So much for a gradual rollout.
What’s most unbelievable about today is who broke the embargo – L’Osservatore Romano that’s who. With a mistranslated section that’s what.
(I think – I’m assuming. The Italian translation had a feminine article with prostitute and the English version that I read and that has been published at the link below is specific about male prostitute.)
Jimmy Akin has a good summary here.
The point? No the Pope did not have a “condom conversion” as Ruth Gledhill so idiotically put it on Twitter. What he said – whether he should have said it or not is another issue – but whatever the case it really is nothing new and has nothing to do with the Church’s teaching on contraception either.
It’s an articulation of his concern for and interest an individual’s moral progress – ironically enough.
Here’s what I’m going to say – this whole conversation is going to be flipped on its head when the rest of the interview comes out and the people who are either crowing about or mourning the Pope changing the Church’s teaching on contraception or sexuality or something are really not going to know what to say next.
(I will check and see if the section I’m thinking about is in the pages I’m allowed to talk about tomorrow but who knows they already may be out there – I’m in the woods and things happen so fast these days…then again, if L’OR can break embargos why can’t I, over here in the forests of North America?)
The N.Y. Times today despite the condom related title is much broader than the web and touches on the Pope’s surprising comments on Popes retiring and the sex abuse crisis. Maybe the book has been launched.
I read the blaring headline in the Indy Star this morning and my first reaction was “this is why you can’t trust the secular media to cover the Church.”
Then I yawned and turned the page.
Declare to God, I wish that there was some kind of course or release or teaching module or something in journalism courses that covered exactly this; the difference between the Pope giving a personal opinion in an interview and the Pope declaring ex cathedra an infallible teaching of the Magisterium.
If you actually read what he said, it was in the context of “Although condom use is wrong, in certain instances it can be the first movement towards the realisation that sex is not a commodity but entails a duty of care towards the other person. As for example, a male prostitute.”
I rather imagine that in cases where someone is engaging in (1) sodomy (2) prostitution, condom usage does come in at No. (3) on the list in order of gravity.
As I understand it, what the Pope meant is this: male prostitution with a condom is perhaps less depraved than male prostitution without a condom but it is still depraved; and by doing something less depraved, maybe the male prostitute is on the road out of depravity all together. The press has translated this into: the Church now admits that condoms are good sometimes and the Church is on the road to blessing depraved sexuality.
Amy, I pray — and literally have prayed — to God that you are right and that it will soon become crystal clear that the Pope is not opening a door to the blessing of depraved sexuality.
I put this little satire on my blog
http://mccamley.org/blog/holy-father-tells-terrorists-how-to-plant-bombs
and I’ve got some favourable comments – people might find it helpful.
The Holy Father was asked in a recent interview to comment on the behaviour of terrorists who plant no warning bombs in heavily populated areas of cities, close to schools and nurseries. He said it was a bad thing.
He was then asked if it was better if the terrorist telephoned in bomb warnings so that buildings could be evacuated.
The Holy Father said that while engaging in such acts of terrorism was always morally wrong, telephoning a warning “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 political issues or demands for justice”.
Media: “So you’re saying it’s okay to plant bombs so long as you use phone warnings?”
Holy Father: “No, of course not, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of serious injury or death to an innocent person, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of policital action”.
In other news, the Pope said male prostitutes who use condoms so as not to spread HIV may show the first step to realizing they cannot just do what they want and that sex outside of marriage has consequences.
Call me naive but I have a more positive outlook: Ignatius Press is going to sell many books about the pope. Hurray!
Just a clarification on some of the above posts – that condom use in the particular case sited by the pope is a “lesser evil” thing. Ummm, condoms aren’t wrong in and of themselves. They are wrong when used to prevent conception. Male homosexual sex cannot be procreative.
So the use of a condom in this case is not even on the “list of gravity” (the other two things mentioned by Martha are, though). Because a condom is in no way being used contraceptively, even accidentally.
I think this is why the Pope specifically used “male prostitute” (which he did in the original German), because it completely sidestepped “the condom issue” as understood by the international media – because the ONLY issue the Catholic Church has with condoms is that they are contraceptive. If you found a condom package on the ground at the beach, realized you had no volleyball, and blew it up for beach fun with the buddies – you wouldn’t be sinning, even though you were “using” a condom.
This is why this is such a non-story.
@BarbaraKB
Amen to that!
I know. Blown up into a story by a mistranslation by L’O R. Why?
lol, I agree with you Barbara. Because of this. who knows, maybe alot of people are going to buy the book and actually read it. someone who is anti-catholic may read it and have a conversion. These kinds of controversy tend to increase book sales.
that’s a good question. And did Fr Lombardi and Cardinal Sgreccia help or hinder the Pope?
So, I’m thinking cynically right now…. was it a ploy to draw attention to the book or was it a way to deflect attention from something else?
I don’t see this as being negative at all, but part of a process. It basically is exploding the media myth that the Church is responsible for the spread of AIDS in Africa because it opposes condom distribution.
What we are hearing is the shattering of the myth of an authoritarian Church that stands in the way of common sense. It’s the noise of what is going on in people’s heads, the shattering of preconceptions, and maybe the beginnings of reasonable discourse.
Future coverage of the Church and the AIDs crisis will be different from here on in. Now maybe the message that condoms aren’t a good fix for the problem at all will be heard.
Unless all of those commentators like having egg on their faces. They think they are backing the Church into a corner, but it means that they can never cover the question in the same way again.