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BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

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On the Pope,
condoms and imbeciles

by Massimo Introvigne
Translated from

Nov. 22, 2010

One must speak about the Pope's interview-book - but at the right time, as it deserves. But today, we must speak about imbeciles.

From gay associations to some self-styled traditionalists, all are saying that the Pope has changed traditional Catholic teaching about artificial means of birth control.

Hence, eight-column banner headlines in the Sunday papers. Exultation at the UN. Commentators explaining how the Pope has admitted that prostitutes should protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies by requiring their customers to use the condom - but then, they add, if prostitutes can be allowed to do this, why not extend it to poor women who are in no position to raise kids... and so on, until it would be allowed for everyone!

Too bad that the commentators - it happens all the time - went at it full throttle simply on the basis of a preview excerpt from the book which did not include the Pope's full answers to the two questions that had to do with condoms and AIDS! [What makes it worse, the partial excerpt came from L'Osservatore Romano and Vatican Radio!]

The Pope, answering a question on the fight against AIDS, says that "the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality", and that "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".

In the succeeding paragraph - correctly translating from the original German - Benedict continues:

There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as when a male prostitute uses a condom [wenn etwa ein Protituierter ein Kondom verwendet], 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.

I do not know if the Italian edition that will come out tomorrow correctly translates 'ein Prostituierter' - which is clearly masculine, or will carry the error of L'Osservatore Romano which translated it as 'prostituta', female, which renders the Pope's statement senseless.

Female prostitutes obviously do not 'use' condoms themselves, but their customers could. The Pope obviously was referring to male prostitution in which, as scientific studies tell us, customers usually insist that the prostitute should not use a condom, although many such male prostitutes are HIV-positive - pre-earthquake Haiti was notorious for a long time as a paradise for 'homosexual tourism' - and infect their customers by the hundreds.

Some may say that 'male prostitutes' can also mean heterosexual gigolos who service multiple women for pay, but the argument is captious because the AIDS epidemic is notoriously prevalent in the male homosexual community [whose clients could then go on to infect women partners], and that the German language uses the term 'gigolo' for gigolos!

Thus, once it is clear that pregnancy is not a consideration in the Pope's example, then the Pope is not saying anything 'revolutionary'. To begin with, in the Catholic view, prostitution itself is a sin, and the homosexual act is a sin.

But if a male prostitute, knowing he has AIDS, infects his customer(s), knowing that he would be infecting him(them), then he would be committing two mortal sins - against the sixth commandment, and against the fifth, because it would be akin to attempted homicide.
Sexual immorality is a grave sin but it becomes even worse when it is coupled to the possibility of 'killing' others.

And an HIV-positive male prostitute who 'systematically' infects his clients through unprotected sex is both immoral and 'homicidal'. However, if he develops scruples and decides to use a condom to minimize the risk of transmitting the virus (the efficacy of condoms as protection is , of course, not foolproof, but that is a technical and scientific question, rather than moral) - he does not automatically become a good man, but he has taken 'a first step', the Pope points out, towards 'moralization' - 'an assumption of responsibility'. A first step because a potential killer decides to stop being one - but he is still a prostitute.

The Pope quickly adds: "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." In the case of prostitutes, male or female, clearly, they should stop being prostitutes. [But this is an altogether other argument. Even the obvious threat of AIDS has not curbed prostitution appreciably except in some of the most afflicted African nations.}

A confessor's sensitivity to help "find a way that is humanly possible to deal with the most sensitive practices of applying Catholic doctrine" - which has not changed - in the case of contraception, is raised by the Pope in another part of the interview, but it is not related to the excerpt that has raised so much interest this weekend for the wrong reasons.

The statement using the example of an HIV-infected male prostitute is the cause of all the frantic and hasty commentary published before the opinion-makers had even seen the entire transcript of what the Pope actually said on the subject.

The AP wins the prize for the most absurd headline (which it later corrected) "The Pope says male prostitution is allowable as long as condoms are used".

