Wrap up on the condom connundrum

The church's role as a moral teacher in a world where everyone is Louis XIV

It seems to me that the condom flap is most interesting because of the insecurities it exposed on both sides of the Catholic aisle. Up until now, I have been hardest on the liberal/progressive side; and I stand by that because they deserve the lion's share of the blame for this particular flap. But conservative/traditionalists also showed some of their worst traits this time.

Oddly enough, the liberals showed their weakness in the way they were wrong and the conservatives showed their weakness in the way they were right. That's probably a little obscure so let me explain.

Hard-line liberal orthodoxy
A few days ago, Maureen Fiedler, of the National Catholic Reporter, accidentally let the cat out of the bag about what is wrong about the liberal response to the pope's remarks. Here is where she gives the game away, see if you can spot her slip:

As best anyone can decipher, the Pope approves of the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, and thus save lives.

Can you see it? It's the word "decipher". Because with that word Fiedler admits the thing no liberal has been courageous enough to admit: the pope's words quite simply do not mean what liberals claim they do. You have to "decipher" them and find some hidden intention that the words literally do not mean.

From there on it's a familiar game, liberals read what they want to read into the comments rather than what is there.

Hard-line conservative orthodoxy
Conservatives seem to have a simpler task. They can focus on what the words literally mean and the words literally mean ... well here is a citation from the actual remarks, see if you think it's hard figuring out the literal intention the pope had in saying this:

Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?
She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution ...

It's not a a real or a moral solution.You couldn't get clearer than that.

Okay, but here is the rest of it:

Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?
She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.

Again, let's look at the literal meanings here:

1. "[I]n this or that case, there can be ...." As I've said before, this is casuistry (I mean that in a good way); Benedict is talking about evaluation of individual cases not making a general statement about fighting HIV. In some cases we can find something to praise in an individual's election to make this choice.
2. "[A] first step..." meaning it is not a good thing in and of itself. The first step is worthless if you don't want to take a second one and a third and so on.

And here is where conservatives are having trouble. Because they are right in saying this has always been church teaching. And it has always been church teaching that everyone is supposed to do the best they can and that the church looks upon these efforts charitably.

And charitably means that the church will see what is morally positive in the efforts of even the person living a blatantly sinful life not in accord with church teachings.

Louis XIV's confessor
I've mentioned this guy before. He's a personal hero of mine. You've heard of him. No really, you have. His name is François de la Chaise and you've heard of him, if for no other reason, because the cemetery in Paris where a whole lot of famous people, including Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison, are buried is named after him.

Being Louis XIV's confessor was a peculiarly challenging vocation. Louis was not only completely lacking in self restraint about matters such as sexuality he was also the absolute monarch. It's tough to be a moral authority to a guy you quite literally have to bow and scrape to at every turn. At his merest whim, you, your family and the organization you represented could be wiped out.

So Pere Lachaise had to find more subtle ways of moving. Louis XIV was fond of having affairs with whomever he wanted and no one, even the husbands of the women involved, dared object. Rather than tell him point blank that everything he was doing was wrong, Pere Lachaise decided to gently encourage Louis in the right direction. He found particular areas where the king might be willing to take steps in the direction of moralization and encouraged him to take those steps. Meanwhile, he conveniently ignored other things that he and everyone else knew the king was up to.

This sometimes put him in a position of risking scandal. You can see the problem, if everyone in court plainly knows the king has been having an affair with Madame de So and so, and that Easter Sunday, in plain sight of his confessor, the king receives communion, well, people are going to start thinking, "Oh yeah, one rule for us and a different rule for the guy with all the power."

Pere Lachaise dealt with situations like this by conveniently getting severe colds so he couldn't see the king and therefore was unable to grant absolution immediately before Easter Sunday.

It drove a lot of people crazy. The Jansenists really went ape.

There are always people whose morality is really about controlling other people's lives. You can spot them today because they, like the Jansenists before them, are obsessed with other people's  hypocrisy. But what Pere Lachaise did was the right thing to do.

And the Pope has merely restated that with one perhaps important shift. In today's world, Benedict is acknowledging, everyone is Louis XIV. We all have to be brought along slowly and by degrees because we all have a sort of absolute power to ignore moral teaching we don't want to hear.

And some people, both conservatives and liberals, hate that. They want black and white truth and no room for squirming. Benedict just reminded everyone that the Catholic Church has all sorts of squirm room on moral issues. It always has.