www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Pope approves use of condoms in fight against Aids

I am worried that the name of this thread is misleading. See Eric Giunta [lexetlibertas.wordpress.com], Phil Lawler [catholicculture.org], The Catholic Herald [catholicherald.co.uk] and Damian Thompson [blogs.telegraph.co.uk] for (in my opinion) accurate reporting and commentary on this issue.

See on the other hand Archbishop Joseph (Raya), who noted that celibacy is an heroic vocation, and the Church cannot demand heroism of those who lack that gift. Moreover, the Church historically has frowned upon sexless marriages if both parties are capable of the act. St. Paul set the precedent, when he directed his flock not to deny the nuptial bed to their spouses, except for brief periods of prayer and fasting, and then only by mutual consent.



The problem is making perfect the enemy of the good. Would you rather have 85-90% protection (which can be elevated further through the use of topical foams and ointments), or 0% protection, or 100% protection without any sexual relations in the marriage at all? The problem I always have with Rome's approach to such matters is it simply treats them in the abstract, and never sees the people about whom it is speaking. This might have just a little something to do with the distance between the celibate Latin clergy and the overwhelmingly married laity.


So, in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, we should allow the mother and the unborn child both to die, because removing the fallopian tube would save the woman but terminate her pregnancy? The whole point of double effect is doing something for a licit purpose that has an illicit side effect--but that one does not intend that side effect.

There are, for instance, a whole range of drugs for treating a number of diseases that have the effect of rendering a man or a woman temporarily sterile. In other words, such drugs are contraceptive in their effect on human reproductive systems. Would you suggest that a married couple abstain from sexual relations while one of them is taking these drugs, because of that side effect?


That's how the Eastern Churches have always seen it, which is why, even while upholding the indissoluability of marriage (much more stringently, in fact, than the Latin Church), the Eastern Churches have always found ways of reintegrating those who feel the need to remarry, whether after widowhood or divorce.


The ancient canons of the Eastern Churches always regarded marriage as an eternal sacrament, and remarriage--for any reason--as equivalent to adultery (which, last time I looked, was a sin). Yet the Eastern Churches also recognized that not everyone is made for the celibate life, and thus, as a condescension to human weakness allowed those who remarried to reenter communion.


Makes me rather glad the Eastern Churches never developed such a fetish about natural law.

See on the other hand Archbishop Joseph (Raya), who noted that celibacy is an heroic vocation, and the Church cannot demand heroism of those who lack that gift.

But this is not the only case in which the Church demands celibacy. A man who, for whatever reason, cannot marry also is required to abstain from sexual activity.

As Father Loya always points out when discussing this, the church is in the business of leading people to the truth. It is VERY problematic for the Church to allow an illicit act that has the percentages that it has. It is tantamount to telling them a lie to practice something that has a 10% failure rate. For most married couples, statistically, that 10% failure rate would occur in a relatively short time.
You wouldn’t think it was a good idea to get on the elevator at the top of the empire state building when it had a 10% failure rate. BXVI even points this out that condoms may be a part of an answer, but it is not THE answer, and cannot be used as the sole answer without addressing the fact that the only sure-fire method of prevention is abstinence.
I acknowledge that this is extremely difficult for people, but the fact that you aren’t seeing is that this is a life and death choice now, and the use of a condom really doesn’t mitigate the risk much since statistically, the failure rate is very high to render it non-protective as a long term solution. Statistically, there’s a bullet in the gun that’s going to end up in the barrel.
Sin can never be allowed as a matter of economy. You are doing a lot of gymnastics to say that the East is more stringent than the west, and then turn around and say, but we allow remarriage putting people in objective adultery anyway. Ok, whatever.

So, in your typical fashion, you denigrate the Wast instead of giving an argument as to why natural law is wrong.

Still waiting for that list of Eastern Fathers on the unitive aspect.

The only reason a man cannot marry is if he has taken a vow of celibacy--from which vow he can be released, and thus is free to marry. A man and woman who marry have an expectation of conjugal rights, and I fail to see what benefit is obtained through a rigidly legalistic view of condoms in the hypothetical (but all too common) situation I mentioned.

