In yesterday’s post on Pope Benedict’s remarks concerning the use of condoms in AIDS prevention, I promised there would be more to follow, so here ‘tis.
For those who may not be aware, there is a new, book-length interview with Pope Benedict in which he made remarks that were sure to—and were—widely misunderstood and misrepresented in the press. “Press gets religion story wrong” is about as common a narrative as “Dog bites man” or “Sun rises in east.” Go figure.
Anyway, it’s a fascinating book. YOU CAN ORDER IT HERE.
It was inevitable that the press would parse the Pontiff’s comments along the lines of the Pope “modifying the Catholic Church’s absolute ban on the use of condoms,” as Damian Thompson of the Telegraph put it.
I want to give kudos to Thompson, though, for correcting himself very promptly. May his journalistic tribe increase!
The idea that the Catholic Church has an “absolute ban on the use of condoms” is widespread, though, so let’s take a moment to look at it.
Just how absolute is the ban?
Well, as I’ve noted before, on more than one occasion, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states (quoting Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae):
“[E]very action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” is intrinsically evil [CCC 2370].
I’ve boldfaced the phrase “conjugal act” because it’s the key to understand what is being said. Many gloss over this phrase and assume it means “sexual act.” It doesn’t. “Conjugal”—like its Latin equivalent, coniugale—doesn’t mean “sexual”; it means “marital.”
If you are having sex with someone you are (heterosexually) married to then you are engaging in the marital act. Otherwise, not. If you are engaging in sexual behavior but not with someone you’re married to then it is a different kind of act (masturbation, adultery, fornication, etc.).
What the Church—in Humanae Vitae and the Catechism—has done is say that one cannot deliberately frustrate the procreative aspect of sexual intercourse between man and wife.
That’s actually a fairly narrow statement. It doesn’t even address all situations that may arise in marriages, because there may be situations in which the law of double effect would allow the toleration of a contraceptive effect as long as this is a side effect of the action rather than being intended as a means or an end.
It thus would rule out the use of a condom to prevent a husband and wife from conceiving a child, but that doesn’t address condom use in other situations. Thus far the Church has not explored the question of condom use—or other, typically contraceptive acts—in cases outside of marriage.
Why not?
The Church holds that all sexual acts outside of marriage are gravely sinful. To start exploring the question of contraceptive use outside of marriage would put the Church in a really weird position that could lead to the subversion of the very moral values it is trying to promote.
We all know how in the public schools sex-ed teachers often pay lip service to the idea that people shouldn’t have sex before marriage and then spend enormous amounts of time spelling out just how to do it and what contraceptive and “safe sex” alternatives there are. The frequent result is thus a message of, “Don’t, but allow me to give you an extended discourse on just what to do in case you decide otherwise.”
School kids recognize the phoniness and pretense of this and that it amounts to a tacit permission for them to go off and sexually misbehave.
The Church, understandably, does not want to be put in the same position. It’s about calling people to authentic moral and ethical values, not giving them advice on how to sin.
And so it’s left the field largely to moral theologians to discuss and not really treated it on the Magisterial level.
That’s something that may change, though. It’s easy to see how changing social factors—including the AIDS crisis—could cause pressure for this question to be treated on the Magisterial level. That’s one reason I’ve addressed this subject in the past, to help people understand what the Magisterium has and has not said thus far, so that if it says something in the future, they will have the context to process and assimilate it.
That this kind of work is needed was evidenced yesterday when many people online were saying how their hearts or stomachs lurched when they encountered the first press reports of the Pope’s remarks.
Now, the Holy See could in the future say that the principles articulated in Humanae Vitae regarding contraception also apply to all sexual acts outside of marriage, or some of them, or none of them. At least it could, hypothetically.
What is it likely to do in practice?
It’s hard to say, but Pope Benedict’s recent interview is suggestive. In the interview he considered the case of a male prostitute. Male prostitutes aren’t all that common from what I’m given to understand. Certainly they aren’t as common as the female variety is supposed to be. Which raises the question of why the Pontiff would zero in on this example.
Presumably, it is because male prostitutes most commonly service male clients, in which case the act is homosexual in nature and thus has no procreative aspect to begin with. The question of contraception thus doesn’t arise because there is no openness to new life in the act in the first place. He also might have chosen this example because males, whether behaving homosexually or heterosexually, have a greater chance of infecting others with HIV, but my guess is that he’s thinking of homosexual prostitution in particular.
