Thinking out loud...

One of the purposes of this blog is to think out loud on church issues and have you chime in with your thoughts. Perhaps this will help mold a future editorial or give us a story idea ... or it may hopefully just provide stimulating conversation.

I had a discussion this morning with someone regarding the Vatican's purported study on the use of condoms. It is not known if the study will stick to the topic of condom use and its relation to disease prevention or if it will lead to a Humanae Vitae-type document or general discourse on the church's teachings on condom and contraception use.

Of course, the church teaches it is against the use of contraception in marriage (we stick to the context of marriage because the church teaches we shouldn't be having sex outside of marriage). This assumes that the woman is in her childbearing years, obviously, but that's where an interesting scenario came up: If a wife was beyond childbearing years and the husband had AIDS or another sexually transmitted disease (or if the wife had the disease and the husband didn't), could condom use be justified? Since the woman is beyond childbearing years, the condom can not be seen as contraceptive (contrary to conception) in purpose.

Now before I get accused of wanting the church to change its teaching on artificial contraception, know that I am 100 percent on board with the church. I strongly recommend reading Humanae Vitae and studying John Paul II's "theology of the body." But it is still an interesting ethical dilemma to explore. Are condoms always wrong, no matter what? For someone who uses the above scenario, you could respond that the Bible contains instances of women bearing children at ages well past what are considered childbearing years. Just recently in Britain, it was reported a woman in her early 60s is pregnant and soon to give birth to a child. Granted, she achieved conception immorally through in-vitro fertilization, but still... who's to say when exactly childbearing years are past? And, to throw the theology of the body in here, even if a couple cannot have children, condom use still prevents a husband and wife from making a complete gift of themselves.

What are your thoughts on this scenario?