Of Condoms and of the Church

By: Jeunesse San Juan
Photo By: Office of the President
Editorial Cartoon By: Pat Bagley
UNPUBLISHED OPINION COLUMN

Last February, during the eve of Valentine’s Day, the Department of Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral distributed condoms at the Dangwa flower market to promote the prevention of HIV-AIDS, which has been spreading in the call center community in the past weeks. Catholic Church leaders have reacted upon the secretary’s measure as “vulgar” to the point of influencing the youth to become promiscuous and have been urging her to step down from office up to now.

Though it is true that the distribution of contraceptives might encourage premarital sex, condoms are still the best way of preventing HIV-AIDS from spreading in the Philippines. Bishop Emeritus Teodoro Bacani claims that the more effective way to combat HIV-AIDS would be a campaign for total abstinence, put he offers no supporting details regarding this statement. According to information presented by D.T. Fleming and J.N. Wasserheit in 1999, significant biological evidence exists that links STDs and HIV. According to their research, the presence of STDs increases the likelihood of HIV transmission during sexual contact. In addition, a study in 1992 proved that people with HIV and STD transmit their virus more readily than people infected with HIV alone. This, therefore, proves the need for condoms in being 97% effective as prevention for both STD’s and AIDS through sexual intercourse, putting to mind its efficiency rate from previous studies in the Philippine setup.

Marbel Bishop Dinualdo Gutierrez also stated that “Secretary Cabral should not continue serving until June because the culture and morality of society will be endangered under her. First, she does not respect the big number of Catholics in the country who oppose the distribution of condoms. Second, is she Catholic? I doubt that she is. Because if you are a Catholic and in the government, you should be living the teachings of the Church. But she is doing the opposite.” The statement is a weak argument, especially when you come to consider how the culture and morality would be endangered by one person alone trying to prevent HIV-AIDS. Bishop Gutierrez fails to set the parameters on what defines “society”. If he intends to define it as the ‘big number of Catholics who oppose the distribution of condoms,’ then maybe he should answer to the big number of Catholics who are for the fast and effective prevention of HIV-AIDS in the country, as well as those who are of other religions. The second statement is also questionable in the sense that he missed out on the fact that Secretary Cabral is the head of the DOH and that her priority, first and foremost, would be the safety of her people and not her own beliefs, whether or not she is a devout Catholic.

Fr. Melvin Castro, executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines’ Episcopal Commission on Family and Life, also condemned the DOH for helping “cheapen sex and human love.” On a conservative approach, we can agree on the fact that sex is cheapened when it is not done within the walls of marriage. The waterloo on Fr. Castro’s claim is on how the prevention of HIV-AIDS can cheapen human love, or even premarital sex for that matter. Is marital sexual intercourse the only basis of human love? We would have to ask the millions of married Catholic couples the answer to that.

What the solution should be is not the resignation of Secretary Cabral, but the concentration of all societal sectors to minding their own business. Church officials should have better things to do than ask the health secretary to resign, such as trying to prevent HIV-AIDS from spreading through ways that they deem more effective than the plans of healthcare professionals. Or maybe they should concentrate more on how to make the 80% of the Philippine population good Catholics, so that they will no longer practice premarital sex. Who knows, they might actually prove that their words of wisdom would be better at stopping an erected HIV-infected penis from infecting another person than a condom.

Church officials might have forgotten it, but we are in the year 2010. Gone are the days of thinking that kissing a girl would impregnate her. HIV-AIDS is here in the Philippines, and it does not choose anyone, not even the priests. It does not let time fly smoothly unlike the Church who is probably waiting for Jesus to arrive and cure those who are dying of HIV-AIDS.