Official CDF clarification "Regarding certain interpretations of 'Light of the World' "

Following the publication of the interview-book Light of the World by Benedict XVI, a number of erroneous interpretations have emerged which have caused confusion concerning the position of the Catholic Church regarding certain questions of sexual morality. The thought of the Pope has been repeatedly manipulated for ends and interests which are entirely foreign to the meaning of his words – a meaning which is evident to anyone who reads the entire chapters in which human sexuality is treated. The intention of the Holy Father is clear: to rediscover the beauty of the divine gift of human sexuality and, in this way, to avoid the cheapening of sexuality which is common today.

Read more at the Vatican website...

George Neumayr on "The mischievous debate over condoms"

George Neumayr writes in an editorial for Catholic World Report:

During his 2007 visit to the US, [Pope Benedict] sounded this warning again, lamenting as “particularly disturbing…the reduction of the precious and delicate area of education in sexuality to management of ‘risk,’ bereft of any reference to the beauty of conjugal love.”

And then, most recently in the interview-book Light of the World, he repeated that condom use is not a “moral solution.”

Yet the Catholic left claims confidently that the Church’s position on condom use has “changed.” Dissenters continue to point to the passage from Light of the World in which Benedict offers a narrow and nuanced observation about an intention behind (but not the act of) condom use and speculates that the flicker of consideration for another person’s safety contained within that intention might in some cases grow into a greater sense of morality: “[The Church] 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.”

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A Select English Language Bibliography for Understanding the Benedict XVI/Condom Debate

Joe Trabbic has assembled a useful list that gives background to the debate about condom use, and the Pope's comments in Light of the World:

This is a very select (i.e., incomplete) bibliography, arranged in chronological order, to help those interested in understanding the Benedict XVI/condom debate, which, despite the note issued yesterday by the Holy Office, may still (for better or worse) have life left in it.

Not all the entries deal directly with the condom debate itself. Some provide the theoretical context, not always made explicit, in which much of the debate has been carried out. And not all the contributions are of equal quality.

I have also constructed the bibliography in such a way that readers will get a sense of some of the debate's historical development. The Pope's remarks in Light of the World only brought into a broader public view a debate that has been going on for a number of years among Catholic moral philosophers and theologians.

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Bishop Thomas Tobin on Light of the World, condoms

From News Channel 10 in Providence:

Tobin said the pope's comments were misunderstood.

"It's a very highly nuanced, a very refined theological position, but one that is very difficult to explain in the public sector. It doesn't translate well easily into headlines," Tobin said.

Tobin said that the pope's comments are not a reflection of a change in the church's stance against condom use, but that the comments reflect moral awareness.

"It's still wrong. It's still evil. But if a person uses condoms to prevent the spread of disease, at least there is some kind of humanity there, some kind of decency, that the pope referred to as the first step toward moralization," Tobin said.

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Sydney Morning Herald on Light of the World

Gerard Henderson reviews Light of the World for the Sydney Morning Herald:

The Vatican, apparently like God, works in strange ways.

A series of official meetings at the Holy See last week served as a reminder that, in its governance function, the Catholic Church is very bureaucratic. Yet Pope Benedict has just done what few government or religious leaders would do. He gave six interviews of one hour's duration each to the German journalist and author Peter Seewald.

The product of this conversation is contained in Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times (Ignatius Press), which has just been published. In the Western world, which is increasingly subsumed with sex and celebrity, media attention has focused on the Pope's answers to two questions about HIV/AIDS in Africa and the church forbidding condoms.

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William Oddie on the secular media and condoms

At the Catholic Herald UK, William Oddie analyzes the impact some Catholic commenters had on the secular media's reaction to the condom issue.

Francis Philips got it dead right in her last blog; the pope’s gripping, highly readable and indispensable book The Light of the World (and if you haven’t read it yet you really should) is about a great deal more than just sex.

The extraordinary distortion by the secular Press of his passing remarks about condoms is now generally seen for what it was: a sign of the fact that papers have to have splash headlines; that’s the way they’re designed: hence the Sunday Telegraph’s declaration of a “historic U-turn by [the] Catholic church”. So the secular response is understandable: journalists need stories; it’s not so much that they don’t care about the truth, but that they really aren’t necessarily equipped, in a story about the Church, to recognise it when it’s staring them in the face.

But parallel to this kind of understandable secular distortion, there was a jumping on this particular bandwagon by some Catholics who really didn’t have that kind of excuse. Perhaps the most informative example of the “historic U-turn by Catholic Church” syndrome among Catholic journalists was the Today programme’s “Thought for the Day” on the morning after the Sunday Telegraph splash headline, uttered from on high by Clifford Longley, the BBC’s token “authoritative” Catholic and the elder statesman of the Tabletistas.

