'Latex Journalism' and the Holy Father

By Brother André Marie  

Cut to the chase: It’s a pack of lies. In what is perhaps the worst Vatican PR nightmare since the Williamson Affair — now back in the news with a vengeance — the world’s media are abuzz with prurient headlines regarding the Supreme Pontiff’s supposed partial approval of condom use. This twisted obsession shows that the esteemed members of the fourth estate have contracepted more than babies. Their favorite accessories have become a prophylactic for rational thought, honesty, and genuine journalistic observation. It’s no longer yellow journalism; it’s “latex journalism,” whose standards of truth are more elastic than the nasty little things themselves.  Allow me one case-in-point of yellow latex journalism, the Boston Herald. Quoting “Catholic” activists and commentators, whose claim on the name is quite a stretch, the Herald deviously congratulates the Pope for saying, regarding condom use, that “in some cases it’s justified to stop spread of HIV.” Only problem is he didn’t say that. The headline, too — “Pontiff blesses condom use” is a lie. What did the Holy Father do? In an unguarded, leisurely, book-length interview with Peter Seewald, Pope Benedict XVI did something truly dangerous. He took a risk. He spoke in a speculatively psychological way about the subjective dispositions of one deeply entrenched in a life of sin, and how, for such a one, the use of a condom “can be a first step in the direction of a moralization.” The risk was that his words would be misunderstood, for not everyone wants to understand the Holy Father’s thinking on the issue. Further, the complexity of these thoughts are not easily reducible to a sound bite or headline.

Read the account of Pia de Solenni, who does us the favor of reproducing the entire excerpt our latex journalists have hacked and parsed and spliced beyond recognition. Note, the Pope did not say that condom use was “moral.” He did not say it was “justified.” He did not say it was judged “permissible” now or ever in the infallible moral magisterium of the Church. None of that.

By the way, SBC friend and conference speaker Joe Doyle was interviewed for the Herald piece. Look what came of it:

C.J. Doyle, executive director of the conservative Catholic Action League, was in shock over Benedict’s reported statements and said he’ll seek a clarification.

“The Catholic Church has always and everywhere opposed every form of contraception and continues to do so and there is no evidence that has changed,” Doyle said. “It’s not a change in Church doctrine.”

Joe told me on the telephone that he was not “in shock,” but simply told the Herald reporter that he did not believe the reporter’s claims regarding what the Pope had said. It turns out that Joe’s incredulity was justified.
For God’s sake, the Holy Father was discussing the morals of a prostitute! Prostitution is itself morally reprehensible. Specifically, the acts associated with it constitute inherently grave matter which, if unconfessed and unrepented of, will lead one to hell. That’s Church teaching.

If the Holy Father had been speaking about a subject that was not so hot-button — one that neither invoked the gods of political correctness, nor challenged the libidinous leanings of the paladins of our popular morals — his words would not have been so cruelly tortured. Suppose he had been speaking of a possible “first step in the direction of a moralization” for a serial rapist or murderer, who has now decided to treat his victims with less cruelty. For instance, this might be the first glimmer of moral awakening in the warped mind of a man like Jeffrey Dahmer, the homosexual serial killer, whose crimes included (we are told) rape, torture, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism. Should the Pope have speculated that such a man could have a nascent moral reckoning making his crimes progressively less savage, this would not constitute a change in the Church’s teaching on the grave immorality of murder, rape, or homosexuality.

While the interested and tendentious spinning of Pope Benedict’s words by a hostile press is indeed infuriating, the handling of the situation by the Pope’s own press lieutenant has been less than flawless. To wit:

Father Lombardi acknowledged, however, that the pope had to “consider exceptional situations where the exercise of sexuality represents a real risk to someone’s life.” Having “disordered” sex isn’t morally justified, Father Lombardi added, but the use of condoms in such situations can “reduce the danger of infection.”

…

“Benedict XVI has courageously given us an important contribution, clarifying and deepening a long-debated question. It’s an original contribution,” Father Lombardi said.

Sorry, Father Lombardi, that won’t do. You’ve said too much. We’re not dealing with an “important contribution clarifying and deepening a long-debated question.” That language bespeaks a change in dogmatic teaching. At least that’s the message the world will take from your own “clarification” of the Holy Father’s words. We’re dealing, rather, with the Pope’s erudite excogitations that are very much at the periphery of the issue.

Besides that, the claim that condoms can reduce the risk of infection is highly arguable at best. Condoms were not designed to stop infectious viruses, but the male seed, which is substantially larger than a virus. The Holy Father’s controversial claim in 2009, that “the scourge [of AIDS] cannot be resolved by distributing condoms; quite the contrary, we risk worsening the problem” was seconded by none other than Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, who said that the available scientific data supported the Pope’s statement.

But the scientific question is even more at the periphery. The real issue is the Holy Father’s authority to teach Catholic moral doctrine to a world badly in need of it. As the partisans of sexual anarchy alternately attack and misrepresent the august person of the Supreme Pontiff, let’s keep repeating the Church’s teaching: Onanism (the sin of contraception) is inherently grave matter and leads souls to hell.