Trojan Horses

This Condoms business is extremely irritating. It is a little known fact that the grounds on which Paul VI was expected to say that the pill was ok in the late 60s was that it was not a contraceptive but a way of regulating the menstrual cycle. You never hear that mentioned now because the people who put it forward never believed in it in the first place, they just wanted the Pope to say the Pill was ok and they were prepared to use any reasoning however tortuous to get there. It's like the people who want the Church to say that sodomy is ok as part of a stable loving relationship have no intention of advocating abstinence from sodomy before the contraction of an indissoluble stable loving relationship. Now the Trojan horse is the use of barrier contraceptives to prevent Aids. It is almost impossible to get Aids if you and your spouse follow the Church's teaching. If you get it because your spouse doesn't follow that teaching you still cant transmit it to anyone else so long as you do. So saying that married couples can use condoms to prevent the spread of Aids would have no practical impact whatsoever as they cant spread it unless they reject the Church's teaching. If both spouses knew that one spouse had Aids it would of course be sinfully irresponsible to engage in sterile sexual activity at the risk of the other's life. So the only possible circumstances in which one could use a Condom according to this proposed 'new teaching' would be when one's spouse suspected the other of infidelity but the other did not admit it. This of course would be sinfully to impugn the good faith of the other spouse. So in order to avoid that one would have to make the use of condoms routine for all couples except when they decide to 'try for a baby'. QED Trojan horse installed in the City of God.

Another powerful side effect this 'new teaching' would have would be to unravel the whole of the church's moral teaching by conceding the point that one can do evil that go may come of it. For the use of contraceptives is intrinsically evil. And, as the Compendium says, the sexual act can never be sterilised either as a means or an end. So why would anyone be calling for this? For the same reason as last time, they don't believe in the church's teaching in the first place and they want to see the Church's teaching authority implode. If they can't get the Pope to err then at least they can create the impression he is going to and then if he says nothing they will claim that silence is consent and if he condemns them they will complain he has disappointed the widespread expectations of the laity. Sound familiar?