VATICAN CITY — Using a condom is a lesser evil than transmitting HIV to a sexual partner, even if that means a woman averts a possible pregnancy, the Vatican said Tuesday, signaling a shift in papal teaching as it explained Pope Benedict XVI’s comments.
The position was an acknowledgment that the church’s long-held anti-birth control stance against condoms doesn’t justify putting lives at risk.
“This is a game-changer,” declared the Rev. James Martin, a prominent Jesuit writer and editor.
The new stance was staked out as the Vatican explained Pope Benedict XVI’s comments on condoms and HIV in a book that came out Tuesday based on his interview with a German journalist.
The Vatican still holds that condom use is immoral and that church doctrine forbidding artificial birth control remains unchanged. Still, the reassessment on condom use to help prevent disease carries significance, particularly in Africa where AIDS is rampant.
“By acknowledging that condoms help prevent the spread of HIV between people in sexual relationships, the pope has completely changed the Catholic discussion on condoms,” Martin said.
Theologians have debated for years whether it could be morally acceptable for HIV infected people to use condoms to avoid infecting their partners. The Vatican years ago was reportedly preparing a document on the subject, but it never came out.
The shift would appear likely to restrain any public criticism from Catholic conservatives, who Tuesday insisted that the pope was merely reaffirming the church’s moral teaching.
Conservatives have feared that a comment like this would give support to Catholics who want to challenge the church’s ban on artificial contraception in an environment where they feel they are under siege from a secular, anti-Catholic culture.
George Weigel, a conservative Catholic writer, said the Vatican was by no means endorsing condom use as a method of contraception or a means of AIDS prevention.
“This is admittedly a difficult distinction to grasp,” he told The Associated Press in an e-mail. What the pontiff is saying is “that someone determined to do something wrong may be showing a glimmer of moral common sense by not doing that wrong thing in the worst possible way - which is not an endorsement of anything.”
Benedict’s comments come at a time when bishops in the United States are intensely focused on upholding the strictest views of Catholic orthodoxy, emphasizing traditional marriage, natural family planning based on a woman’s menstrual cycle and making abortion the most important issue.
In the book, Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times, Benedict was quoted as saying that condom use by people such as male prostitutes was a lesser evil since it indicated that they were moving toward a more moral and responsible sexuality by aiming to protect their partners from a deadly infection.
His comments implied that he was referring primarily to homosexual sex, when condoms aren’t being used as a form of contraception.
However, questions arose immediately about the pope’s intent because the Italian translation of the book used the feminine for prostitute, whereas the original German used the masculine.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told reporters Tuesday that he asked the pope whether he intended his comments to apply only to men. Benedict replied that it really didn’t matter, the important thing was that the person took into consideration the life of another, Lombardi said.
“I personally asked the pope if there was a serious,important problem in the choice of the masculine over the feminine,” Lombardi said. “He told me no. The problem is this: ... It’s the first step of taking responsibility, of taking into consideration the risk of the life of another with whom you have a relationship.”
“This is if you’re a man, a woman or a transsexual. ... The point is it’s a first step of taking responsibility, of avoiding passing a grave risk onto another,” Lombardi said.
Those comments concluded the news conference, and Lombardi took no further questions about how broadly this interpretation could be applied.
The clarification is significant.
UNAIDS estimates that 22.4 million people in Africa are infected with HIV, and that 54 percent - or 12.1 million - are women. Heterosexual transmission of HIV and multiple heterosexual partners are believed to be the major cause of the high infection rates.
The global AIDS epidemic has slowed with a 20 percent decrease in new HIV infections over the past decade, the United Nations’ AIDS agency said Tuesday.
Despite claiming that the trajectory of the epidemic has been “broken,” a report released Tuesday by the Geneva-based agency said there are still 7,000 new infections each day, which means two people are still infected with the virus for every one starting treatment.
Sheila Tlou, an Africa based UNAIDS official, said increased condom use, abstinence and improved awareness of AIDS, have contributed to the fall in infections in Africa.
“There is time for optimism, but with a purpose,” Tlou told The Associated Press. She said programming needs to focus on groups that are stigmatized by society and the government.
In the book, the pope reaffirms Vatican opposition to homosexual acts and artificial contraception, as well as the inviolability of marriage between man and woman.
But by broadening the condom comments to also apply to women, the pope was saying that condom use is a lesser evil than passing HIV onto a partner, even when pregnancy is possible.
“We’re not just talking about an encounter between two men, which has little to do with procreation. We’re now introducing relationships that could lead to childbirth,” Martin said.
Information for this article was contributed by Rachel Zoll, Jason Straziuso, Nastasya Tay, Frank Jordans and Marilynn Marchione of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 11/24/2010