Only imbeciles could confuse the Pope with Marazzo even if both live in Rome. [The reference is to Piero Marazzo, who was the president of Lazio region from 2006-2009. He resigned after four Italian policemen tried to blackmail him with a video purportedly showing him with a transsexual 'friend'. He said the video was 'fake' but he wanted to protect his wife and three daughters from further exposure to scandal.]





Vatican publishing house already
into a second printing of
'Luce del Mondo'

by PAOLO RODARI
Translated from

Nov. 22, 2010

Many American commentators have been unhappy with L'Osservatore Romano's preview Saturday of several passages from the Pope's interview-book with Peter Seewald and the subsequent frenzy of comments appearing in the Sunday papers. Check out these links {to Abp. Chaput's article in First Things; to Jimmy Akin; to Thomas Peters in American Papist; to Amy Welborn's blog; and to Lisa Graas's bloghttp://lisagraas.com/2010/11/20/some-big-change-from-the-pope-on-condom-use/
where she brings up Introvigne's arguments, and expands the discussion on Catholic teaching about sexual morality).


But there has been one unexpected result. The Vatican publishing house, in the immediate aftermath found its first printing of 50,000 copies instantly gobbled up by the bookstores.

LEV is now into a second printing with, sources say, 'some corrections in the text'. Probably they will correct the reference to a 'prostituta' and make it 'prostituto' as the Pope clearly said in the German original. Then it will all make sense, as Massimo Introvigne points out!




Speaking of AP absurdities, they had a short report this morning that was absurd - Victor Simpson claiming that 'Vatican sources' told him the Pope deliberately made a provocative statement 'to start a debate about condoms and AIDS', to which no one in his right mind, least of all anyone who knows anything about the Pope, could possibly give any credence.

Well, it appears Simpson has fleshed out his story, and let me post both stories here for the record. Much of it is in purple. Although Simpson makes it specifically clear that the Pope's statements do not apply to the Church teaching against artificial birth control, he is still pushing the idea that the Pope is 'signalling' a change in Catholic doctrine about the use of condoms!



Pope seeks to start debate
on condoms and AIDS

by VICTOR SIMPSON


This was the first brief story:

ROME, Nov. 22 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI sought to "kick-start a debate" when he said some condom use may be justified, Vatican insiders say, raising hopes the Church may be starting to back away from a complete ban and allow condoms to play a role in the battle against AIDS.

With his striking comment on condoms and AIDS, Pope Benedict XVI has started a new chapter in the complex Church debate about morality and preventing the spread of HIV.


The Roman Catholic prohibition against artificial contraception is not in question, but Benedict could be carving out a very rare exception for the use of condoms.

Benedict said that condoms are not a moral solution to stopping AIDS. But he said in some cases, such as for male prostitutes, their use could represent a first step in assuming moral responsibility "in the intention of reducing the risk of infection."

And this is Simpson's expanded story:

VATICAN CITY, Nov. 22 (AP) – Pope Benedict XVI sought to "kick-start a debate" when he said some condom use may be justified, Vatican insiders say, raising hopes the Church may be starting to back away from a complete ban and allow condoms to play a role in the battle against AIDS.
Just a year after he said condoms could be making the AIDS crisis worse, Benedict said that for some people, such as male prostitutes, using them could be a step in assuming moral responsibility because the intent is to "reduce the risk of infection."

The Pope did not suggest using condoms as birth control, which is banned by the Church, or mention the use of condoms by married couples where one partner is infected.

Still, some saw the Pope's comments as an attempt to move the Church forward on the issue of condoms and health risks.

For years, divisions in the Vatican have held up any effort to reconcile the Church's ban on contraception with the need to help halt the spread of AIDS. Theologians have studied the possibility of condoning limited condom use as a lesser evil, and reports years ago said the Vatican was considering a document on the issue, though opposition apparently blocked publication.

One senior Vatican official said Monday he believed the Pope just "wanted to kick-start the debate." He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. [CRAP!]

For the deeply conservative Benedict, it seemed like a bold leap into modernity - and a nightmare for many at the Vatican. The pope's comments sparked a fierce debate among Catholics, politicians and health workers that is certain to reverberate for a long time despite frantic damage control at the Vatican.

