The University of Notre Dame made two major announcements Monday that
put the University at odds with Pope Benedict XVI on the promotion of
condoms to prevent AIDS—even as the U.S. bishops fight to defend
Catholic colleges’ First Amendment right to uphold Catholic teaching on
contraception.
The University also has reignited concerns about its standards for commencement speakers and honorees with its
selection
of Dr. Thomas Quinn, founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for
Global Health, as Distinguished Alumnus and graduate commencement
speaker on May 19.
This week, Notre Dame
announced that its Eck Institute for Global Health is now a full member of the
AMPATH Consortium, a collaborative effort led by Indiana University to address the pandemic of HIV/AIDS in western Kenya.
Although the consortium has done much good for Kenyans struggling
with the spread of HIV infections, AMPATH also promotes condoms and has
partnered with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to
integrate family planning programs, including contraception.
Notre Dame indicates that AMPATH is expanding its services to include
“delivery of essential primary care services and control of
communicable diseases and non-communicable, chronic illnesses.” The
University’s will bring its expertise in tropical and communicable
diseases to support research at Moi University School of Medicine and to
address “constraints to health care in western Kenya.”
But Notre Dame also says, “Joint research activities, participation
in seminars and academic meetings, student and faculty exchanges, and
special short-term courses will be used to advance the mission of the
Consortium.”
A USAID
study
from 2005 to 2009 followed an AMPATH pilot program to offer both
HIV/AIDS prevention services and family planning services from a single
clinic. The final report explains that prior to the pilot program,
AMPATH provided only “condom counseling” and “strategically” placed
condoms “in the waiting bay, check in/out rooms, and consultation rooms
for patients to access.” But in the trial, AMPATH provided clinic
patients the “oral contraceptive pill, intrauterine contraceptive
device, implants, injectable depo provera, or condoms” upon request.
Today, the AMPATH Reproductive Health program promotes contraception to AMPATH clients, according to AMPATH’s
website. Among the consortium’s other programs is the B-Fine Women’s Project, a
clinic
that offers a variety of services including distribution of condoms in
local bars and motels and providing condom “education” to truck drivers.
An Indiana University
article
last year described AMPATH’s at-home counseling and testing (HCT)
program, which includes youth outreach: “It influences youth, teaching
proper condom use and distributing free condoms to the community,
encouraging safe sex practices.” An AMPATH program manager’s
presentation on the HCT program reveals that 150,000 condoms were distributed between July and October 2009.
Notre Dame’s selection of Thomas Quinn to be honored as Distinguished
Alumnus and to speak at the Graduate School commencement ceremony
similarly raises concerns about the University’s commitment to Catholic
teaching on contraception, and it appears to violate the U.S. bishops’
2004
policy banning Catholic honors and platforms for opponents of Catholic moral teaching.
That policy was the basis for protests in 2009 against Notre Dame’s
selection of President Barack Obama as commencement speaker and
honoree. Opponents included 83 bishops who publicly criticized the
University and more than 367,000 individuals who signed a Cardinal
Newman Society petition.
At the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health, Quinn is responsible
for facilitating numerous faculty projects, including many that promote
the use of contraceptives including male and female condoms, “emergency”
contraception (which can cause early abortion), and IUDs (which also
can cause abortion). Current examples include:
- reproductive health project in Malawi
- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation project to promote contraception in Kenya (see also here)
- condom marketing project in Mozambique
- project to study a new female condom
- family planning project in Liberia
- HIV/AIDS prevention project in Kazakhstan
- HIV/AIDS counseling project in Lesotho
- HIV/AIDS prevention project in Kazakhstan
When asked whether such projects should have any bearing on his
selection as Notre Dame’s commencement speaker and Distinguished
Alumnus, Quinn said that his job is simply to “coordinate” faculty
activities.
“You may have concerns about what those individuals are doing,” Quinn said. “I myself am not. I keep the data in line.”
Quinn has done his own important work studying HIV/AIDS and its
prevention. But his work has involved condom distribution to prevent
HIV infection, as he explained in a December 2000
article about his project in Uganda:
“The number of sub-Saharan Africans living with HIV is
frighteningly high,” opined Dr. Quinn. “The number is almost
meaningless, it’s so high. We wanted to take some of the lessons we
learned early in the United States, such as condom use and safer sex
education, and see if we could make them work over there.”
…All subjects in both groups received intensive instruction from
trained personnel on the prevention of HIV and condom use. Subjects
were also offered free condoms….
In an interview with The Cardinal Newman Society, Quinn claimed that
the Catholic Church in Uganda endorsed the Ugandan government’s policy
of “abstinence, be faithful, condoms” to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS.
“There are 30 million people infected with HIV and you need to do something to actively try to change that,” Quinn said.
But a 2004
study
by Cambridge University researchers found that Uganda’s incidence of
HIV declined by 70 percent in the 1990s under a program emphasizing
abstinence, behavioral change and communication—before widespread condom
distribution and counseling became available through programs like
Quinn’s. (More on this
here.)
The Cambridge researchers questioned the strategic emphasis on
condoms and recommended a “shift in strategic thinking on health policy
and HIV/AIDS, with greater attention to epidemiological intelligence and
communications to mobilise risk avoidance.”
“My commencement address won’t be about these issues,” Quinn
promised. “What I want to do is talk about their futures and their
lives.”
“I know there was a lot of controversy about President Obama,” said
Quinn. “I want to reassure the Society that they can rest assured that I
won’t be promoting anything like that. My job is saving lives.”
Despite some media
confusion about a statement made by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 regarding the use of condoms by male prostitutes, the
Holy Father and
Vatican officials have strongly opposed condom distribution as immoral and an impractical solution to preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Moreover, the Catholic bishops of Kenya—where Notre Dame will be cooperating with AMPATH—have publicly
reiterated
Catholic teaching against condoms. They promise that Catholic Church
efforts to address HIV/AIDS, “both in partnerships with others and on
her own, will always be aimed at a search for human and liberating
solutions to the pandemic.”