Here is one of the best and most enlightening commentaries so far on the Holy Father's position on condoms and AIDS, which considers it both in its doctrinal and moral aspects, as well as in its public health implications. The writer, Matthew Hanley is, with Jokin D. Irala, M.D., the author of Affirming Love, Avoiding AIDS: What Africa Can Teach the West.
Misrepresenting Benedict’s bravery
By Matthew Hanley
Dec. 2, 2010
Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks about condoms and AIDS – or rather
confusing manipulations of those remarks – are reverberating around the world.
But they do not represent the change in his thought or Catholic teaching that the media have vigorously claimed, however much progressive or dissenting theologians, and perhaps even some papal aides, wish otherwise.
And they are not a vindication of public health authorities who have, for decades, unsuccessfully advocated technical means of battling sexually transmitted epidemics, while refusing to emphasize the kinds of behaviors that would avoid infection altogether.
The New York Times tells us the Pope’s words, in the newly published book
Light of the World, were received with “glee from clerics and health workers in Africa, where the AIDS problem is worst.”
The Pope as anachronistic obstacle to global health has long been a fashionable narrative. But consider:
decades of robust condom promotion (and other technical interventions) utterly failed to curb Africa’s AIDS epidemics, and it has been common-sense changes in sexual behavior that have accounted for Africa’s handful of AIDS declines.
Is one misrepresented remark from the Pontiff now to do what lavish and sophisticated condom campaigns couldn’t? Public
health leaders should be carefully scrutinized. They, not the Pope, are explicitly charged with containing epidemics.
In the late 1980s, Benedict stated the case quite clearly: “To seek a solution to the problem of infection by promoting the use of prophylactics would be to embark on a way not only insufficiently reliable from the technical point of view, but also and above all, unacceptable from the moral aspect.”
Doing so facilitates evil rather than tolerating it. Catholic institutions, he said, should avoid “engaging in compromises which may even give the impression of trying to condone practices which are immoral, for example, technical instructions in the use of prophylactic devices.”
In the new book, he repeats what he said last year on the way to Africa: condoms are not “a real or moral solution” to the AIDS crisis. As Dr. Janet Smith helpfully notes, “The Church has no formal teaching about how to reduce the evil of intrinsically immoral action…the homosexual act itself.”
Benedict was driving, rather, at the possibility of interior awakening and transformation. Those who use condoms while engaging in homosexual activity may recognize the moral imperative not intentionally to inflict harm upon oneself or another. They might then ask whether taking such calculated risks of doing so is acceptable. (The fact that new HIV infections in the United States are rising today only among men who have sex with men suggests persistent risk-taking).
Such persons might even radically reconsider the purpose and proper context for sexual expression.
Benedict’s remarks, it seems, express a profound sense of hope that even the most dissolute person may perceive deep moral imperatives and forsake unhealthy lifestyles altogether. Public health leaders studiously avoid encouraging that possibility.
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Health wrote in the pages of the
Washington Post last year that “the annual number of new HIV infections in the United States – about 56,000 – has remained fairly constant for more than a decade. That’s right, 56,000 people are infected in this country every year. Clearly, our efforts at HIV prevention have been insufficient.”
This failure has occurred even though high-risk populations (such as those Benedict mentioned) are knowledgeable about condoms and motivated to use them.
Dr. Fauci called for “drastic action and new approaches,” by which he meant more technical risk-reduction measures – new drugs and more voluntary counseling and testing. He didn’t mention behavior change. He doesn't dare.
As Benedict put it in a 1988 Cambridge lecture:
"Whoever dares to say that mankind ought to refrain from that inordinate sexual license which gives AIDS its effective power is put on the sidelines as a hopeless obscurantist because of his public attitude. Such an idea can only be deplored and passed over in silence by the 'enlightened' of today."
The silence of our enlightened medical and public health authorities has clearly not served us well. Rates of other STDs are unabated or even rising; one in four teenage girls has an STD, according to the Center for Disease Control. Several western countries have seen some STD rates double or triple over the past two decades despite pervasive condom messaging.
San Francisco has essentially banned McDonald’s Happy Meals, thereby forcing people to abstain from certain foods. Yet it cannot recommend abstinence from much more dangerous sexual behavior. That would be truly intolerable in our present cultural climate.
Benedict XVI had precisely that in mind when he deplored the “dictatorship of relativism,” which now has many loyal subjects.
Those who now portray the Pope’s words as a theological and philosophical revolution do so not because they think it will improve public health, but because they imagine it will increase the likelihood that the Church will ultimately approve of homosexual acts and contraception.
Benedict maintains that “not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants.” Dr. Fauci and the Public Health Establishment dare not say, even for health reasons, that some behaviors should be avoided entirely.