From Crowning: The Christian Marriage,
by Archbishop Joseph (Raya)

Birth Control

In a world where eroticism dominates the hearts and minds of men and women, it is almost impossible to honor the Christian vision of a sexuality more precious than pleasure and more honorable than social necessity. In our days, the problems of birth control are heart rending.

In his praiseworthy attempt to counteract a sexual morality falsified by a secularized society and atheistic propaganda, Pope Paul VI, who at the time of the Second Vatican Council had reserved to himself the final decision on birth control, called upon a papal commission to advise him before publishing the official Church doctrine.

Over three quarters of the members, chosen by the Pope for their wisdom and reliability, offered the majority opinion endorsing a carefully qualified use of birth control, and proposed a revision of the current unqualified condemnation.

Pope Paul VI, however, disregarded their advice and published the Encyclical Humanae Vitae, maintaining the negative position. There is a present a painful tension between the supporters of rigidity in this matter, and those who believe it is unjustified.

The Byzantine ceremony of Crowning glorifies Christian chastity. Chastity means integrity of the human relation, integration of the forces of life into the personalistic aspects of nuptial love, which leads the couple into the Kingdom, into the peace and harmony of life. Both fertile and childless couples go beyond the mere functional: the combine the instinctive and passionate movements of their love, integrating them into a single act of ascent of pure goodness. It is not in spite of marriage, but in its fulfillment in peace, harmony and supreme joy that couples live the supernatural and holy reality of their union, chastity.

In the embrace of love, Christian couples are chaste. They are perfectly and entirely for each other. “I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine” (Canticle of Canticles). In genuine faith, they assume their human and spiritual responsibilities, and choose the best ways, pleasing to God, to achieve what they have set out to do. Birth control is in some way their responsibility. Vatican Council II has clearly established that conscience is the most sacred core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths.

The theologian Paul Evdokimos, in his study on the “Sacrament of Love”, summarizes the attitude of Eastern theology on birth control: The Church “addresses herself to evangelical metanoia, and hopes to change man and woman into a new creation, to render them charismatic; She exorcises demonic powers and protects the Gate of Life; She discerns among the spirits, and shows the pathways to ultimate liberation; She does not define the rules of social life, and does not prescribe panacaeas. . . “ (p.175). The Church should never refuse to advise when advice is sought, but should not try to manipulate the intimacy of husband and wife. Patriarch Maximos IV of Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem proclaimed at the Council of Vatican II, “The Church does not penetrate into the nuptial chamber. She stands at the door.”

The Byzantine Church does indeed believe that the Sacrament of Crowning establishes the man and woman as prophets, king and queen of supernatural worth, and robes them with the Royal Priesthood of Christ. Their dignity is real. Consequently, their vocation will be to form personal decisions, and to judge situations, in order to find solutions to the individual circumstances of their lives.

The end does not always justify the means.

This expectation does not include anytime, though. It has never been understood as an absolute at any time on demand.

This is is only legalistic if it is viewed from one perspective.
Since when does a situation which calls for one to sacrifice and take up one's cross become legalism?

ridiculous

From Crowning: The Christian Marriage,
by Archbishop Joseph (Raya)

Indissolubility

The third part of the crowning ceremony emphasizes the permanent character of faithfulness, the indissolubility of the union of man and wife: “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and they two become one flesh (Gen 2:24). And Christ added, “What God has joined together , let no man put asunder” (Matt 19:6). It is only under such a condition that life become both radiant and dynamic.

God’s love is unbroken and inexhaustible: it is indeed faithful from eternity to eternity. In the ceremony of marriage, the Christian love uniting man and wife is intended likewise to last to all eternity. No one in heaven or on earth, and nothing, not even death, can ever dissolve the covenant they have made with each other in complete freedom.