It’s easy to see how one could look at that situation and say, “Male homosexual prostitutes are at high risk of both contracting and transmitting HIV; it would be better if they gave up prostitution altogether, but if they are engaging in this activity then the use of a condom would reduce the risk of HIV transmission, and it wouldn’t make the acts they are performing any less open to life than they already are.”
The trouble would be how to present this judgment in a way that does not cause more problems than it solves.
Pope Benedict’s remarks in the interview seem to be an attempt to do just this. He could have phrased himself more clearly, but (a) this was an interview, and in interviews one does not have the kind of leisure to carefully craft one’s remarks that writing allows and (b) he’s straining to find words that communicate the basic moral insight without leading to headlines like “Pope approves condoms!” and “Pope changes Church teaching on sex!”
All in all, his “first step on the road to a more human sexuality” approach is not that bad. Also, addressing the matter in an interview—rather than in a Church document—is a not-that-bad way of getting the subject on the table while blunting some of the problems that could result.
Or not.
One can certainly judge that it would have been better for the Pope to leave the subject unaddressed or to have addressed it in a different way or in a different venue. He himself stated repeatedly in the interview that there have been problems communicating through the press in his reign (even describing the Vatican’s PR efforts as a “failure” on one recent subject), and in hindsight he may (or may not) judge that this was the case here as well.
We’ll have to see.
I have to say that I admire Benedict’s courage.
Oh, and as I predicted, the Holy See swiftly came out with a new statement clarifying the pope’s remarks.
I couldn’t help observing (with some satisfaction) how many of the exact same notes were hit in the clarification that were hit in yesterday’s post, including the fact that the pope was speaking “in a informal and not magisterial form,” to quote papal spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi.
One last thing: Over at The Telegraph, Damian Thompson does a bit of speculating that I’d like to address.
After quoting from the post I did yesterday, Thompson ponders the case of theologically orthodox bloggers
who claim that the Pope didn’t say what he obviously did say… and then emphasise that he was only speaking in an interview AND how dare L’Osservatore Romano release these quotes out of context. Hmm. There is a strong whiff of cognitive dissonance in the air. I hate to pick a fight with bloggers I admire, and I won’t mention any names, but I get the strong impression that certain conservatives are tying themselves in knots trying not to say what they really think.
Which is that they disagree with the Pope.
I don’t know if I am a blogger who Thompson admires (though if I am, let me say that I also admire Thompson and, in fact, am envious of The Church Times having once called him a “blood-crazed ferret”). However, one might suppose that I am among those he is talking about here since I am one of two bloggers mentioned by name (the other is Eric Giunta) and I did emphasize the interview nature of the Pope’s remarks and the fact that the increasingly-erratic L’Osservatore Romano did a disservice to the public in releasing the comments the way it did.
So let me clear up any potential misunderstanding: I don’t disagree with the Pope on this issue.
There are issues I do disagree with him on (e.g., I tend to be more skeptical of claims regarding global warming than he appears to be), but this isn’t one of them.
I agree that if you’re going to engage in homosexual prostitution that it is better to do so in a way that lessens the chance of getting or giving someone a fatal disease.
I also believe that if you are going to have extramarital sex that it is better to do so with a person who is a willing accomplice rather than raping someone. However, I wouldn’t want to see false and misleading headlines like:
Akin says adultery sometimes permissible to stop rape
Akin: adultery can be justified in some cases
Akin says adultery can be used in the fight against rape
Certainly there is a disanalogy here. Adultery is intrinsically wrong and can never be done, regardless of the circumstances. On the other hand, if Pope Benedict is right that it is better for a person engaging in homosexual prostitution to limit the danger of HIV by using a condom (as I think he is) then this use does not add a new sin to the ones already being committed.
But there is a danger of sending a highly misleading message here. Headlines stating things like “condoms sometimes permissible” and “condoms can be justified in some cases” or “condoms can be used in fight against AIDS” will not be understood by the general public in the limited sense that the Pope is addressing. They will be understood way more broadly than that, and that makes them fundamentally misleading.