For all practical purposes, theirs is a variation of Ivan Karamazov’s famous formulation: without God – and with faith in the strictly technical fix – all things are permitted.
The claim that some forms of sexual activity are wrong is seen today as a limitation on individual freedom. But Benedict is teaching us that “morality is not man’s prison; it is rather the divine in him.” He courageously proclaims an unpopular moral message because he hopes that all people – even that male prostitute – will recognize and respond to the divine spark within.
He has been far, far braver than leading public health figures. And his message is far more hopeful, healthier, and conducive to the common good. In a sane world, media attention would be trained not on Benedict but upon our public health authorities, who wave the white flag of surrender when it comes to unhealthy behavior.
The following essay properly belongs to the ISSUES thread but it is very apropos - it restates some of Mr. Hanley's points - and is short enough to be posted here. Janet E. Smith is the Father Michael J. McGivney Chair of Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Michigan. She is the author o two books on the encyclical Humanae Vitae and wrote ignatius Press's first article in conjunction with the condom remarks in LOTW.
Why are the media fixated on condoms?
An appeal to focus on the negatives of reckless sexuality
By Janet E. Smith
DETROIT, Michigan, DEC. 1, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Most people remember their grandmothers at some point telling them that pointing a finger at someone means that three fingers are pointing back at you.
The media are obsessed with the issue of the Catholic Church and condoms because they seem to believe that condoms are the solution to preventing the transmission of the HIV.
Might it be time they began to think about other organizations, such as themselves, that might bear some responsibility?
Who can deny that if people were living by the Church's teaching on sexuality, if people were having only married heterosexual sex, there would be no problem with the HIV (and a host of other problems)?
Certainly, in this fallen world, that is not going to happen everywhere. But why doesn't it happen more often? Why does it seem that so many people think sex outside of marriage and homosexual sex is perfectly acceptable? That people should be allowed to have whatever kind of sex they want to have?
Benedict XVI calls this the "banalization of sexuality."
I have been teaching on sexuality for many decades. When I started, nearly three decades ago, even though promiscuity was in full swing even then, I could generally count on young people agreeing with me that sexual intercourse was meant to be an expression of love.
In fact, "making love" was a euphemism for "having sex," but who says that anymore? When I would speak about "sex" they would naturally think of an act performed by spouses.
Some argued that if you were in love and intending to get married, it could be moral to have sex before marriage. Even so, there was also fairly widespread agreement, that if you weren't ready for babies, you weren't ready for sex. Few were arguing that it was moral to have any kind of sex.
How things have changed since then! Now, when I speak of "sex" people think of a profoundly pleasurable sexual act that has no connection to love, commitment or babies. Young people are a bit surprised when I maintain there is a natural connection between sex, love, commitment and babies.
Why has this change come about? Well, as I have argued incessantly for years,
the introduction of the contraceptive pill changed everything.
Suddenly people thought removing the baby making power of the sexual act meant they were free to engage in sex without a second thought about any new life that might be conceived. And then we all went wild.
As a result, 41% of babies are now born out of wedlock; one of four pregnancies is aborted; and nearly 70% of all children in the United States grow up in households affected by divorce or unwed pregnancy. Worldwide, millions of people are dying of the HIV.
And the media continue to fixate on condoms as a solution to all these problems?
I blame the media, and to a great extent, the entertainment world. It is a rare parent who doesn't find the media to be tremendous threats to forming their children well, especially when it comes to sexual morality.
All of us are bombarded daily with seductive sexual imagery and the glorification of sexual immorality, from advertisements to nearly every TV show and any nonanimated film.
Some films do show the terrible life consequences of irresponsible sexuality, but
most entertainment presents irresponsible sexuality as normative and falsifies the all-too-common consequences.
Why don't reporters harass script writers and producers and others responsible for what appears in the media, instead of further harassing the Holy Father?
Why don't they ask questions such as, "Aren't you concerned that the way you portray casual sex as exhilarating and satisfying will lead young people to engage in sex recklessly?" "Don't you feel responsible to some extent for all the unwed pregnancies, abortions, sexually transmitted infections, broken hearts and broken lives?"
[They don't ask these questions for the simple reason that it does not even occur to them! Bred and permeated in the anything-goes mentality of the 1968 counterculture, they can only perpetrate it in every way, passively and actively.]
This would focus our public debate on how those who create our cultural icons are tearing down family values brick by vital brick.
There is also a dearth of reporting about the consequences of unwed pregnancy for the people involved, for the economy and the culture. There is a lack of reporting about the reality of the homosexual lifestyle; the number of lifetime partners, of anonymous sex, of shortened lifespans. Without full information, people can't make good choices.
