SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
The Pope never says Condom Use is Morally OK
After almost a year now, there are still people in the media who keep on repeating the line that the Pope has already changed the Church teachings on condoms.
To set the record straight, let’s take a look at LIGHT OF THE WORLD, p. 119, where he says:
“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.”
What the Pope says can be understood more clearly when we first posit the idea that the attainment of moral awareness is first and foremost a process where there is a point of origin (terminus a quo) and a point of arrival (terminus ad quem). First, when we have an experience of temptation and sin, we know that there is something wrong somewhere and we sense this awkwardness, restlessness, guilt and remorse, sooner or later, which now inserts us into the process of looking for peace of heart, serenity of spirit, or simply, the state of grace. The word used by Pope Benedict is “moralization” and his description of it is “a first assumption of responsibility” or “on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants.”
Now, unfortunately the media tweaks the word “moralization” as described by Pope Benedict XVI to now mean “morally acceptable.” And, lo and behold, eureka, the media proclaims to the whole world that condoms are now morally acceptable!
There has never been an editorial note about the process of attaining a moral awareness that the use of condom is but “a first step” toward realizing that there is something wrong with making use of sexuality as a living, that the animalization or commercialization of sex has its risks, and “that not everything is allowed.”
Whatever happened to the last two sentences of Pope Benedict’s paragraph: “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.”?
The attainment of moral awareness, therefore, requires that we move from the animalization, commercialization or prostitution of sex to the “humanization of sexuality.” Nowhere should this “moralization” be understood as now morally justifiable. On the contrary, the point of Pope Benedict XVI is to restore the humanization of sexuality. Humanizing sexuality means that we do not isolate it from the deeper relationship of love, responsibility and self-sacrifice.
In fact, two sentences before the above-mentioned paragraph, Pope Benedict says: “This means that the sheer fixation on the condom implies the 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 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.”
Now, if we read p. 119 of the LIGHT OF THE WORLD in its proper context, in nowhere and in no way is Pope Benedict XVI telling us that condoms are now morally justifiable or morally right.
Malacanang officials are quick to say that we cannot be more Popish than the Pope. How I wish that we were quicker to point out to the process of attaining moral awareness or the humanization of sexuality than to seeking moral justifications for the banalization of sexuality!
Just setting the record straight…
