Cardinal Maradiaga says
condom debate is a chance
for priests to explain teaching
ny Anthony Barich
Wednesday, 01 December 2010
THE public debate on the Church’s teaching on condoms, triggered by Pope Benedict XVI’s comments in a new book, is an ideal opportunity for parish priests to clarify it for the faithful from the pulpit, the Caritas Internationalis president said.
Salesian Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, told
The Record Catholic newspaper of the Archdiocese of Perth that many Catholics do not know what the Church teaches in this regard.
[I doubt that many parish priests do either. The generations born since the 1960s grew up in the post-Vatican-II, post-1968 world of laissez-faire sex, to whom Humanae Vitae was an Ice Age curio, so even seminarians and priests did not think it worthwhile to study whatever the Church taught about sexuality and its consequences. Qhat could they say now, much less teach?]
The controversy started when the Vatican newspaper
L’Osservatore Romano published on 20 November excerpts of a book-length interview with German journalist Peter Seewald called
Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times.
In it, when the Pope was asked whether it was “madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms”, he replied: “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 moralisation, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward discovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants.”
[This is, of course, only part of his answer.]
“But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanisation of sexuality.”
Cardinal Maradiaga laughed off claims made in secular media that the Pope has changed the Church’s teaching on the use of condoms, saying “of course not”!
“It has been the doctrine of the Church all the time that when there are emergency cases the principle of double effect (applies),” he told
The Record by phone during a four-day trip to Australia. “The Pope was only quoting the extreme cases, so I believe it is coherent (with existing Catholic teaching).”
[This 'double effect' was first brought up by Russell Shaw in the OSV Daily Take commentary I posted earlier on this page. Apparently, it is a principle of moral theology, and being rather 'black and white' about my moral beliefs, I have never been inclined to read moral theology, so I was ignorant of it.]
The Church teaches that the principle of double effect may be employed when one is considering an action that is morally good, yet the action involves one or more unintended bad consequences. As these consequences are side effects, and not directly willed, the choice that brings them about is morally acceptable.
“This could be a good opportunity for us in the parishes to clarify and to teach, as very many Catholics do not know what the Church teaches (in this regard),” said the Cardinal, who has completed three separate doctorates in philosophy, theology and moral theology and holds a diploma in clinical psychology and psychotherapy.
“It is the chance for the priest to speak about it, who in our modern Church is also teacher. We, as disciples of Christ, have a lot to learn; we cannot pretend that in special matters all the baptised know everything, as we are always learning and trying to implement what the Mother Church is teaching us.”
Melbourne Archdiocesan Office for Evangelisation director, Marist Brother Mark O’Connor, brought the Cardinal to Australia with Franciscan Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, Archbishop of Durban, South Africa for the 25th anniversary of the Dom Helder Camara lecture series which focuses on the Social Doctrine of the Church.
Cardinal Maradiaga said that the Social Doctrine of the Church is “the most well kept secret, as many people have never heard about it, yet it’s so important”.
“It’s important as it changes the mentality of many people who think that working for the social doctrine in the Church is mixing in politics; (but) it’s just doing our duty to evangelise the culture of politics and economy,” he said.
“Many people think that Christian life is only in the temple, but you cannot divide the human person - we live in society, so social life has to be illuminated by the Gospel, and this is the role of the Social doctrine of the Church, founded in the dignity of the human person.
“This is the first principle of the Social Doctrine of the Church.”
I've tended to keep an eye on Maradiaga because in the run-up to the 2005 Conclave, the hype about him was considerable, given a background so unusual and formidable. Besides his academic preparation and a Church record of long pastoral and teaching experience, his CV says he was trained as a classical pianist and plays the saxophone, he is a licensed pilot and he speaks six or seven languages. Since 2007, he has been president of Caritas International and has been the Vatican spokesperson with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/12/2010 09:51]