John Allen har tydeligvis allerede lest bok-intervjuet på 180 sider, der pave Benedikt uttaler seg om mange spørsmål – mye om kontroverser over ting han har sagt og gjort de siste åra. Les gjerne denne interessante artikkelen. Om kondom-spørsmålet skriver Allen ganske balansert:
it’s the pope’s surprisingly nuanced comments on condoms which have excited international interest.
In chapter eleven of the book, Benedict tells Seewald that the anti-birth control teaching of Pope Paul VI in the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae remains an important witness against the “banalization of sexuality.”
Nonetheless, Benedict says that in carefully circumscribed cases – where the intent is to prevent the transmission of disease, not to prevent pregnancy – the use of a condom “can be a first step in the direction of 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.”
The pontiff offers the example of a male prostitute, though the same line of reasoning could arguably be applied in cases of heterosexual couples where one partner is HIV-positive and the other isn’t.
That question has long been a subject of Catholic debate, even among cardinals. In 2006, the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Health Care Pastoral examined the question of condoms for married couples where one is HIV-positive and tentatively drew a positive conclusion, but no formal statement was issued – in part because of PR concern in the Vatican that such a limited concession would be heard by the world as blanket approval of condoms.
In a Nov. 21 statement, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson, said that the pope’s comments did not come out of the blue.
“Numerous moral theologians and authoritative ecclesiastical personalities have sustained, and still sustain, similar positions,” Lombardi said. “Nevertheless, it’s true that they have not been heard until now with such clarity from the mouth of the pope, even if it’s in a colloquial rather than magisterial form.” …