There is a story in the New York Times this morning that opens as following:
Pope Benedict XVI clearly acknowledged on Tuesday that the need to prevent diseases like AIDS could outweigh the church’s long opposition to the use of condoms.So there is a quote in the story to back this up right? Well actually, no there isn't.
The Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s spokesman, said that for Benedict, the use of condoms by people infected with H.I.V. could be “the first step of responsibility, of taking into consideration the risk to the life of the person with whom there are relations.”That's all you get. It could be a first step in responsibility by an individual. That is long-standing Catholic teaching.
Look, as anyone who reads this blog will know, I have significant reservations about a lot of Catholic teaching in sexuality. But getting the facts right matters.
Here is what Benedict says in the book with some emphasis added by me. If you compare that with the quote by Lombardi above, you can see he adds nothing new.
[T]he sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality, which , after all, is precisely the dangerous source of the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves. This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also a part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man’s being.
There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.
Yes, that's what he says in the book, but the quotes from Fr. Lombardi were to clarify what was in the book after the initial furor and questions about what Benedict meant. Benedict told Lombardi gender, for example, didn't matter, and Lombardi said he was unambiguous about it. He obviously said those things to Lombardi in conversation and his statement because they quote other people commenting on them, who I don't think would take the word of a reporter without researching it themselves. I agree with Lisa Cahill (whom I heard lecture here several years ago) that while it doesn't change church teaching per se, it moves the emphasis from procreation to preventing AIDS. And I agree with the Jesuit they quote who said that the Church can no longer claim that using condoms is "intrinsically evil." This, of course, is consistent with Augustine's "ex malo bonum." I also think that it acknowledges a hierarchy of evil, that some things are less evil than others. While those who have spent their lives studying theology might have been aware of this, this was never conveyed to the people in the pew. They were taught that using birth control or masturbation were mortal sins as grave as having an abortion, absurd to say the least but nonetheless. The laity who rejected that these past 40 yrs. post-Humanae Vitae were simply using their own common sense.
ReplyDeleteInteresting perspective on the reaction.
ReplyDeleteThe Pope Broadens His Comments
Posted at: Tuesday, November 23, 2010 10:51:35 AM
Author: James Martin, S.J.
http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&entry_id=3588
Well it is America!
ReplyDeleteThe Pope said, realizing that your actions could have an impact on others and using a condom could be interpreted as a 'first step" in "moralization".
He did not say, as Martin and others keep taking him as having said, "it is okay in some cases to use a condom to prevent transmission of HIV."
There is nothing in the Popes statement that says that nor is there anything that can be reasonably interpreted as saying that
You better tell Lombardi he's misquoting. Let's see if we see any retraction or "further clarification." I think Benedict's smile speaks for itself.
ReplyDeleteBut Lombardi is not misquoting: he is saying exactly what the Pope said but NOT what the NYT says he said.
ReplyDeleteYou can see the quote in the post above. It doesn't back up what the media are reporting.