Pope support

How can we change 'macho' attitudes to sex? | Society | guardian.co.uk

It's hard to read this article in The Guardian without thinking that it basically supports what the Pope and George Pell were attacked for saying a few weeks back.

On the issue of use of condoms within marriage: I would be concerned if the Pope's view was commonly taken by African women as meaning that they should still have unprotected sex with their husband even if they know he is HIV positive. But in fact, as one article I referred to in the previous post indicated, Catholic moralists would probably argue that it would be wrong for a HIV positive husband to insist on sex at all. (I don't know about most of my readers, but if I were in such a wife's situation, there's no way I would want to keep a sex life going with the husband - condom or not.)

For a situation where it is only suspected (through a belief that he is being unfaithful, say) that the husband is HIV positive, it seems to me doubtful in the extreme that unprotected sex within the marriage would be due to the Catholic teaching. After all, condoms don't exactly enhance the experience: a fact which condom promoters don't seem to ever want to acknowledge.

A wife's insistence on use of one when she only suspects the husband may be HIV positive is likely to be resented by him, and seen as taking away his perceived right to maximum enjoyment. And besides, she may want a child.

I strongly suspect that in the vast majority of cases, while a wife's decision to not insist (or her inability to insist) that her husband use a condom is consistent with Catholic teaching, but her position is far from primarily motivated by such teaching. On the husband's side, adherence to the Papal view on condoms would almost never be the reason that he does not use one with another partner or a prostitute.

(Update: is it possibly a partial reason a husband tells his wife that she should not make him use one? Maybe, in some cases, but again its doubtful from the Catholic point of view that he should be having sex at all if there are doubts about his sexual health. But again, isn't it far more likely that in most cases it is husband's selfishness that is the main reason he doesn't want to use one?)

Another way of looking at it is to say this: if the Catholic Church changed its teaching on condoms in Africa tomorrow, would it make a substantial difference to the HIV transmission rate? I think it's extremely doubtful that it would.

At heart, the problems are much more likely to cultural ones as the article suggests.

Update 2: having said all of that, I would be more than happy for the Catholic Church to revise its view on contraception and the idea that all sex has to be capable of procreation. What I am reacting against is the oft-repeated claim that Catholicism that is killing millions by virtue of its current teaching.