Playing Legitimacy Games: The ‘Condom Issue’ of Cafod in the Organisational Context of the Catholic Church

A number of articles have raised fundamental questions about how we conceptualise and measure NGOs’ legitimacy. These include questions about the polity and legitimacy criteria of NGOs, such as who’s in charge of NGOs? How are they accountable and to whom? What is the benchmark for their normative framework? And, which audience confers legitimacy onto NGOs’ claims? In this paper Cafod is used as a case study to explore these questions through a contentious issue that reflects the religious and secular dimensions of Cafod's legitimacy sources. As a Catholic agency, Cafod is primarily reliant on the Church for its legitimacy and as such subject to its authority as expressed in Catholic documents. The ‘condom issue’, which refers to Cafod's promotion of prophylactic devices in its HIV policy, raises an interesting dilemma about how to measure Cafod's legitimacy and against what background. This paper examines the reasons for how Cafod managed to maintain a secular stance in direct defiance with the official line of the Catholic Church and the normative framework it provides for Cafod.