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Bishop Paprocki on Condoms, Light of the World, and Catholic Teaching

Bishop Paprocki's December 5, 2010 Column from Diocese of Springfield in IL on Vimeo.

"Misrepresenting Benedict’s Bravery"

Matthew Hanley, author of Affirming Love, Avoiding AIDS: What Africa Can Teach the West, writes about the Pope and AIDS at The Catholic Thing:

Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks about condoms and AIDS – or rather confusing manipulations of those remarks – are reverberating around the world. But they do not represent the change in his thought or Catholic teaching that the media have vigorously claimed, however much progressive or dissenting theologians, and perhaps even some papal aides, wish otherwise. And they are not a vindication of public health authorities who have, for decades, unsuccessfully advocated technical means of battling sexually transmitted epidemics, while refusing to emphasize the kinds of behaviors that would avoid infection altogether.

The New York Times tells us the pope’s words, in the newly published book Light of the World, were received with “glee from clerics and health workers in Africa, where the AIDS problem is worst.” The pope as anachronistic obstacle to global health has long been a fashionable narrative. But consider: decades of robust condom promotion (and other technical interventions) utterly failed to curb Africa’s AIDS epidemics, and common-sense changes in sexual behavior accounted for Africa’s handful of AIDS declines. Is one misrepresented remark from the pontiff now to do what lavish and sophisticated condom campaigns couldn’t? Public health leaders should be carefully scrutinized. They, not the pope, are explicitly charged with containing epidemics.

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"Why Are the Media Fixated on Condoms?"

Dr. Janet Smith asks the question and responds to it in an essay for ZENIT:

Most people remember their grandmothers at some point telling them that pointing a finger at someone means that three fingers are pointing back at you. The media are obsessed with the issue of the Catholic Church and condoms because they seem to believe that condoms are the solution to preventing the transmission of the HIV. Might it be time they began to think about other organizations, such as themselves, that might bear some responsibility?

Who can deny that if people were living by the Church's teaching on sexuality, if people were having only married heterosexual sex, there would be no problem with the HIV (and a host of other problems)? Certainly, in this fallen world, that is not going to happen everywhere. But why doesn't it happen more often? Why does it seem that so many people think sex outside of marriage and homosexual sex is perfectly acceptable? That people should be allowed to have whatever kind of sex they want to have? Benedict XVI calls this the "banalization of sexuality."

I have been teaching on sexuality for many decades. When I started, nearly three decades ago, even though promiscuity was in full swing even then, I could generally count on young people agreeing with me that sexual intercourse was meant to be an expression of love. In fact, "making love" was a euphemism for "having sex," but who says that anymore? When I would speak about "sex" they would naturally think of an act performed by spouses. Some argued that if you were in love and intending to get married, it could be moral to have sex before marriage. Even so, there was also fairly widespread agreement, that if you weren't ready for babies, you weren't ready for sex. Few were arguing that it was moral to have any kind of sex.

How things have changed since then! Now, when I speak of "sex" people think of a profoundly pleasurable sexual act that has no connection to love, commitment or babies. Young people are a bit surprised when I maintain there is a natural connection between sex, love, commitment and babies.

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Dr. Deal Hudson, 'On Condoms: More Dostoevsky, Less Catechesis'

Dr. Deal Hudson weighs in on the "condom controversy":

There is, of course, no new rule about condom use: The Church still teaches that contraception during intercourse between a man and woman is forbidden, even in the case where one or the other is HIV positive.

What Benedict actually said is much more interesting than what is being wrongly reported by the media. The Holy Father was probing into an imagined individual's moral psychology, rather than rehearsing a new item in the next edition of the Catechism.

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"The Church and Condoms"

Fr. Roger J. Landry provides another clear-sighted analysis of the Church's teaching on contraception and Pope Benedict's comments on condom use:

Last weekend, headlines focused on how Pope Benedict was apparently changing the Church’s teachings about the immorality of the use of condoms. The comments, excerpted from a book length interview of the Pope with journalist Peter Seewald, led many news outlets, like The New York Times, to claim that this was “the first Vatican exception to a long-held policy condemning condom use.” Many Catholics were confused. The controversy revealed widespread misunderstandings of the Church’s teachings with regard to the use of contraception. It’s therefore worthwhile to read what Pope Benedict said in context and then to make some important clarifications. 

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"A public relations flub, but no seismic shift in teaching"

Russell Shaw, in an opinion piece for CNA, says regarding the condom controversy that "...a lot of people have blamed the media for the confusion that has surrounded this incident. In some instances, the media did indeed blow it, but that was hardly their fault."

