Poetry

...In some sexual relations the condom use itself, as well as the overt, direct, and exclusive intention, is to protect another person from death, or to preserve one's own health, while main- taining family unity through marital intimacy during a difficult time...

...Obviously, the condom is the same...

...One day, I paint smooth strokes of religion and afterlife...

...My mind conceives a picture on the wall: It's the Last Judgment...

...Moreover, the moral quality of a decision to protect one's partner from infection would not be affected by changing the material facts...

...Removing an infected uterus, for example, may bring about permanent infertility, but unless that result is directly intended the procedure is acceptable under natural law theory as it is understood by both conservative and progressive interpreters...

...If circumstances or context alter act description and definition, and they do, then moral eval- uation also changes...

...In the case of AIDS there is no procedure, medical or surgical, which can cure the disease, only a procedure to prevent its spread...

...Using a condom to prevent the spread 190: Commonweal of infection may superficially appear to be the same act as using a condom with contraceptive intent...

...But the husband understands his obligation not to infect another person, and the wife knows her right to protect her own life...

...Thousands of health-care workers are exposed to HIV infection by accidental sticks and splashes, and they need to protect their spouses until they are sure about their own HIV status...

...applied to certain situations, over the years it has provided uncontested justification for needed medical procedures that would not otherwise be allowed...

...Not to expose another person to harm is the right thing, even if one's own exposure came about through use of a nonsterile needle in drug abuse, or through sexual contact with a male or female prostitute...

...God has already dug His fingers through my soul...

...Condom use too removes or inhibits transmission of an infectious agent...

...The hemophiliac never knows whether a transfusion will contain a virus which escaped through a blood test's window of vul- nerability...

...This argument concludes that, in some cir- cumstances, condom use qualifies as a right, sensitive, respectful, and nonmaleficent act...

...Murder is always wrong and in some cultures punishable by death...

...For centuries moral theology tracts Timothy Hodor The Rag Man in the Vatican Like Michelangelo In the Sistine Chapel, I lie on my back, Trying to connect God to man: Sometimes I feel an arm's length from God, Yet, my scaffolding's shaky...

...But pulling the trigger of a deadly weapon in order to commit murder and pulling the same trigger of the same gun in self-defense against a murderous assailant, though physically identical and employing the same device, are not the same...

...But preventive medicine is as valid as therapeutic medicine...

...The next, my tools undergo transformations...

...they are not antilife nor do they harbor a "contraceptive mentality...

...But the act is different: different elements of the behavior constitute its definition...

...Even traditionalists who continue to consider condom use evil, regardless of intention and circumstances, must take into account the moral obligation to prefer a lesser evil when the choice is between two evils...

...in fact, it is generally more respectful of the body's natural mechanisms...

...For persons infected with the AIDS virus, the act of protecting a partner from deadly harm is a right act which has two effects...

...Once it is recognized that circumstances enter into the definition and the moral evaluation of actions, then for pers~ with every right to have sexual relations, condom use is not merely justifiable but obligatory...

...Achieving these ends through condom use prevents con- ception as well as infection, but so do certain medical procedures long accepted as entirely licit...

...One approach to the moral question is to bring into play the classical principle of double effect...

...My face hangs like tattered dough...

...in some circum- stances, it enhances and strengthens physis and natura in the sense of supporting nature's own preventive strategies--when ordinarily protective immunological mechanisms are too weak to create their own barriers against infection...

...killing in self-defense, however tragic, is morally justifiable and not punishable at all...

...Along with intention, circumstance (including consequences) is all important for the description and definition of acts and their moral evaluation...

...They have a child and would like to have another...

...For them, condom use is the only way to prevent infection of the wife or a fetus while nourishing their love and satisfying their sexual needs...

...Both he and his wife need sexual intimacy to maintain their marriage and family...

...I lose hold of faith and the future, But continue to work--to paint over Or to touch up my beliefs...

...The device used in both cases is the same, just as the weapon may be the same in acts of self- defense and murder...

...Murder involves much more than killing...

...One fragment of a complex human behavior does not define the whole behavior...

...Needless to say, this hypothetical situation is duplicated many times over in real life...

...I turn away from the ceiling...

...Conception is not the same as infection, and protecting against one is different from protecting against the other...

...As the example just cited shows, it is easy to imagine circum- stances in which the contraceptive effect is recognized but regret- ted...

...It is not a Catholic notion that past blameworthy actions narrow the range of permissible future moral choices...

...My whole life, I've drained myself, Reaching to unite human fingers of concrete To immortal palms of abstraction...