You clearly do not if you are under the impression that the Church has never officially approved of nonabortificient birth control in cases of rape. Its been longstanding practice/policy of the worldwide Church (including Vatican Congregations) for several decades now.
Why again with the ***prostitution? *** Talk about ignoring the big picture!
The subtlety will be missed by huge numbers of Catholics, who will still be back on the prostitution issue, then secondarily on the active homosexual behavior issue, to draw smaller moral distinctions against the much more gigantic immoral context of prostitution, fornication or adultery (for your single-parent example), and active homosexuality. What would have prevented the confusion would have been not to have made any such public statement to those who were not preeminent theologians.
Indeed. Some study in moral theology is needed to properly understand the nuances of “Churchspeak.”
I think the Holy Father was, in fact, avoiding the whole question of double effect. When it comes to homosexual activity a condom does not act as contraception or an abortificient. The condom neither adds nor subtracts any moral element to the homosexual act. Asking if its ok for homosexuals to use condoms is kind of the equivalent of asking if its ok for homosexual to wear costumes during sexual activity. What’s being put on carries no moral weight.
I think the issue of prostitution was used because the Holy Father probably thought no one would ever think he was saying gay prostitution was ok. Whereas if he used the example of a gay couple his words might be spun out of context. Unfrotuantely for the Holy Father, even this simple example has spun widely out of control.
Thank you for bringing this up again. You are correct. I was on a thread once and other posters were telling me about rape victims who are not pregnant being allowed to take certain medications which would prevent a pregnancy from occurring.
It’s beyond me, too. Surely as Catholics we should be used to being persecuted. But why accept what the secular media says (btw, they are making a profit while saying it) instead of the Church?
I do not understand that.
I do not know if we can trust the BBC for information.
I agree. Why didn’t the Pope say that? We should be dis swaying male prostitutes or homosexuals from having sex, not saying, just use a condom.
That is a good statement.
Thank you for the clarification. I did not write that article.
The Pope did not say that Catholic teaching would change or all that all people should use condoms.
Pope may have been in error but it is going to be published now.
And most (modern) Catholics don’t have that, at least not the average churchgoing lay person. And very little of the modern press has that.
Again, I think that point was lost on both the secular public and (will be) by the Church laity.
Again, I think what people might be focused on just as much (or more) is the possibility that male prostitution is OK. The public doesn’t deal in abstract theoreticals, but the concrete. I think the way you stated it was good: What you put on has no effect, positive or negative, on the (im)moral category of the behavior itself. (I’m adding to your statement obviously.)
I think he also should have been explicit about that. The three concepts above could have been combined in logical sequence which would have fully contextualized his thinking and prevented the conclusion that people will come away with, which is that the comments were largely a discussion about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, when this particular pin is not even an acceptable practice to begin with.
I respectfully believe that this assumption was an enormously bad judgment call on his part. I can see why/how it happened, and one has to acknowledge – give church officials credit – that it’s difficult to control public reaction – both neutral and malevolent. But juxtaposition is a huge factor in public reaction, as observed in the fairly recent juxtaposition of female ‘ordination’ with clergy sex abuse.
Despite intellectual understanding, even some prominent people in the church judged this one also to be a very, very problematic pairing. It was covered eloquently by an articulate & noncombative canon lawyer on The World Over Live on EWTN.It would appear so at first glance, I am waiting for clarification before commenting further on this website. It can and is being misconstrued by those dissident Catholics and others who condone artificial contraception.
The head of the Holy See Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi, SJ, has issued a statement clarifying passages of the book Light of the World, in which Pope Benedict discusses AIDS and condom use.
The statement says Pope Benedict states that AIDs cannot be solved only by the distribution of condoms, and, in fact, concentrating on condoms just trivializes sexuality, which loses its meaning as an expression of love and becomes like a drug.
At the same time, the Pope considered an exceptional situation in which the exercise of sexuality represents a real risk to the lives of others. In this case, the Pope does not morally justify the exercise of disordered sexuality, but believes that the use of condoms to reduce the risk of infection is a “first step on the road to a more human sexuality”, rather than not to use it and risking the lives of others.
Father Lombardi’s statement clarifies Pope Benedict XVI has not reformed or changed the Church’s teaching, but by putting it in perspective reaffirms the value and dignity of human sexuality as an expression of love and responsibility.No. Condoms DO prevent HIV/AIDS. If they didn’t then we would have the same amount of gay men having AIDS that we did 25 yrs ago.
HIV/AIDS dramatically dropped in the gay population because of condoms being used.Whether it’s rude or not, the bigger point is that your claim that the discussion reflects a lack of critical thinking does not hold. Rather, the Pope’s thinking would have been better understood in a critically logical and more explicit sequence, in which he reaffirmed that compounding one evil with another merely compounds the immorality. That’s not what came out of his mouth, unfortunately.