Why does the church ban contraception, especially when so many people are dying of AIDS in Africa?
Thank you for your question. You touch on two very complex issues: the question of life, and the question of illness and suffering in Africa.
To make the answer easier to follow, I am going to treat it as two questions:
Why does the Church ban contraception?
As a priest I have met many people who struggle with what the Church says about contraception: young people who think that sex becomes "safe" when you use contraception; married people who have had children and who simply cannot afford to have another child, because their family finances are limited.
So the first thing to say is that the Church tries to meet everyone with love, just as Jesus did. If someone comes to talk to a priest about this - or anything else - we should always welcome them with great love. Also, it is essential to say right now that these questions are not simple, and cannot be resolved with easy, shallow answers. Questions about sex and sexuality touch on the heart of who we are, because they are questions about the gift of life itself. The answers that I offer here, then, are in that spirit - offered in love, and with faith in Jesus, and knowing that these are hard and complex struggles in the lives of many people.
Sometimes people think the Church just says "no" to lots of things. In fact, we say "yes" to the things in life that are really important - love, especially, and faith in Jesus Christ, and we say yes to life itself. We believe in life - life that starts from the moment the baby is conceived, and ends at the point of natural death. We believe that life is precious, and life is there to be cherished. Our last Pope, John Paul II, wrote a letter to every Catholic in the world, called Evangelium Vitae, in 1995. The title means "Gospel of life" and the Pope said that we should always promote a "culture of life." The letter is not very long - about fifty pages - and if you really want to know more about this subject, I encourage you to read it. You can download it via this link from the Vatican website: http://www.vatican.va/edocs/ENG0141/_INDEX.HTM
It is our belief in life that means that we have a very important view about the gift of sexual love, and this is where the problem comes over contraception. You see, if our sexual love for another person was only about pleasure, then contraception would be fine. But we believe that our gift of sexual love is something very, very precious. It is so precious that we should already be committed to another person before we offer them that intimate, loving gift: that is why the Church asks people to commit to marriage before they share the gift of sexual love. Why is it so precious? Because it is through our gift of sexual love, exchanged in love with the person we love, that we have the chance to bring new life into the world. It is awesome, amazing, and a gift to be cherished.
In 1968 Pope Paul VI wrote a letter called Humane Vitae - "On the subject of human life." In this letter he wrote about the times when a couple make love, and the unity between the physical pleasure of those times, and the openness to bringing new life into the world. He said that the pleasure and the openness to life were intertwined, and should not be separated. What contraception does is to completely separate these things, reducing what should be the greatest gift of all from one human being to another to something which is just about physical pleasure.
I hope that answers the question about contraception. There is just one more thing to add: the Church does believe that the rhythms of our bodies can help us to plan when we have children, within marriage. There are only a few days in each month when a woman is ready to conceive new life, and there are physical signs that show when those days are. Through natural family planning (NFP) it is possible to understand the rhythm of the body. There is a problem here, though, and it is to do with attitude. It is no use simply using NFP as another sort of contraception: as I said earlier, the most important thing the Church says in this area is a very strong "yes" to life!
The second question remains, though:
What about in Africa, where people are dying of AIDS? Why not use contraception there to stop disease spreading?
In the year after I left university I spent two months in Kenya, and two months in India. In both Africa and Asia I saw a lot of desperate poverty: I still have a pair of sandals made in the slums of Nairobi from old car tyres - and they were the shoes for the lucky ones, the ones who had shoes.
Why is this relevant? Because the reason there is so much serious disease, illness, and death in Africa has very little to do with contraception and very much to do with unfair trade, lack of help, lack of education and lack of food. When people cannot read and write, and when people are so poor they do not have clean water or enough food to live on, then it is ridiculous to spend billions of pounds sending contraceptives. The first thing to do is to give good, decent education.
In Botswana the government did hand out lots and lots of condoms, to try to stop the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Now, the government there has changed its mind, and tells people that they need to choose one sexual partner, for life.
The situation in Africa is desperate: over 22 million people have died of AIDS alone, and that number is rising fast. There are millions of "AIDS orphans" - children whose parents have died of AIDS - and there are lots of children who themselves have AIDS because they were born with it, transmitted through their mother's blood.
Would contraception help in Africa? It is fair to say that there are differing views about this. In general, the Catholic Church - which is providing a huge proportion of the medical care and support in Africa - has consistently opposed contraception. The reason is attitude. People do argue that contraception stops the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and in theory that is true: there is a physical barrier to the exchange of fluids, at least when the contraception used is a condom. However - and we see it not only in Africa but indeed in England as well - what contraception does is give us a particular attitude to the gift of sex that I wrote about in the answer to the question on contraception. That is, sex becomes something merely for physical pleasure. This attitude that leads to people having lots of sexual partners, and it leads to sex being treated in a very casual way: it is this which leads to the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
There is one possible exception to this, which is currently being debated. CAFOD - the Catholic aid agency working hard in Africa to fight poverty - has raised the question of whether the church should be supporting the use of condoms by married people when one partner has Aids. It is a very interesting debate, and it turns on the question of what is the greater suffering: the married couple being unable to enjoy the gift of sex within their relationship, or the danger of a partner contracting Aids - or, indeed, a child being born with Aids. That debate remains open.
In addition CAFOD - and everyone working in the field - recognise that people who live in a culture where it is normal to have many sexual partners can take time to change their lifestyles, and that while they are on this journey of change it may be counterproductive to put a ban on the use of contraception as the first priority (see the CAFOD statements on HIV/Aids on the website www.cafod.org.uk). The church does not approve of contraception, but just as the disciples were on a journey to get to know Jesus better, so too we are all on a journey to live our Christian lives as fully as we can. Change in lifestyle - in all sorts of ways - may well be a necessary part of that journey, but we cannot - and do not - expect it to happen overnight.
Finally, it is important to stress that the Catholic Church is not simply saying to Africans - or anyone else - that they cannot have contraceptives and that is the end of it. In Africa the Church is providing 25% of all the financial and practical help for those suffering with AIDS. Governments have lots more money than the Church, and yet it is we who are giving so much to Africa. The work that we are doing there is the long term work, to provide education and health, and the loving work of caring for those who are sick and dying with AIDS. It is Catholic religious sisters, and Catholic nurses, that are running many of the care homes for AIDS patients, because no-one else will touch them. That is the message of the Church - support life, cherish life, and as part of that help those who are sick and dying to live their final months and years in as comfortable a way as possible.
For more information about this, from people who are doing the work on the ground in Africa, visit CAFOD's website - www.cafod.org.uk (there is a link direct to this in our links section).
Article Written: 24th April 2005
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