If any food or drug led to the amount of disease, poverty, and general human unhappiness that is caused by reckless sexuality, there would be a full-fledged media campaign attempting to alert people to the danger.
Is global warming a worse danger than reckless sexuality, which may be said to create an imbalance in our personal and culture moral "ecosystem"? Is overeating a worse danger than reckless sexuality, resulting as it does in a warped and cynical self-image? Is lack of recycling or oil spills worse than reckless sexuality, which trains us to disrespect and ignore our bodily dignity?
Why can't the media see what is in truth one of the worse threats to human happiness that lurks right under our noses?
Why do they continue to fixate on the Pope and condoms, when the world needs to hear about sexual responsibility? Why?
The following is an earlier commentary written by Deal W. Hudson, president of Catholic Advocate and the editor of Inside Catholic.
More Dostoevsky than catechesis:
Reflections on the moral psychology of a prostitute
are not what you normally expect from a Pontiff
By Deal W. Hudson, Ph.D
WASHINGTON, DC, Nov. 30 (Inside Catholic) - Catholics are obsessed with rules about what can and cannot be done. Contraception, abortion, women in the priesthood, even kneeling for the Eucharist are often subjects of controversy whenever Catholics discuss their faith.
Thus, when Pope Benedict XVI made his now-famous comment in
Light of the World about condoms, it was inevitable that his utterance would be treated as a new rule. The media is reporting that Catholics may now use condoms during sexual intercourse to avoid transferring HIV.
There is, of course, no new rule about condom use: The Church still teaches that contraception during intercourse between a man and woman is forbidden, even in the case where one or the other is HIV-positive.
What Benedict actually said is much more interesting than what is being wrongly reported by the media. The Holy Father was probing into an imagined individual's moral psychology, rather than rehearsing a new item in the next edition of the Catechism.
The context of the condom comment was his response to a question about how to fight the spread of AIDS in Africa. The Holy Father described how the "fixation" on condoms has led to the "banalization" of sexuality, where it is no longer viewed as an "expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves."
Up to this point in the conversation with Peter Seewald, the Pope is simply reiterating the Church's teaching as stated, for example, in
Humanae Vitae.
But then another thought occurred to one-time professor Benedict -- a situation in which the use of a condom might be considered a moral act.
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.
The Holy Father imagines the moment when a prostitute, while conducting business, becomes concerned about the physical well-being of his or her customer -- wanting to keep that person from being infected by a deadly disease.
Reflections on the moral psychology of a prostitute are not what you normally expect from a pontiff. Benedict's imagining that, even in the midst of such degrading labor, a person can become aware of the moral dimension of sexuality seems to belong more to the substance of a Dostoevsky novel than the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Benedict's observation is much more interesting, more morally probative, than what has enthralled the media for more than a week. It is grounded in the Catholic anthropology of the human person's natural desire for God, the good, and happiness.
There's no aggregate of sinful habits or base acts that can remove this desire completely. As a result, it's a human propensity that can find expression at any moment and in any circumstance. Conversion, so to speak, is a perennial possibility.
If Benedict had further developed his observation about the imagined prostitute, he might have come to the conclusion he was no longer talking about condoms as understood by the Church.
Condom use is banned for Catholics, because it is a means of contraception. When a condom is put to other uses, however -- whether as a balloon or a medical device to inhibit infection -- it is no longer functioning as a condom.
Some will say this is just a play on words; but for Catholics who have been brought up to identify condoms with contraception, it's important to insist upon the distinction.
Once we move past the obsession with the rule about contraceptives, Catholics and non-Catholics alike may notice that Benedict was giving a message of hope to those involved, whether by choice or circumstance, in degrading and dehumanizing actions.
The Pope is reminding all of us that, regardless of how far we fall or how much we fail, we remain God's children, and our desire for Him can never be extinguished.
The bishop of St. Petersburg, Florida, presents a very sensible pastoral view of the Pope's remarks, with the added context of his personal knowledge of what Cardinal Ratzinger said on the subject in 1987....
The condom conundrum: The Pope as priest
seeking pastoral application of morality
Last week’s Church news gave ample proof why Popes generally shy away from giving interviews to the media or anyone. In case you missed it, Pope Benedict XVI last summer devoted a good length of time to being interviewed by a German journalist, Peter Seewald, who previously interviewed him prior to his election as Pope.
The resulting book
Light of the World was published in German, Italian and English [Ignatius Press] at exactly the same time as the Holy Father was creating new cardinals and excerpts from the long interview made the front pages of the world’s press.
Headlines such as “Pope Approves Condoms” and “Church Allows Condom Use for Male Prostitutes” greeted us in one form or another last week.
