ope Benedict's suggestion last week that condom use was tolerable in certain circumstances started a frenzy of debate -- was the pontiff loosening sexual mores? Would it affect global family planning efforts? To whom did the statement apply?
But context shows, more than anything, just how far the issues that matter most to secular society are from the mind of the Church, which sees itself as working on a spiritual plane. Secularists can laugh, but they do so at their peril. Benedict had no intention of issuing a new edict on condoms. An interviewer asked him casually, could he see any circumstance where the use of condoms would be preferable to the alternative? He thought for a while, and responded that perhaps it would be permitted for an HIV-positive male prostitute. It was a toss-off, a hypothetical. The Church does not want to encourage immorality, but sodomy while not knowingly killing someone is preferable to sodomy while knowingly killing someone.
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