In a sign of the tensions, the Holy See's chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, rushed out a statement to counter any impression the church might lift its ban on artificial birth control. Lombardi stressed the Pope's comment neither "reforms nor changes" church teaching.

While much of the world hailed Benedict's statement as a major shift toward lifting the Church ban, conservatives insisted the Pontiff was not "justifying" condom use from a theological point of view.

Many Vatican observers were struck by the example the Pope used - that of a male prostitute - though the comments clearly were not meant to condone prostitution or homosexual conduct, which the Church condemns as "intrinsically disordered."

And while Benedict made only a tiny opening, he stepped where no pope has gone since Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which was supposed to have closed debate on Church policy barring Catholics from using condoms and other artificial contraception.

Notably, the Pope chose to make his statement in an interview with a German journalist, Peter Seewald, and not in an official document. [DUH!!!!]

Excerpts of Seewald's book, "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times," first appeared Saturday in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

Luigi Accattoli, a veteran Vatican journalist who will be on a Vatican panel launching the book Tuesday, said Benedict had taken a "long-awaited" step that only the highest authority of the church could do." [When I read this in an Italian newspaper, I found Accattoli's reaction strange for someone who is usually level-headed, and I cannot understand him jumping the gun in this way!]

Also on the panel is an influential prelate who showed his independence last year when he argued that Brazilian doctors should not be excommunicated for aborting the twin fetuses of a 9-year-old child who was allegedly raped by her stepfather. [Simpson conveniently omits the fact that the CDF 'walked back' Fisichella's statement later in a lengthy clarificatory note!]

Monsignor Rino Fisichella argued the doctors were saving the girl's life and should be shown mercy; he was forced out as head of the Vatican's bioethics advisory committee for his stance. [FACTS PLEASE! It was the Pontifical Academy for Life, not just some advisory committee. And he was not forced out, though some prominent members asked him to resign. He managed to make a graceful exit because he was named to head the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization.]

Benedict previously had shown little sign of budging on the issue of condoms. Last year while en route to Africa, the continent hardest hit by HIV, he drew criticism from many health workers by saying condoms not only did not help stop the spread of AIDS but exacerbated the problem.

With Benedict prone to gaffes and crises - such as his remarks likening Islam to violence that caused a fury in the Muslin world and his lifting of the excommunication of a Holocaust-denier - some wondered whether it was again a communication problem.


However, Seewald wrote in the preface that Benedict had reviewed the text and made only small corrections. Seewald, who wrote two other books of interviews with Benedict while he was a cardinal, spent six hours over six days with Benedict at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo in July.

The German-born Pope appears comfortable talking with his fellow countrymen. [DUH AGAIN!] The only other interview the Pope has given was to German television in 2006.

Beyond the debate within the Roman Catholic Church on its condoms policy, it is unclear how much effect the shift could have on health policy in Africa. [TRIPLE DUH!!! When everyone ganged up on the Pope last year because of his statement on condoms and AIDS, my first reaction was stunned outrage at the sheer hypocrisy of the universal outcry: 1) Weren't the very people who were crying to high heavens the very same ones who constantly ridicule the Church saying no one follows its old-fashioned teachings anyway? 2) Now, suddenly, they were claiming that what the Pope said about condoms was going to cause the death of millions? How? Most of the AIDS victims in Africa are not Catholic. If the critics say even Catholics do not follow the Pope anyway, why would they now suddenly make it appear as though all those AIDS patients, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, would now listen to the Pope and stop using condoms??? ... These are the sort of common-sense considerations that got lost in the false debate over whether the Pope was right or wrong - if they believe what they always say to put him down, that no one listens to him or the Church at all, what does it matter? But it really was no debate at all because his opponents merely said 'HE'S WRONG!" while refusing to even look at the many epidemiological studies that prove him right!]

Kevin O'Reilly, a World Health Organization AIDS expert in Geneva, said the Pope's comments "will remove some barriers in Africa."

"The fact that the Vatican is demonstrating any flexibility at all, and is considering the real-world use of condoms, is encouraging," O'Reilly said.

