PrintNovember 22, 2010
No, the Pope didn't condone condom usage
Relativists everywhere are atwitter that the Pope has condoned condoms. He has, hasn't he?
After all, in reference to male prostitutes in Africa, he said condom usage,
...can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward discovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants.
Ok, so maybe not so much condoned, but surely the comments mean that the world's leading and most visible proponent of objective morality has left the door open for a subjective revision and massaging of the issue, practically condoning condoms, right?
Afraid not. Wanting something to be true does not make it so. Relativists so willfully immune to nuance should consider that the Pope could just have easily have said that the use of lethal injection represents "a first assumption of responsibility" as compared to crucifixion. In that case, how many in the press and elsewhere would have trumpeted the Pope's apparent condoning of capital punishment?
The reporting that the Pope "ok's condoms" is more wishful than accurate. The Catholic Church will never offer the morality buffet from which hopeful relativists would so like to pick and choose, which is precisely why the New York Times will always attack the Church.
Regardless of the spin put on the Pope's comments, the rest of the story still remains the same. The Catholic Church teaches that sex outside of marriage is a mortal sin, which unconfessed, unforgiven and unrepented still results in the same eternally dismal fate (no condom footnote on this one). It's a fact the Pope won't be updating.
No condoning here. Move on, nothing to see.