The third prayer of the Sacrament is a magnificent hymn of theology breathing goodness and glory in this indissolubility that God himself is weaving:

O Holy God, you fashioned man from dust
And from his rib fashioned woman
And joined her to him as a helpmate for him.
For it pleased your Majesty
That man should not be alone on earth.

O Master, extend your hand
From your holy dwelling place,
And unite your servant (N.) and your handmade (N.)
For by you is a wife joined to her husband.

Join them together in oneness of mind and chastity,
And crown them with glory.
Wed them into one flesh.
Grant them the fruit of the womb
And procreation of good children
Who will lead blameless lives.

For your is the dominion,
And yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory,
Of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
Now and always, and unto Ages of Ages, Amen.

The main point of the ceremony of crowning is that, as Christ is eternally faithful to his Church, so also are man and woman to each other.

Remarriage

The first law of God at the beginning of creation was that the union of man and woman was to be permanent (Gen 2:24). Jesus Christ our Lord, referring to this will of the creator in Genesis, declared that, in the Kingdom of God which he was inaugurating, and which was already present, marriage was to be indissoluble. But in the Old Testament, Moses permitted divorce. The Book of Deuteronomy states: “When a man has taken a wife, and married her, and it came to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, because she is in some way unclean; then let him write her a bill of divorce. . . she may go and be another man’s wife” (Deut 24:1-2). Our Lord and God Jesus Christ refused such an easy way to put away a wife. He refused to allow his followers the right to enter into later a relationship of marriage with the woman who had been put away so easily. Our Lord always sought to save the dignity and integrity of the human person: “Whosoever shall marry her who was put away commits adultery. . .” The disciples objected to this saying of the Lord as too hard an ideal: “Lord, if this is the case of the man with his wife, it is not good to marry at all” (Matt 19:10). He answered, “Not anyone can accept what I said, only those to whom it is given” (Matt 19:11). But in order to save the dignity and integrity of the human person, he added: “I say unto you, whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication. . . “ (Matt. 5:23).

The Lord addresses the Gospel in its totality to every person in this world, but to each one in an individual way. He calls every person to the absolute of the Gospel, but he does not force it indiscriminately on all humanity. He simply offers his divine ideals as he offered the Beatitudes, as graces of blessedness and sources of security and joy:

Blessed are the poor in sprit,
Blessed are the merciful,
Blessed are the pure in heart. . . (Matt 5:3ff)

To the young man who asked what to do to gain eternal life, Our Blessed Lord answered by recommending the observance of the Ten Commandments as a good and sufficient practice. But the young man was wishing for more perfection. He asked for something special to elevate him above the ordinary. He was trying for a way of life on the level of the Gospel’s expectations. The Lord then said to him: “If you want to be perfect, go sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and follow me” (Mark 10:21-22). The young man went away disappointed: he was not made for such perfection. Jesus, Our Lord, did not condemn him in any way.

Let us also remember the scribe who came with enthusiasm and seemingly great generosity to follow him. But the Lord sent him away with a delicate and respectful refusal: “The foxes have dens, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matt 8:20).

Following the teaching and example of the Master, the Christian Church upholds the rule of indissolubility of marriage, while admitting exceptions. The high ideals of the Gospel are presented to every human being, but never forced upon them because it would be unjust and an insult to human dignity to impose heroism indiscriminately. A person wronged by the permanent absence of the other would have to become overnight an exceptional soul, or perish.

Perfection is possible only for “those to whom it is given” (Matt 19:11). The Church understands the high ideals of Christ and has always proclaimed and upheld them while realizing that high ideals cannot be imposed equally no everyone and in all circumstances. Following the example of the Master, and in order to protect the honor and dignity of its children against the consequences of sin or of a partner’s death that separate and isolate the remaining spouse, the Church allows the innocent party or the survivor to taken another companion for life. People marry in order to avoid continence and solitude, a state to which few are called. No one has a right to impose the weight of the world upon another’s shoulders: only a giant, an Atlas or a Hercules, could face such a task.

The practice of discernment and compassion is called Oikonomia.