"Some of the churches there have been actively campaigning against condom use," he added. "But I don't think there are a lot of people making decisions about condom use while worrying about what the Vatican is up to."


[Look at those statements by O'Reilly! A perfect illustration of the liberal condom-brandishing forces' contradictory rhetoric. His last statement nullifies whatever he was claiming in the first two!... And yet, Simpson reports all this without even noting the contradiction. Do reporters like him think that all newspaper readers are zombies who will just swallow anything reporetrs write hook, line and sinker, and have no vestige at all of critical faculties?]

Still, Sister Christine Schenk, executive director of FutureChurch, a liberal church reform group in the United States, said the Pope expressed a principle about the benefits of using condoms to prevent disease that could apply to women too.

"You can probably take from that example and extend that to other examples," Schenk said. "Clearly, there will be many women who will also be prevented from getting HIV if you look at the principle of what he said."


[That's exactly the kind of false and foolish syllogism that Massimo Introvigne warned about!]

Another news agency variation on a theme:

Pope eases condom stance

VATICAN CITY, Nov. 22 – Pope Benedict XVI has opened the door on the previously taboo subject of condoms as a way to fight HIV, saying male prostitutes who use condoms may be beginning to act responsibly. It’s a stunning comment for a Pontiff who has blamed condoms for making the AIDS crisis worse.

The Pope made the comments in an interview with a German journalist published as a book entitled “Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times,” which is being released Tuesday. The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano ran excerpts Saturday.

Church teaching has long opposed condoms because they are a form of artificial contraception, although the Vatican has never released an explicit policy on condoms and HIV. The Vatican has been harshly criticized for its position.

Vatican officials insist it's nothing "revolutionary," but to many other people Pope Benedict XVI's recent comments regarding condom use mark an important moment in the battle against AIDS and an effort by the pontiff to burnish his image and legacy. [EXCUSE ME????? How does that burnish his image in any way - and with whom? The liberals? Why? Image-building has never been, is not, and never will be any consideration at all for Benedict XVI!]

Just a year after he said condoms could be making the AIDS crisis worse, Benedict said that for some people, such as male prostitutes, using them could represent a first step in assuming moral responsibility "in the intention of reducing the risk of infection."

The Vatican's ban on contraception remains, but Alberto Melloni, an Italian Church historian, said Benedict "opened without a doubt a crack that cannot help but have consequences."

[The liberals, of course, insist on interpreting the Pope's words as though he has finally seen their point "Stubborn codger finally gets it through his noggin!" Just as - and I avoided commenting on it before because I felt the reaction was predictable and picayune, silly and shallow - they interpreted his recent remarks about the 'inalienable right to health care' as being an endorsement of Obamacare - which forces individual citizens to buy health insurance they do not necessarily want, or be fined for not doing so! It's not as if Obamacare was providing healthcare to everyone for free, nor that it automatically gives everyone health insurance. Except for children who can now be covered under their parents' insurance until they turn 26, those who could not afford to buy health insurance before still would not be able to afford it, including many who have children below 26! It's amazing that this basic fact has been overlooked in the brouhaha over the many other problems with Obamacare. But then again, this is exactly what happened over the Pope's remarks last year on condoms: the Media get to set the terms of the 'debate', to cover up or distract from the glaring contradictions of the positions they defend.]

Some Catholic believers in the Americas greeted Pope Benedict XVI's comments on condoms as a sign that the Church was stepping into the modern debate in the fight against AIDS, though the Church was adamant Sunday that nothing has changed in its views banning contraception.

Churchgoers had praise and wariness for the Pope's comments that condoms could be morally justified in some limited situations, such as for male prostitutes wanting to prevent the spread of HIV. Others cautioned it could open a doctrinal Pandora's box. And the exact meaning of what the Pope said was still up for interpretation.




In the Wall Street Journal, William McGurn makes sense as he usually does... and skewers the simplistic secular orthodoxy of this bedrock faith in a piece of rubber - which liberals worship as the answer to everything. And in their case, everything means the ability to indulge in sex any which way anyone wishes, without any responsibility other than warding off, God forbid!, a possible pregnancy - and since the advent of AIDS, a presumed protection from infection...


