The Condom Debate: May 15 Recap

The Condom Debate has mushroomed in the blogosphere, making it ever more difficult to track the valid streams of debate in any coherent way. However, a couple sources are noteworthy:

• Thomas Nash provides a good account of why the "lesser evil" is invalid. A good quote: "... the church cannot condone or encourage condoms as a lesser evil, and Father Johnstone departs from definitive church teaching in arguing that condoms can be morally licit when used in the consensual acts of a married couple. Non-consensual acts, on the other hand, are quite different. The church affirms that non-consensual acts and their effects, similar to an act of rape, may be legitimately repelled by the violated spouse, including through the use of a condom." Nash makes similar useful distinctions in his piece...

The other important stream is to be found in Mike Liccione's blog. Basically, Mark is trying to defend Cardinal Martini and Rhonheimer's stance in favor of consensual condom usage between couples when one is infected with the HIV virus. With all due charity and respect, I think he fails to do so. To his credit, he is in the process of reconsidering his position. What is notable about his discussion however, is that both Hugh Henry and Luke Gormally - chief defenders of the anti Condom position - have been participating in the comment boxes.

I highly recommend reading their comments if you want some good short responses to common objections raised to their position: [Part One] - [Part Two].

In the meantime, I am going to try to collect all the articles, etc. that I've gathered on this debate and create a unique page for them (as I've done for the Janet Smith MP3 debate and List of Upcomming Papal Visits).

Update: I have a rough version up. The content will likely be updated but the link will remain the same.