Archbishop of Maputo (Mozambique) on Condoms/HIV
October 1, 2007, 9:02 am
Posted by Eduardo Peñalver
From the BBC:
The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has
told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with
HIV deliberately. Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some
anti-retroviral drugs were also infected “in order to finish quickly
the African people”.
The Catholic Church formally opposes any use of condoms, advising fidelity within marriage or sexual abstinence. Aids activists have been angered by the remarks, one calling them “nonsense”….“Condoms are not sure because I know that there are two
countries in Europe, they are making condoms with the virus on
purpose,” [the Archbishop] alleged, refusing to name the countries.
This is appalling. I am not going to argue about church doctrine or the overall protective potential of condoms, their limitations, and so on. What angers me is to see an arm of the church that is incapable of standing up for its dogma on its own terms with the understanding that it might, depending on the circumstances, expose people and in particular women to life threatening consequences. It’s a lot easier to make up stories about foreigners infecting condoms in order to bring about genocide than it is to face up to the reality that adhering to church doctrine might materially harm the church’s adherents.
Blake said:
“A truth that’s told with bad intent
beats all the lies you can invent.”
He’s right, but that doesn’t justify well-intentioned lies.
It’s not just Africa. When I did pre-Cana in the Archdiocese of Washington, we were given a lecture on NFP by a crazy woman who claimed that condoms did not protect against AIDS. Again, I have no problem with the Churhc making an argument against artificial contraception on its own merits, but to engage in out-right lies is beyond the pale. Whatever happed to the dictum that “truth cannot contradict truth”?
What a surprise that a Catholic archbishop is not telling the truth about condoms! Or is it?
VATICAN CITY, NOV. 11, 2003 (Zenit) – In this interview on Vatican Radio, Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, emphasized the ineffectiveness of the condom as a contraceptive and in preventing sexually transmitted diseases.
http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=488
But pseudo-scientific arguments have also been deployed by some conservative Catholics against the use of condoms as a means of HIV prevention. A recent BBC Panorama documentary found that some senior Catholic clerics were maintaining that not only were condoms theologically unsound, but were also spreading false information about the reliability and safety of condoms. [4/18/2005]
http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/DF198BFC-D4A9-4B91-A1A1-ED28E771B42D.asp
Steve Bradshaw
Thursday October 9, 2003
The Guardian
The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which HIV can pass – potentially exposing thousands of people to risk.
The church is making the claims across four continents despite a widespread scientific consensus that condoms are impermeable to HIV.
A senior Vatican spokesman backs the claims about permeable condoms, despite assurances by the World Health Organisation that they are untrue.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,7369,1059068,00.html
The Vatican has a special responsibility here, for it not only repeatedly rejected condom use for the sake of HIV prevention, but argued — for example in its 2003 document ”Family Values and Safe Sex” — that condoms, instead of inhibiting the spread of HIV/AIDS, promote it.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/05/01/outlawed_aids_prevention/
Trujillo wasn’t lying, David. Condoms aren’t perfectly safe, and they do give a false sense of complete security, which just isn’t the case.
If the decision were between (a) “don’t have sex at all” and (b) “have sex but only if condoms are used” then Kathy’s point is true. But (a) and (b) are frequently and maybe even mostly not the relevant choices. In almost every other scenario, it is safer to use condoms than not.
Commonweal ran an article on this issue last year. Here’s an excerpt that takes up Trujillo’s misleading claims about condoms:
“Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, has elaborated on the latter point: ‘In the case of the AIDS virus, which is around 450 times smaller than the sperm cell, the condom’s latex material obviously gives much less security…to talk of condoms as “safe sex” is a form of Russian roulette.’ Trujillo called on ministries of health to require ‘a warning, that the condom is not safe’ on packages distributed worldwide.
“Although it is true that condoms are not 100-percent effective in preventing HIV infection, they do reduce the risk of transmission significantly. Comparing condom use to a suicidal dare, as Cardinal Trujillo does, is scientifically inaccurate and socially irresponsible. A preponderance of medical research demonstrates that condoms help prevent the spread of HIV. For example, the European Study Group on Heterosexual Transmission of HIV followed 124 discordant couples (in which only one of the pair is infected with HIV) who consistently used condoms. Over a two-year period and roughly fifteen thousand sexual acts, none of the HIV-negative partners contracted the virus. Thai investigators examining the impact of condom use among the military reported that new infections dropped from 12.5 percent in 1993 to 6.7 percent in 1995. The number of new HIV infections in Thailand plummeted after the introduction of a ’100-percent condom use’ program. Uganda earned its reputation as a paragon of HIV prevention for its now-famous ABC program: Abstain, Be faithful, and Consistent, Correct use of Condoms. Following the implementation of ABC, HIV infection in Uganda decreased from between 15 and 20 percent of the population in the early 1990s to 5 percent in 2003. A comparative analysis of Ugandan population-based surveys in 1989 and 1995 concluded that delaying the age of first sexual encounters, decreasing the number of casual partners, and increasing condom use all contributed to Uganda’s success. More recently, though, HIV has been on the rise in Uganda. Current data estimate 7 percent of the population is infected with the AIDS virus. Some advocacy groups attribute this upswing to a national condom shortage orchestrated by the Ugandan government under pressure from the Bush administration. The Health Ministry of Uganda refutes this allegation, stating that delays in the distribution of condoms have been the result of enhanced inspection of shipments after a batch of Chinese condoms was purportedly discovered to be faulty.”