The Pope and the condom :
His challenge to secular orthodoxy

By WILLIAM MCGURN

Nov. 22, 2010

In heaven, we are told, there is more rejoicing over a man who sees the error of his ways than over 99 who are blameless. Maybe not only in heaven. In the days since Pope Benedict XVI indicated there might be a place for the condom, the good news has been reported, tweeted and hosanna'd to every corner of the earth.

The Associated Press says many believe that these "recent remarks regarding condom use mark an important moment." The New York Times heralds them as a "milestone." A BBC presenter praises the Pope for having come over to a "moral position that many Catholic theologians have been recommending for quite some time."

Welcome to the Gospel
according to St. Condom


They say ours is an age of skepticism. Yet it is hard to reconcile skepticism with the faith we see in the powers of this miracle sheath.

Whatever the issue — sexually active teens, overpopulation in Asia, the AIDS tragedy in Africa, not to mention keeping sand out of Marine rifles in Iraq — the solution seems to start with latex.

Now the faithful feel they may have an unexpected convert. On Saturday, L'Osservatore Romano published an excerpt from a soon-to-be published book of interviews with the Pope. In it, he said this:

"There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be the 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."

The Pope's statement, of course, is rooted in the larger Christian understanding of human sexuality. He made this clear in other parts of his answer, as when, for example, he complained about the "sheer fixation on the condom." His full remarks bear out his orthodoxy.

The media excitement over the Pope's one sentence favorable to condoms points to another orthodoxy, however. This orthodoxy is not much given to self-examination or tolerance of dissenters.

We saw it at work the last time Pope Benedict mentioned the condom, during last year's pastoral visit to Africa, when he said that condoms were no solution for the AIDS crisis — and might even make things worse.

"Irresponsible," sniffed the New York Times. The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a cartoon of the Pope telling dying Africans in an AIDS ward: "Blessed are the sick, for they have not used condoms." The gist of the charge was this: Catholic teaching is spreading AIDS in Africa.

It's an interesting proposition. Surely we might start from the most obvious fact: The sexual activity where a condom might be most useful is often that which the Church regards as a grievous sin. Do men and women who have no problem rejecting papal teaching on sex really go on to tell their partners before so indulging, "Hang on there. I'm afraid a condom is out. The Pope says so." [My point, exactly, in my comments to the AP piece.!]

More awkward still, a senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health, Edward C. Green, came forward with an inconvenient truth. "Current empirical evidence," he wrote, supports the Pope.

Mr. Green went on to make clear he is "not anti-condom." Condoms, he pointed out, have worked in places like Thailand, where the transmission of AIDS is largely through the sex industry.

In Africa, by contrast, the main reason for the spread of AIDS is that people have too many partners, and are in too many sexual relationships at the same time.

Even more interesting, in a 2005 article for the Weekly Standard, Mr. Green alluded to a larger issue for liberals like himself. It has to do with an attitude.

"Condoms," he wrote, "have been regarded as the first line of defense for everyone, everywhere, and anyone who disagrees with this orthodoxy has been dismissed as a religious fanatic with 'an agenda.'"

And so everywhere we hear only the glories of rubber. A South African film makes the health section of our "paper of record" (the NYT) because it is that nation's "first all-black pornographic movie" — and its male actors all use condoms.

Snooki of "Jersey Shore" fame turns down liquor sponsors for her 23rd birthday party — that would send the wrong message — and LifeStyles condoms steps in, because the New Jersey reality star is (what else?) "an advocate for safe sex." And so on.

Against what he calls the "banalization of sexuality," Pope Benedict offers a message: There is a better way.

It is not a popular way, it is easy to mock, and in some circumstances it demands a self-restraint that we inheritors of the sexual revolution regard as inhuman. Still, the Pope is willing to debate his message, seriously, honestly, openly.

Would that the champions of the opposing orthodoxy were willing to do the same.
{Another point I brought out - there can be no debate for as long as they refuse to look at facts that contradict their smug orthodoxy!]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/11/2010 12:14]
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