which were derived by menand which have endured beyond their usefulness or theological veracity. It is evidentthat a church should not adhere to dogmas that are ungodly in their impact andethically questionable in their import. If a church needs to revise its dogmatic stanceon such issues, it should have the courage to do so.This research considers whether the stance of the Catholic Church on condoms can beconsidered ethical. The position of the Catholic Church is considered critically from a variety of philosophical, empirical and ethical viewpoints. In so doing, it highlights theprincipled and practical problems of resolving differing moral positions that cross thereligious and secular divide.The approach adopted is one of an applied ethical nature, given the probable effects ofparticipating in unprotected sex. Pregnancy and contracting HIV/AIDS are the likelyoutcomes of not using condoms, and these conditions will create enormous problemsfor the individual concerned, her, or his, family, as well as for the greater society.The position taken in this research is that the Catholic Church's stand on abstinencebefore marriage and faithfulness in marriage, as the answer to the HIV/AIDS crisis,would be a realistic ethical position, if, and only if, it was at all feasible and realisablein practice. However, it is the contention of the author, based on empiricalconsiderations, that the idealistic stance taken by the Catholic Church is out of touchwith the realities in our contemporary South African society and is doomed to failure.Given this perspective, the Catholic stance is morally questionable, as, if sexualrelationships continue to occur outside of marriage, and if condoms are not used, theresult will be unwanted pregnancies, HIV infections of both mothers and their babies,crises for families and society at large, and ultimately widespread death from AIDS.Given the pandemic facing South Africa, the Catholic position in banning the use ofcondoms, is ethically questionable and morally suspect. The Church needs to be calledto account for the implications of its dogmatic stance.The HIV/AIDS pandemic is simply too serious for a public institution, such as theCatholic Church, to be involved in perpetuating theological niceties and holdingidealised positions. The Church is not divorced from the society it exists in and arealistic, responsible and accountable response is needed in the current context ofhundreds of thousands of persons facing death from AIDS and its related diseases.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University