FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Fr Francis Marsden
THERE is nothing new under the sun,’ says the Preacher in the Book of Ecclesiastes. It is certainly true about human sexuality and contraception.
Ancient Egyptian papyri from 1850 BC recommend the use of a pessary made of crocodile dung for contraceptive purposes, or, more pleasantly, honey mixed with bicarbonate of soda. By the 12th century BC they had invented the male sheath, not for their wives’ sake but to protect themselves from insect bites.
The Greeks had various potions concocted from fern roots, willow leaves, and even iron rust and slag, to be drunk by their womenfolk. Chinese women fared even worse: they were encouraged to swallow, on an empty stomach, pills made from fried mercury with oil. This was recognised to be more dangerous than conception and childbirth, just as deaths from the modern Pill exceed the total of deaths during pregnancy and childbirth these days.
The history of contraception is arguably that of sacrificing women’s health to male pleasure. Our English poet Chaucer stated the prevailing orthodoxy in the 14th century:
	‘When one interferes with the conception of a child and maketh a woman barren by drink ing poisonous herbs which prevent conception, or uses an instrument to bring about abortion and slay the child, or else practises unnatural intercourse, or else if a woman has conceived and hurt herself and slayeth the child, it is homicide.’

BURDEN
The first contraceptive that was at all efficient was the condom, devised by the Italian anatomist Fallopius in 1564 — not to spare women the burden of too many children, but to protect men from catching syphilis from their sexual partners. The government’s propaganda to popularise the condom to prevent the spread of AIDS is at the same moral level as 1564.
Holiday adverts on TV at present are urging holidaymakers to ‘Take a condom’. Indeed the coming of the HIV virus has been well manipulated and exploited by the permissive sex lobby to popularise the condom and encourage ‘safe sex’. The public are being misled. The experts are not telling the truth. How effective is the condom at protecting people from AIDS? A few simple calculations will expose the lie that is being sold to the British public:
The efficiency of the condom in preventing conception is usually given as 93 per cent. Its failure rate therefore is 7 per cent: of 100 couples practising condomistic intercourse, seven of the women will become pregnant during one year. However, in the first year of condom use, when the couple are less experienced, the failure rate is 14 per cent.
How does this relate to transmission of the HIV virus? Of course the virus may be transmitted any time of the monthly cycle, whereas condom failure and sperm transmission only becomes apparent when it results in pregnancy. A woman can conceive during only a few days of her monthly cycle.
The ovum can be fertilised during only 10 hours of its 48-hour life -afer release 4rom 4ke~. ovary. Sperm can live up to three days after intercourse. There are then at most four potentiall fertile days in the mont (although because of slight uncertainty in forecasting the precise moment of ovulation, NFP users abstain from 7-12 days per month).
Condom failure only comes to light, therefore, during at most four days of the month. So the actual failure rate is much higher than 14 per cent per year. It is at least 14x30~4 = 105 per cent p.a. Moreover fertilisation does not always ensue upon intercourse, even during the most fertile days. Ten per cent of couples are infertile or subfertile. In the first year of marriage, 80-90 per cent of couples allowing nature to take its course become pregnant.
If we guess at a 50 per cent overall conception rate for intercourse during the peak fertility period, then we must double the failure rate to 210 per cent per year or 17.5 per cent per month. If the AIDS virus is communicable at the same rate as sperm, this is the likely infection rate using a condom. In fact, because the Aids virus is much smaller than a sperm cell, it will penetrate through tiny cracks, holes and manufacturing imperfections in the condom which the sperm cannot get through, so this figure, if anything, needs to be increased.

ABSORBED
The sperm have higher motility and can swim, but they have to get as far as the Fallopian tube to fertilise the egg. The HIV virus need get only as far as the cervix or the womb lining to be absorbed into the bloodstream. Obviously there are a lot of imponderable factors, and no one really knows the exact risk. Yet the Government and Health Authorities are putting the lives of thousands or millions at risk, by lulling people into a false sense of security about ‘safe sex’, when there is no such thing.
Casual sex ruins lives: not just one’s own, but that of one’s spouse and of future children. The promotion of condoms is actually encouraging the spread of AIDS in the long term. Why? Because it promotes promiscuity as a viable lifestyle. The Gillick case showed that when contraception was withdrawn from under-16s, the rate of under-16 pregnancies dropped. Withdraw contraception and, paradoxically, you reduce conceptions in this age group, because sex had again been tied to responsibility.
Once the House of Lords overturned the appeal court ruling, which had forbidden the prescription of contraceptives to girls under 16 without their parents’ consent, the number of abortions and illegitmate births in that age group rose again.

STANDARDS

By the same logic, condoms promote AIDS. What our young people need is standards not condoms, but we have a government which can see no higher than the morals of the farmyard. If we expect young people to behave badly, they will probably fulfil our expectations; if we want our children to achieve great things, we must give them a great goal to reach for. But if our children are told that chastity is a perversion, and that promiscuity and homosexuality are normal, they will not cultivate the one nor resist the others.
‘Moralising’ — telling the truth about right and wrong — has become the unforgiveable sin of today, the blasphemy against the Spirit of the Age. I remember one teacher saying it was
‘judgemental’ to tell children that sex before marriage was completely wrong: yet she became 
very indignant and angry when she saw pupils smoking. Her moral fury was ignited far more by cigarettes than by fornication!	
 The hypocrisy of many of our modern health educators is appalling. Smoking, eating too much sugar or fat have become the new mortal sins. But they never tell the truth about the dangers of promiscuity and adultery: gonorrhea, chlamydia, warts, genital herpes, hepatitis, urethritis, cervical cancer, CMV and AIDS. What a garden of delights awaits the promiscuous.

ANONYMOUS

Bishop Fulton Sheen once said that today’s young lovers had taken the fig-leaf from the genitals and put it over the face. In magazines and on TV everything to do with sex and sexual technique is described and discussed, but there is very little about how to get to know the other person in themselves, not just their body.
Too many modern sexual relationsnips are anonymous. The fig-leaf is over the face. Only the genitals are exposed. -
It is sad and difficult, but the only totally moral course of action for a married couple, when one spouse has contracted the HIV virus, is to abstain from sexual intercourse, because it is not safe and cannot be made safe.
HIV brings about a tragic irony: the act which the Creator intended to transmit life is turned into a life-threatening and destructive act, transmitting sickness and death: not
The only moral course of action for unmarried persons is not to fornicate. AIDS and VD in general could be wiped out in a generation if Christ’s rules were followed: no sex outside marriage, fidelity to one lifelong married partner. 
The Chief Rabbi Jakobowitz noted that the problem of writing about AIDS is the dilemma of choosing between soothing platitudes and unpalatable truths.’ No less important than clean needles, are clean speech, clean thoughts and clean conduct.”
Catholic moral teaching is too simple a solution for our lust driven  world. Like the Israelites whom God wished to lead quickly and easily into the Promised Land, the modern world does not want to follow the Maker’s instructions. God left the Israelites to wander 40 years in the desert until they had learnt their lesson. Our society too will wander long in the wilderness, following its own plans and desires. Many will die by the wayside and never reach the Promised Land. That is their choice, not God’s — but that’s being judgemental, isn’t it?