Why Promoting “Safe Sex” is not good enough

By Athanasius of Boston

One service that the BC Students for Sexual Health certainly do provide is getting people talking. One of the things we need to talk about desperately are false ethical systems permeating this campus. While the administration is standing strong on the issue of the distribution of condoms, the conventional wisdom of the world even among Catholic administrators, it appears, is that if students are going to fornicate, it should at least be “safe.” With that in mind, the university plans on educating students about these matters, possibly in future freshman orientations.

Ignoring the fact that condoms only provide a false sense of safety, to even suggest that “If a student wants to have sex, the University should make sure that sex is safe” misses the point entirely. To be very clear, I am not by any means saying the University should be saying, “If you have sex, whatever you do, please don’t use a condom.” I am say- ing that the University needs to say very clearly, it’s all risky and all very immoral.

The reason that people say things like “If a student wants to have sex, the University should make sure that sex is safe” is because they operate under a proportionalist ethical system. In this mindset, the ethical way to act is the one in which the negative results of the chosen act are lessened. In this case, the chance of a pregnancy out of wedlock or of disease being spread are diminished, and it would seem ethical to conclude that condoms should be used by those who fornicate.

The problem is that propotionalism is not compatable with the Christian worldview. Proportionalism cannot condemn as wrong an act as always wrong, nor can it explain the transformation in Christ that grace works within the soul. This is not the place to flesh out all the arguments against the erroneous teleological ethical theories, a fuller treatment of that was done by Pope John Paul the Great in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor. It would be a good idea for students, faculty, and administrators to seek out a copy.

In a virtue ethics that takes into account the natural law, it becomes much more clear why contraceptive fornication is such a grave matter. The act has two ends, the one of fornication and the one of contrace- tion, making the act solely about pleasure and thwarting the natural law. The danger in this is that it inculcates a bad habit, a vicious (meaning non-virtuous) disposition, to think that intercouse is about pleasure and not about self-gift that may carry over into a contracpetive mentality within marriage. The promotion of bad habits among students would be a tragic mistake, as once students enter into the contraceptive mindset, it will be very difficult to free them from in, thus doing great danger to their souls. A fuller treatment of this would examine how this mindset sets students up to be tempted by abortion and divorce, but space does not permit such examination.

The administration of Boston College cannot under any circumstance begin suggesting that students who do choose to have intercourse should use a condom. They must continue to tell students universally not to engage in immoral behavior. A Jesuit, Catholic education must not be lukewarm but care about the whole person and not use the students freedom as a right to make bad choices. While privacy should not be violated, it’s time for the University to take “care of the whole person” seriously.

Athanasius of Boston is the pen-name of a BC grad living in the Boston area.

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