Phyllis Thomas, News EditorSOME RELIGIOUS denominations in Jamaica have refused to give their approval to condom use as a method of preventing AIDS, which is cutting a path of destruction through Jamaica and the rest of the world.
The churches believe that it is personal behaviour that is causing the wild-fire spread of the killer disease and that Governments have failed to attack the root of the problem - immorality.
Furthermore, rejection of condom use is not a stance they can change, but God's law which is not changeable, churches say.
"Many Government and private agencies have educational campaigns to help people learn how to avoid AIDS by the use of condoms. However, what is often missing in such advice is any moral consideration," said Luther W. Georges, speaking on behalf of the Jehovah's Witnesses. "Rarely is any appeal made to avoid a practice because it is morally wrong. To avoid AIDS, a cardinal rule must be: 'Live a moral life'."
However, this is not a total rejection of condom use by the Jehovah's Witnesses. This group sanctions condom use by "a Christian married couple...as a means of birth control."
The Roman Catholic Church's position remains rigid.
"Sexual intercourse between husband and wife must be 'open' to its procreative effect and thus the use of condom between partners in a marriage is sinful," the Most Reverend Charles H. Dufour, bishop of Montego Bay said last week.
"The teaching of the church has not changed because that teaching is presented as being God's law, not any changeable church law," he added.
Other denominations have a more relaxed approach to the use of condoms, though not about chastity and fidelity, which they continue to insist on.
"The church strongly recommends that people abstain from having sexual intercourse when they are not married. Had that been obeyed the scourge of AIDS would not be what it is today," Reverend John Bartlett, a minister at the Pentecostal Tabernacle on Wildman Street in Kingston said.
Nevertheless, he explained that the church supported the use of condoms, but "only when the parties who are involved in the sex act are married."
Jamaica Council of Churches Vice President, Rev. Ernle Gordon, said people should get medical examinations before getting married.
"I would take it a little further," he said, "if you are going to have a relationship with someone permanently and you are not married to the person, you should get a medical examination."
He said that the Anglicans' belief is that a Christian must develop Christian ethics, however, they do not lay down ethics which people must follow.
World attention was focused on AIDS last week as leaders in the health profession and influential agencies put the issue under the microscope at the XIII International AIDS Conference in South Africa. It was reported that 18 million people have so far died from the disease worldwide, the majority of them from sub-Saharan Africa. In Jamaica, 4,196 people have contracted AIDS since 1982. More than 3,000 of them have died from it.
