Sometimes I come across a blog post that is so good, I must simply defer and exhort my readers to get thee hence. Fr. John Hunwicke’s explanation of the current controversy over Pope Benedict’s comments on condoms is one of those posts.
He explains well with an economy of words what the Pope said:
Having contemplated the BBC translation of the German texts, I see what the Holy Father's words mean. He is saying that if a rent-boy has unprotected sex, he is committing two sins: the mortal sin of homosexual genital intercourse; and the mortal sin of risking communicating a lethal infection. If, however, he uses a condom, while he is still committing the first of those mortal sins, he has to a degree excluded the second. By so doing he has, as we might say, taken a step in the right direction.
Then he critiques the Pope’s Secularist critics on this and other matters deliciously well:
Secularists are, even when they hold Oxford professorships, a generally dim lot ... dim because of a bigoted determination not to understand. They just want to ask blunt and unnuanced questions about "Is it All Right to use condoms?". Within this toddler-level mode of moral discourse, our Holy Father's simple statement of the moderately obvious is bound to seem to them like a "change in his implacable opposition to the use of condoms".
And he says more – and how! Like I said, get thee hence!
Problem is, condoms do not prevent disease or pregnancy for that matter, reliably. So the rent boy is giving a false sense of security to his 'customers.'
ReplyDeleteI am not in any way approving of the comments and believe the Pope should have omitted commenting on condoms. It looks like he's hedging or compromising a bit which is not good for the church or humanity.