Use of condoms and other contors

[Iacobus]

I was writing a paper on HIV in geriatric populations today and noticed that in many of the cases the females most probly recived the virus from unfaithful husbands. The female did not know that the husband was being unfaithful and therefore did not concern herself with the possiblity of any STD.

The female is often infected when these relationships manifest through no fault of their own. Also, the data indicates that the use of a condom would prevent the vast majority of the said HIV trasmissions.

This leads me to my question, would it be immoral for a couple to use condoms or other decives of a like nature, in order to reduce the risk of any transmissions due to one partner's unknown unfaithfulness given that the female was in a menopausal or post-menopausal state (i.e. lacking any eggs to be fertizlied).

My understand was that the use of condoms was immoral because they didn't leave the users open to the "tranmission of life." In most geriatric cases there is no possbilty for the transmission of life to occur because the female has already "passed" all of her finite eggs, therefore a condom would not be interfereing with the chances of the creation of life. Is my logic in this case correct or is the use of condoms still immoral even when there is no pre existing chance for life?

[Adeodatus]

The expression "open to the transmission of life" is misleading. This is often misunderstood to mean that there must be some chance of conceiving a child, and if that is the case----then how can Natural Family Planning (which is accepted by the Church under certain circumstances) be 'Family Planning'?

No, "open to the transmission of human life" does not refer to a single act of sexual intercourse. It refers to the whole attitude of the couple, that their marital sex should be "natural", i.e. in accordance with human nature as God created it. This rules out all sorts of sexual practices, for a [i]completely consummated[/i] act of marital sex must be natural---i.e. no barriers, poisons, and using the proper male and female genitalia (please don't make me spell this out!). In other words, no anal, or completed oral sex etc, and no contraception.

People of ten think this use of the word "natural" contrasts with "artificial", as though "natural contraception" is OK, but "artificial contraception" is not. Artificial contraception is definitely not OK, but not because it's artificial, but because it's contraception. Natural methods are not contraceptive acts (i.e. it doesn't stop conception when having sex----it avoides conception by [b]not[/b] having sex. See the difference?). And the word "natural" is used in this sense, in accordance with our human nature.

So even if a couple are infertile, or the woman is post-menopausal, their acts of marital sex must be "natural". We do not kiss people through rubber screens, nor should we have sex like that. In the case of HIV, it is still not permissible to let a post-fertility couple to use such barrier methods, even if it is not for the purposes of contraception. Such acts of sex would not be fully "natural", and not a natural human act.