Excerpt: Pope Benedict XVI discusses condoms and the spread of HIV

Pope Benedict XVI discusses condoms and the spread of HIV

An excerpt from Light of the World, Peter Seewald’s book-length interview with Pope Benedict XVI

From Chapter 11, "The Journeys of a Shepherd," pages 117-119:

On the occasion of your trip to Africa in March 2009, the Vatican’s policy on AIDs once again became the target of media criticism.Twenty-five percent of all AIDs victims around the world today are treated in Catholic facilities. In some countries, such as Lesotho, for example, the statistic is 40 percent. In Africa you stated that the Church’s traditional teaching has proven to be the only sure way to stop the spread of HIV. Critics, including critics from the Church’s own ranks, object that it is madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms.

The media coverage completely ignored the rest of the trip to Africa on account of a single statement. Someone had asked me why the Catholic Church adopts an unrealistic and ineffective position on AIDs. At that point, I really felt that I was being provoked, because the Church does more than anyone else. And I stand by that claim. Because she is the only institution that assists people up close and concretely, with prevention, education, help, counsel, and accompaniment. And because she is second to none in treating so many AIDs victims, especially children with AIDs.

I had the chance to visit one of these wards and to speak with the patients. That was the real answer: The Church does more than anyone else, because she does not speak from the tribunal of the newspapers, but helps her brothers and sisters where they are actually suffering. In my remarks I was not making a general statement about the condom issue, but merely said, and this is what caused such great offense, that we cannot solve the problem by distributing condoms. Much more needs to be done. We must stand close to the people, we must guide and help them; and we must do this both before and after they contract the disease.

As a matter of fact, you know, people can get condoms when they want them anyway. But this just goes to show that condoms alone do not resolve the question itself. More needs to happen. Meanwhile, the secular realm itself has developed the so-called ABC Theory: Abstinence-Be Faithful-Condom, where the condom is understood only as a last resort, when the other two points fail to work. This means that the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality, which, after all, is precisely the dangerous source of the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves. This is why 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.

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.

Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?

She 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 toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.

• Visit www.LightOfTheWorldBook.com for more information about this upcoming release.

Comments

[Mary T]

Sigh. Another soundbite escapes the context of a lifetime of the Pope's teaching (and 2,000 years of the Church's on sexual morality), and is already being radically misunderstood.

"It is madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms" is just a crazy question. The Catholic Church forbids extramarital sex and homosexual sex, but certain people are doing it anyway, so why in heaven's name would they refuse to use condoms JUST BECAUSE THE CHURCH SAID SO? It is utterly ludicrous to blame the Church or the Pope! (Not even to mention that NON-Catholics don't care anyway! SO the Church is "killing" everyone Protestant, Muslim, or atheist who dies of AIDS???)

Second, the escaped soundbite made it very clear that when no new life is possible - in the case of male, homosexual prostitutes - if a man thinks to himself, "I should wear a condom," it means that his MORAL SENSE is beginning to awake. It is the first step toward distancing himself, asking questions - which should, it is to be hoped, lead to FURTHER moral thought, ending with, "I shouldn't be doing this at all."

But of course the mainstream media has latched onto it instead as a "first step" toward allowing condoms for EVERYONE!

[Stephen Sparrow]

Benedict is right. The issue revolves around vulnerable people being confirmed in their vulnerability or low status. Instead of applying the dictum from Matt 25 to feed the hungry, clothe the naked etc etc we sideline the problem "here, you poor things, use a condom that will solve everything, & don't bother us again."

[LJ]

Well said Mary T. Precisely the point.

[Fernando Umberto Garcia de Nicaragua, Prefectus Minimus: The Jacksonian Institute]

Exactly how is one's moral sense beginning to awaken when, immediately after this supposed awakening, he proceeds to commit sodomy - one of the sins that cries out to heaven for vengeance? Does a killer have a moral awakening if, having decided to torture his victim to death, he changes his mind and decides to kill him painlessly by forcing him to take cyanide? A male prostitute is a killer of souls, both of his own and of his client's. A moral awakening would require that he didn't commit such a horrid act at all, condom or not.

[Dan]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101121/ap_on_sc/pope_condoms_reaction

They're already claiming papal blessing for mass condom distributions.

There needs to be a strongly worded Vatican statement that clarifies:

1. Sodomy is gravely wrong, without or without a condom. Sodomy with a condom may arguably be less depraved than sodomy with a condom but it is still depraved. One might hope, however, that by seeking to engage in less depraved sexual acts the male prostitute is taking a step toward turning entirely away from sodomy.

2. The Church does not support the distribution of condoms for any purpose. Any such distribution would likely facilitate disordered sexual acts such as contracepted heterosexual sex and sodomy.

[joe]

the pope is not saying that condom use is good among those who have the cappacity to produce life. male on male (homosexuality) does not have that capacity.So if those who engage in these acts use a condom they are at least looking toward the consequence of there actions and this might lead them to a deeper truth about the nature of life,since they do not have the capacity to produce life in a homosexual way, there is no direct sin against life,you can not prohibit life when there is no action to produce it

[Stephen Cianca]

Unbelievable! (Well, maybe not.) Out of the entire book, the only thing the media notice is something about condoms! Invincible ignorance indeed.

[joe]

there is a great problem we have now, the pope speaks and it is disected. and everyone takes out the inners that they like. we live in a time were we have the capacity to responde immediatley. tech is beggining to define us ,,,,,we have become a people of busy bodies,gossipers,butinskys,and know it alls.

[Charles E Flynn]

Joe,

You might enjoy the quotation you can find by searching for the word "angelic" in the search box on this site (upper left corner). The hit you want is from June 12, 2007. Search on that page for "angelic".

[C]

Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?

The Catholic rules don't apply to non-catholics. and an unrepentant prostitute can't be a real Catholic can he/she? If they're going to go ahead and be a prostitute anyway then why not use condoms..

Heavenly Father have mercy, open our eyes.