Sunday, November 28, 2010

One of the things I am grateful for is the modern media's consistency for poor reporting. I can rely on stories about the Church -- they are inaccurate. Last weeks furor over Pope Benedict's comments about condoms is just such a case.


Peter Seewall asked Pope Benedict about the use of condoms. The Pope reminds Seewall (hence us) that one can get a condom anytime he wants. Benedict remarks about the fixation some have on the condom.It 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.
Our Holy Father goes to remark that 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 this is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.
In the very next question Benedict says again that the use of a condom that the Church does not regard it as a real or moral solution...
One again the media have freely chosen to be short sighted. Apparently, without reading or question reports they went off on a wild goose chase. Look how short lived the so called controversy lasted. There was no "there" there.
My advice to all, when the media reports on Church stories consider 99.4752% of the story false. After some careful  study one may begin to discard intelligently what is ignorance and what is truth. The good side of this is that you never have to worry about the stories being true.

1 comment:

  1. Fr b-
    i too sought the truth after reading all the articles..with much fear and writhing of hands, i was worried! Then i shared with our little elizabeth's godfather, Marco-a seminarian in philly. He explained that because in that case, it was not about being open to life, that he was trying to explain the "step" towards morality. I get it now! (as well as how you shared it)...then marco the next day said he read somewhere, something about how it would be like hitting someone over the head with a pipe, that if you wrapped it with some "cushioning," that THAT would be similar in that you are realizing you can't just beat someone over the head. You would be moving towards the recognition that it was a wrong.
    thought i'd share. Not quite as articulate as i'm sure the author intended..but it gets the point across.
    peace & grace,
    chris milbrandt

    ReplyDelete