Oikonomia is the prolongation of the divine intention of God “to save what was lost” (Matt 18:11). Our Lord said it and repeated it again and again: “The Son of Man has come to seek and save what was lost” (Luke 19:10). To the Lord, humanity is infinitely more precious than any law. He never hesitated to break the law for the sake of restoring sinners to their dignity. He saved the adulteress from the law by which she should have been stoned. He talked to a Samaritan woman and invited himself to her house—while Samaritans were to be shunned and avoided, He broke the law of the Sabbath, declaring, “The Sabbath is at the service of man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). The law of the Temple was clearer yet and stronger about keeping company with sinners: “He who frequents a sinner is worse than a prostitute”. But in order to restore sinners to their human dignity, our Lord met with them, ate with them, and felt at ease in their company. This was the Oikonomia of the Lord.

The Holy Orthodox Church of Byzantium has been indulgent to widows and widowers, and to victims of abandonment. It did not allow legalism to take over, nor did it forget the divine Gospel commitment to love and forgive. It considered in all seriousness the words of the Lord, that “the Sabbath was made for man”, and that laws existed only to enhance their sacramental reality and vitality, not to be a millstone around their necks.

St. Epiphanios of Cyprus, who lived in the fourth century, says that “he who cannot keep continence after the death of his first wife, or for a valid motive such as fornication, adultery or another misdeed, if he takes a wife, or if the wife (in similar circumstances) takes another husband, the Divine Logos does not condemn them or exclude them from the Church.

The Council of Neocaesarea imposed on the clergy the obligation to divorce an adulterous wife (See on this subject the study in Concillium, Vol.55-1970, p.76f). And Father Nicholas van der Wal adds: This position may have been reached in the early Byzantine Church by taking Matthew 5:53 as part of the Sermon on the Mount. It is indeed possible to see the exhortation of the Sermon as the precepts of an ideal ethic which the Christian striving after perfection must try to live up to (and here the Byzantine Church would first of all think of monks and nuns) while this would not be asked of ordinary people” (p.80) (See also Korbianman Ritzer for details, Concillium, Vol.55-1970, p.67 seq.).

St. Basil has a special dissertation on Oikonomia which was officially approved by the Sixth Ecumenical Council of the Undivided Church of East and West, the Second Council of Constantinople in 680. Canon 25 states: “Spouses abandoned without reason are excused, and this pardon means they will be accepted to communion if they remarry”. St. John Chrysostom adds, “It is better to break up a marriage than be damned”. Archbishop Elias Zoghby declared at the Second Vatican Council that “even the Church of the West maintained this practice for many hundreds of years with the positive approval of many bishops, popes and synods; and in fact, never attempted to condemn it in the East, even after it had ceased to practice it” (The Melkite Church at Vatican II, p.24).

The single life presupposes a very special vocation and a very special calling, an heroic disposition, and a rare faith. Indissolubility is an ideal, a lofty ideal, a standard of supreme generosity worthy of the human person, but not every person is able to assume it. Faithfulness and the eternal character of the self-revelation made by man and woman to one another are truly precious and unbreakable. The compassion of the Church only permits and reluctantly admits remarriage. The ceremony that blesses such a marriage in the Byzantine Church is so full of sadness and sorrow for human weakness and misery that is a powerful testimony and proclamation of the indissoluble character of Christian “Crowning”.

Remarriage after a death or divorce is called simply, “remarriage”, not “crowning”, yet it is a binding covenant. It is a partnership of grace and refreshment. There are no crowns, no processions of priesthood, no singing or ringing of bells. There is no incense by which the Church glorifies the divinization of the human person, there is no cup of wine, nor the Body and Blood of the Lord. This is not a priesthood, but a contract made in a ceremony of penance, expressing regret for human frailty and the loss of Christian gifts caused by social conditions.

