Weigel: A serious debate has begun, but a substantial clarification is needed

From a just posted essay on the First Things site, "The Pope, the Church, and the Condom: Clarifying the State of the Question", by George Weigel, who wrote the Foreword to Light of the World (Ignatius Press, 2010):

What the Pope was speculating upon was a subtlety that seemed beyond the comprehension of virtually every reporter who wrote about p. 119 of Light of the World: namely, the interior or subjective moral intentions that might be discerned in a habitual sinner who decided to sin in a way that was less threatening to those with whom he was sinning. Might one find here a glimmer of moral insight, on the part of a habitual sinner, from which deeper moral insights into the evil in which he was engaged might emerge in time?

To read into that papal speculation some radical shift in the Catholic Church’s moral teaching was more than a stretch; it was a serious distortion. But as more than one veteran observer of these matters noted, when you put the words “Pope,” “AIDS,” and “condom” into one sentence without the further word “no,” it’s not hard to figure out what’s coming next in the reporting.

Unfortunately, a clarification issued by Vatican press spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., made matters worse. Rather than trying to explain the difference between the Church’s settled convictions on the ethics of human love and the Pope’s speculations on how one might discern the beginnings of moral growth in a man committing what the Church understood to be serious sins, Lombardi, focusing on the fact that several translations of Light of the World had not rendered “male prostitute” accurately, talked to Benedict and reported back to the press that the Pope wasn’t limiting his musings about possible growth in moral insight to male prostitutes; one could imagine similar interior dynamics at work in females and even transsexuals.

This comment from Lombardi was obvious, banal, and, worse, completely beside the crucial point of distinction that the world media continued to miss. Yet, even more inevitably than the Pope’s choice of example in his book, Lombardi’s clarification led to another wave of distorting stories; the AP’s headline on its November 23 story from Rome can stand for virtually all the rest: “Vatican—Everyone can use condoms to prevent HIV.”

Benedict XVI had hoped to remove the condom from the center of the world’s conversation about a global plague. Yet here was the condom, back at center stage, with Joseph Ratzinger’s longtime critics applauding his concession to reason (as they understood it). Meanwhile, those who had long toiled to defend the reasonableness of the Catholic Church’s ethic of human love were left wondering just what the Pope’s book, and the inability of both the Vatican newspaper and the papal spokesman to bring some order into the conceptual chaos, had set in motion.

Were the teachings of the 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor [The Splendor of Truth], in which John Paul II rejected the moral-theological method of proportionalism and reaffirmed that the Church’s moral judgment was focused on acts, including acts that could be known by reason to be intrinsically evil, now under review—or being reversed? Had a new subjectivism, or intentionalism, been given a tacit papal seal of approval? Was the highest teaching authority of the Church endorsing a method of moral analysis focused on the lesser-of-evils?

Weigel does a nice job assessing where the debate (the substantial debate, not the vacuous media furor) is now at and what the key points are that are in need of "substantial clarification". To that end, he notes the recent remarks by Fr. Rhonheimer and a response by Dr. Steven Long; here are some pertinent links:

• "Rumor that there is No Problem with Fr. Rhonheimer's work, heard by: Fr. Rhonheimer!!" by Steven A. Long ("End of the Modern World" blog; Dec. 14, 2010).
• "Substantial conversation, debate about the Pope's remarks about condoms" (Insight Scoop; Dec. 15, 2010)

Related from Various Ignatius Press Sites:

• The Foreword to Light of the World | George Weigel
• What does the Holy Father really say about condoms in the new book? | Janet E. Smith
• Did the Pope "justify" condom use in some circumstances? | Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.
• Light of the World and the Mainstream Media | Interview with Mark Brumley
• Shedding Some Light on Light of the World | Mark Brumley & Carl E. Olson
• More Excerpts from Light of the World | Pope Benedict XVI and Peter Seewald

Comments

[Laura]

Thank you for giving us somewhere to go to get the truth! It is incomprehensible to me how totally clueless the media is!

[Brad]

Not clueless: obfuscatory, and devilishly so.

[Dan Deeny]

This is very interesting. Perhaps Benedict XVI was thinking out loud on an interesting mystery: the ways Our Lord uses to bring us back to Him.
The film Crazy Beautiful (about a decade old now)focused on how a young girl was stopped from destroying her life. In this movie - my interpretation now - God uses love, romance, sex, and the sin of fornication to prevent a girl from destroying herself, from doing further damage to herself and others, and preventing her from committing more serious sins. It's probably the best movie I've seen. The interesting thing for me is how God uses one sin to prevent more serious sin.
Any comments?

[Nancy D.]

Perhaps Pope Benedict should be shown this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4M_UaZmQfQ&feature=player_embedded

It appears that both Father Lombardi and Cardinal Bertone have a focusing problem. If this clarification is intentially obfuscatory, it would, no doubt, be devilishly so.

Our Lady of Fatima, Pray for us!