Card. Daneels on Use of Condoms

Godfried Cardinal Danneels

Function: Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussel, Belgium

Title: Cardinal Priest of St Anastasia

Birthdate: Jun 04, 1933	Country: Belgium

Elevated: Feb 02, 1983	More information: www.catholic-hierarchy.org

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Card. Daneels on Use of Condoms
Sept 12, 2004
“If a person infected with HIV has decided not to respect abstinence, then he has to protect his partner and he can do that – in this case – by using a condom.” To do otherwise, he said, would be “to break the Fifth Commandment”, that you shall not murder.

(The Tablet, 3 July 2004) To say that a person who refuses to abstain from casual sex should use a condom is neither to condone their behaviour, nor to condone prophylactic sex, they argue; it is to encourage them to take some moral responsibility for the lives of others.

Cardinal Godfried Danneels, the Archbishop of Brussels, expressed this in January when he said: “If a person infected with HIV has decided not to respect abstinence, then he has to protect his partner and he can do that – in this case – by using a condom.” To do otherwise, he said, would be “to break the Fifth Commandment”, that you shall not murder.

But the Linacre Centre in London this week accused Cardinal Danneels of taking an “unusual” and “incoherent” position. “What Danneels is saying is that sex with a condom is not as grave as endangering life. But he appears to be suggesting the violation of one commandment rather than another,” Hugh Henry, its education officer, told me, adding: “This is odd advice from a bishop whose primary responsibility is the spiritual welfare of his flock.”

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