CBCP SLAMS DOH CONDOMS PLAN

PRESS STATEMENT

30 August 2008

CBCP SLAMS DOH CONDOMS PLAN

Archbishop Paciano Aniceto, Archbishop of San Fernando Pampanga and Chairman of the Episcopal Commission on Family and Life of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), today took to task the Department of Health for saying it will begin distributing condoms for general use, allegedly to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The full text of the statement follows:

We are constrained to express grave concern over the press statement attributed to Undersecretary of Health Mario Villaverde that the Department of Health will now promote the nationwide use of condoms, allegedly as a means to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

That decision, if such a decision has in fact been made, appears to us as completely irresponsible and imprudent. It is dangerous to public health, offensive to the common good and should be revoked. The mere timing of the announcement provokes legitimate questions about the real motives of the Department.

The decision ironically coincides with a recently published statement by David and Lucile Packard Foundation, one of the leading foreign promoters of population control in the Philippines, complaining that the Philippine government had not been buying contraceptives.

It also coincides with the well orchestrated campaign by a certain bloc to push the proposed reproductive health legislation in Congress which violates on its face the Constitution, the moral principles and religious beliefs of majority of Filipinos.

We are inclined to view this as an underhanded way of subverting our strong moral and constitutional objection to the proposed legislation, and confronting the nation with a fait accompli bereft of any moral or constitutional basis.

We recognize fully the need to protect our communities from the possible spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) from various sources. Despite the small number of registered HIV/AIDS cases (about 3,000), this should be a priority for the Department.

But in order to succeed, we must strike at the root of the epidemic by promoting responsible sexual behavior among adults, instead of simply trying to promote what is dishonestly and irresponsibly called “safe sex”. We must encourage men and women to live morally upright lives, and to practice marital fidelity and chastity within and outside marriage, instead of telling them that risky sexual behavior is acceptable, provided they wear a condom to protect them and their “partners” from HIV/AIDS.

Not a single scientific literature claims that the condom is 100% effective or “safe,” whether as a contraceptive or as a prophylactic. Indeed, among serodiscordant couples, the condom might be able to reduce the risk of contamination of the seronegative spouse, but it could never eliminate it.

According to the scientific literature, the rate of failure of all brands of condoms is high. But this information is generally excluded from the usual propaganda about “safe sex”. This tends to create the kind of risky sexual behavior, which increases the chances of contracting and transmitting the disease.

It is the duty of the DOH never to propose for general public use any prophylactic that could increase the incidence of the disease it is supposed to prevent. It is, therefore, irresponsible, imprudent, and dangerous for the Department to declare that the use of the condom, without any change in unhealthy sexual behavior, will prevent seropositive cases from transmitting HIV/AIDS to their seronegative spouses.

And it is certainly manipulative and deceitful of the Department to require or recommend to all seronegative males the use of the condom as a “health measure” when the real purpose, it appears, is to please the foreign donors to the illegal population control program and push the latex shell as a state-mandated contraceptive.

Familiaris Consortio #51:Faith as the Discovery and Admiring Awareness of God's Plan for the Family

51. As a sharer in the life and mission of the Church, which listens to the word of God with reverence and proclaims it confidently,(120) the Christian family fulfills its prophetic role by welcoming and announcing the word of God: it thus becomes more and more each day a believing and evangelizing community.

Christian spouses and parents are required to offer "the obedience of faith."(121) They are called upon to welcome the word of the Lord which reveals to them the marvelous news-the Good News-of their conjugal and family life sanctified and made a source of sanctity by Christ Himself. Only in faith can they discover and admire with joyful gratitude the dignity to which God has deigned to raise marriage and the family, making them a sign and meeting place of the loving covenant between God and man, between Jesus Christ and His bride, the Church.

The very preparation for Christian marriage is itself a journey of faith. It is a special opportunity for the engaged to rediscover and deepen the faith received in Baptism and nourished by their Christian upbringing. In this way they come to recognize and freely accept their vocation to follow Christ and to serve the Kingdom of God in the married state.

The celebration of the sacrament of marriage is the basic moment of the faith of the couple. This sacrament, in essence, is the proclamation in the Church of the Good News concerning married love. It is the word of God that "reveals" and "fulfills" the wise and loving plan of God for the married couple, giving them a mysterious and real share in the very love with which God Himself loves humanity. Since the sacramental celebration of marriage is itself a proclamation of the word of God, it must also be a "profession of faith" within and with the Church, as a community of believers, on the part of all those who in different ways participate in its celebration.

This profession of faith demands that it be prolonged in the life of the married couple and of the family. God, who called the couple to marriage, continues to call them in marriage.(122) In and through the events, problems, difficulties and circumstances of everyday life, God comes to them, revealing and presenting the concrete "demands" of their sharing in the love of Christ for His Church in the particular family, social and ecclesial situation in which they find themselves.

The discovery of and obedience to the plan of God on the part of the conjugal and family community must take place in "togetherness," through the human experience of love between husband and wife, between parents and children, lived in the Spirit of Christ.

Thus the little domestic Church, like the greater Church, needs to be constantly and intensely evangelized: hence its duty regarding permanent education in the faith.

Familiaris Consortio #11:Man, the Image of the God Who Is Love

PART TWO

THE PLAN OF GOD FOR MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY

Man, the Image of the God Who Is Love

11. God created man in His own image and likeness(20): calling him to existence through love, He called him at the same time for love.

God is love(21) and in Himself He lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in His own image and continually keeping it in being, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion.(22) Love is therefore the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.

As an incarnate spirit, that is a soul which expresses itself in a body and a body informed by an immortal spirit, man is called to love in his unified totality. Love includes the human body, and the body is made a sharer in spiritual love.

Christian revelation recognizes two specific ways of realizing the vocation of the human person in its entirety, to love: marriage and virginity or celibacy. Either one is, in its own proper form, an actuation of the most profound truth of man, of his being "created in the image of God."

Consequently, sexuality, by means of which man and woman give themselves to one another through the acts which are proper and exclusive to spouses, is by no means something purely biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human person as such. It is realized in a truly human way only if it is an integral part of the love by which a man and a woman commit themselves totally to one another until death. The total physical self-giving would be a lie if it were not the sign and fruit of a total personal self-giving, in which the whole person, including the temporal dimension, is present: if the person were to withhold something or reserve the possibility of deciding otherwise in the future, by this very fact he or she would not be giving totally.

This totality which is required by conjugal love also corresponds to the demands of responsible fertility. This fertility is directed to the generation of a human being, and so by its nature it surpasses the purely biological order and involves a whole series of personal values. For the harmonious growth of these values a persevering and unified contribution by both parents is necessary.

The only "place" in which this self-giving in its whole truth is made possible is marriage, the covenant of conjugal love freely and consciously chosen, whereby man and woman accept the intimate community of life and love willed by God Himself(23) which only in this light manifests its true meaning. The institution of marriage is not an undue interference by society or authority, nor the extrinsic imposition of a form. Rather it is an interior requirement of the covenant of conjugal love which is publicly affirmed as unique and exclusive, in order to live in complete fidelity to the plan of God, the Creator. A person's freedom, far from being restricted by this fidelity, is secured against every form of subjectivism or relativism and is made a sharer in creative Wisdom.