I do acknowledge that there is cognitive dissonance here, but it’s not dissonance caused by disagreement with the Pope. It’s caused by the same communications dilemma the Pope faces: How to communicate a moral truth about limiting the harm caused by sin without appearing to give tacit permission to the sin itself or to other, related sins.
This is very interesting, but what I understood the Pope to mean is that, while condom use remains objectively wrong in all cases, there are some cases where using a condom might subjectively be a moral improvement, because it entails considering the good of the sexual partner. An analogous case is that of Billy Bigelow in Carousel, who, after getting engaged, goes through a thought process along the lines of “I’ll have a child to support soon, so I’ll need money, so I’m going to rob someone.” Robbery is obviously just as wrong here as any other time, and yet this is the first time Billy has tried to shoulder responsibility in his whole life.
I don’t think that Billy Bigelow’s case is analagous to the pope’s example; Billy was aiming to deprive someone of their property; the person on whom Billy will act will not benefit from Billy’s action.
No, but Billy’s future daughter is intended to benefit from Billy’s action. He is performing the action for her sake, even though it, like using a condom, is wrong.
It is not clear to me that condom use in and of itself is objectively wrong, especially in the context of homosexual “sex.” It should be remembered that condom usage is normally problematic because it acts as a contraceptive inimical to the necessary procreative aspect of the conjugal act; but homosexual “sex” contains no conjugal act whatsoever. Such “sex” of course is intrinsically immoral, but it is so with or without a condom. I do not see why the introduction of the condom adds another element of immorality.
The more interesting question is whether condom usage is intrinsically immoral in the context of non-marital heterosexual sex. Of course such sex is objectively wrong, but as far as I know the Chruch’s objections to condoms and other contraceptives have literally been limited to conjugal (i.e., “marital” acts). Do the unitive and procreative aspects of sex apply only in the marital context, being irrelevant in the context of always intrinsically immoral non-marital sex? If so, then there would seem to be no objection to the use of contraception (non-abortafacient of course) in the context of sexual relations outside marriage. To my knowledge, the Magisterium has not addressed this issue head on.
Of course, even under the kind of relaxed understanding of Church teaching that I am speculating (and that is all I’m doing), the advocacy and distribution of condoms would still have to rightly intended and prudent.
Mike, is heterosexual fornication again natural law?
whether it is or isn’t, the use of a condom during heterosexual sex is.
Phil,
Please explain the point of your first question.
As to your second question, I infer that you disagree with those theologians who suggested that condoms could be used to protect African nuns in cases of rape. Now, they may be wrong — heck if I know, I’m better at questions than answers, but the proposition does not seem on its face unreasonable to me. Once the sex act is absent of any unitive dimension (i.e., rape) can it still have a procreative purpose properly understood? My recollection of HV is that it saw these two purposes as being mutually interdependent; if so, the complete absence (rather than imperfect existence) of one would call into question the viablity of the other, wouldn’t it? Perhaps your assertion re natural law trumps the reasoning of HV?
I infer that you disagree with those theologians who suggested that condoms could be used to protect African nuns in cases of rape.
Mike could you source this comment please.
Theologians speculate on a great many matters but only when their speculations are in agreement with the Magisterium are they considered but not necessarily agreed with.
Sharon,
I’m already late and a google search did not turn it up, but it’s true. It was discussed on this very blog. And you are right re speculation, of course. But remember that goes both ways. We should be cautious about speculation regarding what is immoral when the Magisterium is silent. Inferential liberties are dangerous.
Mike, I was only referring to unitive/willing unions. Rape certainly doesn’t fall into that category.
I think the greater issue here, rather than the theological question of male prostitutes, who I doubt very much care about Church teaching, is the Church’s position regarding condom distribution. Currently, many Catholic hospitals, colleges, missions, and even some priests themselves distribute condoms. Will these activities obtain the permission of the Vatican? If so that will cause even greater scandal.
No matter how I try to wrap my head around this, I feel that more people will be harmed through the scandal of the Pope’s statements (even if they are misinformed/and or misunderstood) than male prostitutes will be helped.
Regarding extra marital sex heterosexual and condoms: Humane Vitae clearly warns against the dangers of artificial contraception(things that are common place today, fornication, adultery, abortion), and explicitly says that young people “need motivation to maintain moral standards.” So how could the Church allow the very actions which is directly leads to/enables more sinful actions? That to me, would be an implausiblity. Behind all this theological disection is the simple fact that if people fear the fire, they are less likely to touch the pot. And that’s a good thin.
italics, off
italics, off
italics, off
try again. Italics, off.
try again. Italics, off.
try again. Italics, off.