So what did the Holy Father actually say and what does it mean for the Church? First, some important points need to be made. Pope Benedict in granting this interview to a journalist he trusted made it abundantly clear that his personal opinions, much like his reflections on the life of Jesus which he is writing in book form while Pope, are not to be taken as definitive Church teaching. That is accomplished in other more formal ways.
Rather,
he is allowing Catholics and others who are interested to know a little more about his own thoughts on major issues of Christian living and behaving. So his comments on condoms do not change official Church teaching. But in expanding on this issue, if one takes the time to read the whole section,
one sees a priest searching for a pastoral application of sound moral teaching to a difficult issue.
In response to Seewald’s question about the possible use of condoms to combat the spread of the HIV-AIDS virus, the Holy Father suggested in the interview that condom use might be justified in some very limited circumstances,
as perhaps when the male prostitute uses a condom” as a “first step in the direction of moralisation, a first assumption of responsibility on the way toward recovering 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. . . .She [the Catholic Church] 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 towards a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.
I was not at all surprised by this statement because in November of 1986 the Administrative Committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued its first statement on the pandemic, and in that document said that applying the morally accepted principal of “the lesser of two evils”, death being the greater evil, under certain circumstances condom use could be morally permissable.
A huge uproar greeted this document, even within the bishops’ conference, caused in part by a procedural issue that it had been issued by a committee of the Conference on the very eve of a plenary conference when all the bishops could have debated and decided the issue instead of fifty-two bishops.
The guidance of that first document on combatting the spread of HIV-AIDS through a variety of possibilities was also a part of the ensuing uproar and debate.
A year later the same conference issued a second statement on the HIV-AIDS pandemic which while it never acknowledged that there was theological error to be found in the first statement chose to drop the section on the use of condoms.
At that time I was working on the forthcoming second pastoral visit of Pope John Paul II to the United States which took place in 1987 and I accompanied the officers of the USCC-NCCB to Rome for their twice yearly visits to the Pope and Curia.
They visited Cardinal Ratzinger and the officers of the conference brought up the matter of the first AIDS statement.
The then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that in his opinion while the moral theology contained in the first statement was defensible, he had concerns about the pastoral prudence of the condom approach at that time.
In a later letter to the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Pio Laghi, Cardinal Ratzinger expressed an opposite opinion on condom use. So it was obviously a matter even then which he was reflecting on and thinking about.
Pope John Paul II in his private meeting acknowledged the uproar in the states but did not express great alarm nor was he critical of the application of moral theology in that statement.
So I for one was not surprised when Pope Benedict XVI spoke of a very limited application of the principal of the lesser of two evils in his interview with author Seewald.
Does this mean that the Church is advocating condom use? No, abstinence has been and continues to be our message and the proper application and understanding of human sexuality is not threatened either.
Rather, the Holy Father is speaking to a possible situation in which a precaution might be used to avoid the greater evil of death. In other words, I found the statement of Pope Benedict to be reflective of his thinking twenty-four years previous in private conversations.
Struggling as many confessors might do, the Holy Father simply said there might be cases where the use of a condom can represent the first stirrings of a sense of moral responsibility, if the intent is to save the life of another person.
He does not advocate condom use and he does not generally condone condom use. There are enough nuances here to protect the long held Church teaching that condoms are not a “real or moral solution.”
For many years both Cardinal Josef Ratzinger and now Pope Benedict XVI and many bishops around the world have reflected and considered the application of the principle of the lesser of two evils and its application to the HIV-AIDS pandemic.
This same Holy Father early in his pontificate asked the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to further study the issue and that work product is not yet finished.
In the new book we merely are exposed to the Pope’s reflection on a very small part of the question. He did not intend nor should he be thought of as backing off the long-teaching of the Church on artificial contraception for either of the two purposes of marriage: mutual communion of life and love leading to eternity and bringing children into the world.
I feel for Pope Benedict in the context of his remarks above because he is taking it on the chin from left and right at the moment. However, he is a strong teacher and a moral force for good in the world.
I feel for him that in the current controversy, right as he predicted, little attention is being given to the role which the Catholic Church around the world plays in treating persons with HIV-AIDS.
My beloved Catholic Relief Services is often belittled by US-AID (a branch of the U.S. Department of State) for not distributing condoms in its response to the pandemic yet the same agency often turns to us as first providers in the government program for wider use of anti-retroviral protocols in countries experiencing major incidences of the disease.
More will be written on this subject in the years to come and it seems to me that
what we have here is an example of the universal pastor confronting a major global killer with thoughtful reflection. That’s my take on the condom conundrum.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 05/12/2010 13:40]