After ceasing to apply the principle Oikonomia, in its concern and solicitude for its children, the Western Church established the system generally known as annulment. It should rather be called “declaration of nullity”. It consists in a declaration that since wone of the partners had entered a prospective marriage without fulfilling one of the basic conditions of indissolubility—full consent, freedom and understanding—the marriage actually had never existed, even after children had been born. Both partners are then free to remarry.

In some instances, this system has been extended by western Marriage Tribunals—rightfully or not, it is not for us to judge—to cases in which marriage were presently and actually dead, even though originally valid.

The Church of Rome uses its power over the sacrament of the priesthood, and releases some of its bishops and priests from the ministry of their priesthood. The bond of priesthood is no less sacred and no less eternal than the bond of matrimony. The Church of Rome allows bishops and priests to give up their life of ministry in the Church and marry, while still recognizing the eternal character of their priesthood. In fact, this same power is used [in the Byzantine Church] over the sacrament of marriage to help and heal a painful state of abandonment and solitude.

There are some unavoidable circumstances in which some people are totally unable to continue living with their original sacramental partner. If in such cases, a union is contracted with a different partner, this in fact honors the Gospel command making the human person more precious than the law of indissolubility. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). Absolute enforcement would lead to cruel legalism.

Stuart,

This is from one Bishop with no patristic quotes at all.
This doesn't make your case for the contention that the East has always seen the unitive as being on par with the procreative in its hierarchy.

Because the law killeth--especially when applied without compassion.

Then the Church should make it acceptable for teenage boys to mastubate since this is a common problem for them. Let's have compassion.
They should also see the mitigating reasons of hormonal insanity for those teens who fornicate as well who cannot act reasoned but also burn with their passions.

Obviously, these are exagerated examples, but it seems yours would also then fall in this category.

It's all a matter of degree, but you're not recognizing that Rome has a legitimate variance of degree that seeks the holiness of the person, inviting them into a greater mystery of the cross.

The law can never be used to say a sin is fine and acceptable because of weakness. God, in his mercy, certainly can see these mitigating circumstances, but that is not up to us.
Hand-waiving sins away and allowing them to continue isn't merciful or compassionate; it's very cruel.

.

So, basically, you think that the entire application of oikonomia in marriage and sexuality is fundamentally immoral?

In charity, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that this is not what you actually intend, but the sentence I have bolded sounds almost like you're saying that it is not the concern of the Church to show mercy.

That's not true:

From the Eastern Code:

Canon 790 - §1. A diriment impediment disqualifies a person from contracting marriage validly.

Canon 801 - §1. Antecedent and perpetual impotence to have sexual intercourse, whether on the part of the man or of the woman, which is either absolute or relative, of its very nature invalidates a marriage.

Canon 818 - They are incapable of contracting marriage:
1° who lack the sufficient use of reason;
2° who suffer from grave lack of discretion of judgment concerning essential matrimonial rights and duties which are to be mutually given and accepted;
3° who are not capable of assuming the essential obligations of matrimony due to causes of a psychic nature.

In Latin contexts, canon 1684 of the Latin code allows the judges in an anullment case or the diocesan Bishop (who also has this power independent of such cases) to prohibit those subject to their jurisdiction from marrying, though apparently not perpetually, which shows that the right to marry is subject to limitations in its excercise.

No, what I am trying to get at is that oikonomia is a matter that deals with canonical issues, not doctrinal ones. The Apostolic Fathers were unanimous in their condemnation of contraception. Now, we are just going to say that it is acceptable, when the Church has always taught differently? I don't want to get caught up in divorce and remarriage, because that's getting away off topic.

I think that Rome takes the apostolic tradition very seriously when it comes to contraception. it is no light matter to simply dismiss the tradition of the Church. Instead what teh Church does is to invite people to enter into the mystery of the cross that has come from such a difficult situation. That's not legalism by any stretch.

To be sure, many may find this situation impossible to live with for many reasons (weakness due to our fallen nature, fear, ignorance), and so choose a condom after thought and prayer. But that still does not change that it is a sin. The confessional is the proper place for this in those cases, and God's mercy can certainly be found there, but not the change of the tradition of the Church.