Here’s a link to the article:
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=1610&var_recherche=AIDS
I would not assume that Archbishop Maputo is deliberately saying something he knows or believes to be untrue. Most of you will have heard the views of Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa, on the subject of HIV etc. There is an excellent review by Hilary Mantel of two books that cover this subject in the London Review of Books for 20 September. I doubt it is available on line to nonsubscribers at this point, but if you have access to a good library you may be able to locate a copy there. I am not saying that Maputo’s views are the same as Mbeki’s, but the same sort of suspicion probably underlies the attitudes of both men. Culture does matter.
Kathy,
Nowhere in my message did I use the words “lie” or “lying.”
Below is an excerpt from the transcript of his remarks on the BBC (Bradshaw is the interviewer), which he was being asked about in the excerpt above. It is even more egregious.
SEX and the HOLY CITY
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 12:10:03
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/panorama/transcripts/sexandtheholycity.txt
CARDINAL OBANDO Y BRAVO: Now studying genetics we were told that AIDS can be transmitted through the doctor’s surgical glove which is less porous than a condom.
BRADSHAW: Clearly these extraordinary claims are being made by influential Catholics across the world, so we asked the Pope’s spokesman on the family whether they are also the official view of the Vatican.
Is it the position of the Vatican that the virus, the HIV virus can pass through the condom?
Cardinal ALFONSO LOPEZ TRUJILLO
Pontifical Council for the Family
Yes, yes, because this is something which the scientific community accepts, and doctors know what we are saying. You cannot talk about safe sex. One should speak of the human value, about the family, and about fidelity.
BRADSHAW: But I have spoken to the World Health Organisation and they say it is simply not true that the HIV virus can pass through latex from which condoms are made?
TRUJILLO: Well they are wrong about that, no dialogue is possible at that level, scientifically speaking, because this is an easily recognisable fact.
********************
Check out these sources to see whether what Trujillo was saying is true.
********************
World Health Organization
Laboratory studies have found that viruses (including HIV) do not pass through intact latex condoms even when devices are stretched or stressed.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs243/en/
Centers for Disease Control
Laboratory studies have demonstrated that latex condoms provide an essentially impermeable barrier to particles the size of STD pathogens
http://www.cdc.gov/nchstp/od/condoms.pdf
********************
And I would not assume that the views of Mbeki are anything other than a politically astute way of justifying an unwillingness to pay for HIV medicines. At least Mbeki isn’t accusing foreigners of acts of great evil.
I mean, even if there are European companies putting HIV in condoms sold in Africa (!!!!!), Maputo ought to know (or ought to investigate to find out) that the HIV virus would not likely survive the journey to Africa to infect anyone.
Sorry, I can’t provide him with any benefit of the doubt. Until Maputo demonstrates true stupidity, a weak defense for him and for the Church, I think we are justified in assuming either duplicity or willful ignorance.
Vaccinations are 100 percent reliable, either, but they’ve saved a lot of lives. In my view, a condom used between married people to prevent a fatal disease isn’t any different from a vaccination.
This AB begs description — and so does the good cardinal.
If this is the direction the church is taking, God help us all!
The supreme idiocy of this man is just another reason why the world at large looks at pronouncement of the RCC with amusement (at best) and appalled unbelief in general.
Good luck in evangelizing the world be people like Chimoio. He should be put out to pasture NOW.
Why would Chimoio make such a preposterous claim? Why would he expect that anyone would take him seriously?
Surely it’s not news to him that any syllable a bishop utters in public is subject to instantaneous scrutiny and critique?
I’d really like to know what he was thinking. Where he lives, do people just uncritically accept everything he says?
There is an unfortunate tendency to marshal whatever argument one can to support one’s position in several corners of the heierarchy and even among some of those who blo ghere.
It’s a
return to the old time apologetics, which were uneffective as folks became more educated.
(On the subject of contraceptives, I se the US Supreme Court turned down an appeal from NY Catholic Charities that they had to pay for contraceptives as part of emplyee drug coverage – worth a thread here?)
It is with shocked disbelief that I see that I said “unbelief.”
If condoms are as unreliable and porous as some in the Vatican maintain, there is no reason not to use them, since every instance of intercourse would still remain open to the transmission of life.