An act of contracepted sex, whether the couple is married or no, is of a different moral species than natural sexual relations. A contracepted fornication is actually two sins: fornication and onanism. It is fornication because one copulates with someone “not my spouse”, and is onanism because it frustrates the normative teleology of the generative faculty. Hence the Church could not say that it’s a lesser evil for fornicaters and adulterers to use contraception–it’s a double violation of the natural law.
I agree, Chas.
Chas, I think what you’re saying is an acceptable speculation (just as I think the pope’s speculation is acceptable). I’m just curious, what evidence from church documents that using contraception during fornication is a second sin rather than something that affects the moral weight of the already grave act of fornication? I’m probably getting this wrong, but it sounds like the inverse of what you’re saying would be that whenever fornicating we must be open to procreation which just sounds wrong – we should only be open to procreation during the marital act. Don’t get me wrong, I think that 99% percent of the time contraception compounds the severity an already immoral sexual act. I just think the reason it does so is because it’s a temptation to sin; most people in that situation use contraception so they can continue their behavior without having to worry as much about the effects of their sin.
Italics off?
Ron Conte of CatholicPlanet.com has basically called Jimmy Akin a heretic over this article.
http://www.catechism.cc/articles/heresy-on-contraception.htm
http://catholicplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=4569
While y’all are obsessing about condoms, here are some things to think about on Thanksgiving:
LEST WE FORGET…
Your cell phone is in your pocket. He clutches the cross hanging on his chain next to his dog tags. He knows he may not see some of his buddies again.
You walk down the beach, staring at all the pretty girls. He patrols the streets, searching for insurgents and terrorists. He’s told he will be held over an extra 2 months.
You call your girlfriend and set a date for tonight. He waits for the mail to see if there is a letter from home.
You hug and kiss your girlfriend, like you do everyday. He holds his letter close and smells his love’s perfume.
You roll your eyes as a baby cries. He gets a letter with pictures of his
new child, and wonders if they’ll ever meet.
You criticize your government, and say that war never solves anything. He sees the innocent tortured and killed by their own people and remembers why he is fighting.
You hear the jokes about the war. He hears the gunfire, bombs and
screams of the wounded.
You see only what the media wants you to see. He sees the broken bodies lying
around him.
You are asked to do some thing by your parents. You don’t. He does exactly what he is told even f it puts his life in danger.
You stay at home and watch TV. He takes whatever time he is given
to call, write home, sleep, and eat.
You crawl into your soft bed, with down pillows, and get comfortable.
He tries to sleep but gets woken by mortars and helicopters all night long.
As a veteran and a Catholic, I am offended by the above attempted thread-hijacking which is irrelevant to this post. The comment smells of anti-Catholic bigotry.
I wish to thank “General George S. Patton” for his excellent post. How is it “anti-Catholic bigotry” to recall the sacrifices that are being made on a daily basis by our veterans in defense of our freedom? As Jimmy has pointed out in his article, the Pope’s comments are not official teaching, and they do not reflect the view of the magisterium. Therefore I am free to reject them out of hand, and I emphatically do. Any attempt to divide the doings of male prostitutes into degrees of morality is absolutely abhorrent and repulsive, especially when we consider that the statements are being made by the Pope. If the Pope has been taken out of context or “misunderstood,” he has only his Vatican newspaper to blame, as it violated the embargo without authorization. In the meantime, as a Catholic, I am ashamed to discover that the Pope spends his free time contemplating various degrees of morality of acts associated with male prostitution. First, the scandal of the pedophiles, which the Pope has freely admitted, and for which he has “apologized” profusely, and now this.
Interesting last two sentences. I’m so limited, being stuck in the real world.
What Sarge said.
Sarge, why would you consider my post as “anti-Catholic bigotry”? My whole intent was to rouse a complacent nation to gratitude for those who are conveniently ignored in the rush to cook, watch football and prepare for “Black Friday.”
Now, if you find that my comments grate against the Catholic Church’s semi-official position on American involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan…well, that’s your problem, isn’t it?