An extensive and well-reported review, on the Newshour, of the Vatican AIDS Conference, with interviews with some key figures.
PBS on the Vatican AIDS Conference
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Pope Leo said that if the teen “had come all the way to Rome, then (the pope) could come all the way to the hospital to see him.”
A Reflection for Tuesday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time, by Molly Cahill
As emergency workers searched for survivors and tried to recuperate the bodies of the dead, Pope Leo XIV offered his prayers for people impacted by the latest shipwreck of a migrant boat off the coast of Yemen.
The Archdiocese of Miami celebrated the first Mass for detainees at “Alligator Alcatraz,” the Trump administration’s controversial immigrant detention center in the Florida Everglades.
The Church asserts that permanent conjugal abstinence or celibacy is the only licit answer for serodiscordent couples with one spouse infected with HIV. The use of condoms is illicit because it violates Humanae Vitae and spouses fail to respect the aptness of generation (the penis must be inserted into the vagina and semen deposited in its proper place for procreation). The following arguments call into question the reasonability and sensibility of this teaching.
Did not the ethical context change in this situation? By using a condom would not the HIV positive husband perform an act of Health and Safety, a form of the virtues of charity and justice for his wife. What happened physically, perventing procreative consequences, was foreseen but outside of intentions.
Would not celibacy for a young couple be an act of injustice, an unreasonable cross to bear, that is not proportionate to the survivability of the marriage?
By using a condom, would not the husband perform an act of charity and prudence if he rejects celibacy in order to express conjugal love for his wife? Or is the aptness of generation the supreme moral obligation for this couple regardless of circumstances, intentions or consequences?
I'm intrigued by the Vatican's consistent demand for behavioral change (on this and other social issues) rather than acquiescence to the inevitability of the bad behavior and re-assessing its moral position on other bad behaviors to avoid the negative consequences of the first behavior. Taking the latter position is like teaching children to wear asbestos gloves before sticking their hands in the fire. Or like permitting would-be pedophile priests to have sexual liaisons with over-18 young men with latent adolescence. God forbid anyone deny themselves and take up their crosses.
I hope to see this topic re-posted in textual form of one sort of another.