Read more from his perspective here.

"Pope’s ‘switch’ on condoms"

Ignatius Press President Mark Brumley has contributed a guest editorial to the Napa Valley Register in California, debunking the media claims that the Pope has endorsed condom use:

Judging by the media hype, you’d think the pope just published a book about condoms. His new book, “Light of the World,” actually covers a wide range of issues raised by veteran journalist Peter Seewald: the clergy sexual abuse scandal, climate change, moral relativism, spreading the Gospel, relations among religions, the search for Christian unity, dialogue with Islam, religion in public life, the roles of faith and reason, reforms in the Church, and the second coming of Christ, to name only a few subjects.

The questions are direct, often challenging; the answers, equally direct and often perhaps surprising.
Yes, the pope talks a bit about condoms. But contrary to what has been widely reported, he doesn’t endorse their use, even in “rare cases.”

 Read more...

George Wiegel on The World Over Live

George Wiegel, who contributed a foreword to the US edition of Light of the World, appears to discuss the book on EWTN's The World Over Live. (Segment starts at the 6:00 mark.)

"Should the Pope clarify his remarks? He already did."

Over at Catholic Culture, Phil Lawler addresses the confusion some people are having over the Pope's words about condoms:

 Amid the furor about the Pope’s statement on condom use, perhaps you’re asking why the Holy Father didn’t say something clear and unequivocal. Why didn’t he condemn the drive to accept recreational sex, and rely on condoms for safety? Why didn’t he say something like this:

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.

The above paragraph, of course, is exactly what Pope Benedict did say—in the paragraph directly preceding the one that’s caused all the fuss. Find it on page 119 of Light of the World. 

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"Media Barriers to Truth"

National Review Online editor Kathryn Jean Lopez interviews Fr. Thomas Williams on Light of the World and the media reaction.

So what exactly did the pope say in his new book and what does the Catholic Church say about condom use? Father Thomas D. Williams is a Michigan-born Catholic priest, professor at Regina Apostolorum University in Rome, and author of Knowing Right from Wrong: A Christian Guide to Conscience, Greater Than You Think, and A Heart Like His, among other books. He took some questions about the current papal media frenzy about condoms.

Q. We’ve read in the New York Times that the pope is sowing confusion on condoms in the new book-length interview with him, Light of the World. What’s the pope thinking going around confusing people?

A: The fact is that people, including Catholics and even many priests, are already confused about the Church’s teaching on contraception and natural family planning. They know that the Church opposes contraception but they don’t know why. The pope’s remarks didn’t cause this confusion but they did bring it to the fore. All this attention on the possibility of using condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS in Africa actually provides us with a singular “teaching moment.” People are asking important questions: Why is the Church opposed to contraception? What about the use of condoms in homosexual relationships? How about condoms in the case of prostitutes? Unmarried couples? These issues are usually taboo, and now is a great time to discuss them.

Read the whole piece here.

Jimmy Akin discusses the condom controversy in the media

Phil Lawler: The Pope's message turned upside-down

Phil Lawler at Catholic Culture writes:

Today, what the world thinks Pope Benedict said is almost exactly the opposite of what he clearly intended.

In Chapter 11 of his new book, Light of the World, Pope Benedict mounts a strong defense of his argument that condom use is not the appropriate means of fighting the AIDS epidemic.

This week, millions of people received the impression that the Pope made precisely the opposite argument-- that he recommended condoms as a defense against AIDS...

He goes on to argue that the public relations effort on the part of the Vatican has fallen short. What do you think?

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ABC, CBS Inaccurately Report Pope's Condom Remarks as 'Change in Policy'

Newsbusters shows how inaccurately the mainstream news media has been in its reportage of Pope Benedict's statements on condoms:

On Tuesday evening, ABC and CBS furthered the mainstream media's largely inaccurate reporting on Pope Benedict XVI's recent remarks on the morality of condom use. While the pontiff stated that condoms are "not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection," World News anchor Diane Sawyer stated that "the Pope shifts his rules on condom use." Evening News anchor Katie Couric labeled Benedict XVI's comment a "historic statement," and trumpeted how supposedly, "Pope Benedict says, for the first time, that condoms are okay to protect against HIV and other diseases."

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"Condoms! Condoms! Condoms!"

In a guest post at the Chicago Tribune's The Seeker blog, Fr. Robert Barron laments the tone of the coverage Light of the World has been getting.

He writes that "one of the stupidest and most dispiriting expressions of the media culture that I have ever encountered is the 'coverage' of Pope Benedict’s recently-published interview entitled Light of the World. I can’t really say that I was surprised."
Read more here...