OPINION: HARMFUL MISINTERPRETATIONS
MANILA, NOVEMBER 23, 2010 (PHILSTAR) A LAW EACH DAY (Keeps Trouble Away) By Jose C. Sison - Once more the press has shown its tendency, intentional or unintentional, to misread some statements especially coming from authoritative sources. This time it is about Pope Benedict's still to be published book, "The Light of the World: The Pope, The Church and The Signs of the Times", which contains his answers to the interview conducted by a German journalist Peter Seewald particularly the portion on the use of condoms to prevent AIDS.
Appearing in the front pages of newspapers last Monday was the intriguing news about the Pope's alleged latest stance that the use of condoms can be "acceptable in certain cases"; that condoms can be used to fight AIDS. Did the Pope really make those statements? The best way to answer the question is to read the excerpts from the book itself:
Seewald…. "In Africa you stated that the Church's traditional teaching has proven to be the only sure way to stop the spread of HIV. Critics, including critics from the Church's own ranks, object that it is madness to forbid a high risk population to use condoms".
Pope Benedict…. "In my remarks I was not making a general statement about condom use but merely said, and this is what caused such great offense, that we cannot solve the problem by distributing condoms. Much more needs to be done. We must stand close to the people, we must guide and help them, and we must do this both before and after they contract the disease.
As a matter of fact, you know, people can get condoms when they want them anyway. But this just goes to show that condoms do not resolve the question itself. More needs to happen. Meanwhile, the secular realm itself has developed the so called ABC Theory: Abstinence-Be Faithful-Condom, where the condom is understood only as a last resort, where the other two points fail to work. This means that the sheer fixation on the condom 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 as a sort of drug that people administer to themselves. This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also 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.
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 moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one can do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality."
Seewald: "Are you saying, then, that the Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?"
Pope Benedict: "She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more humane way, of living sexuality".
Reading the above answers more closely, it is easy to find out what the Pope said and did not say regarding the use of condoms. He said that: it is "not the real or moral solution"; "we cannot solve the problem by distributing condoms"; "it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection". Nowhere in his answer did he say that condoms are "acceptable in certain cases" that they can be used to fight AIDS.
Apparently, the Press misread the statement saying, "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 moralization, a first assumption of responsibility on the way to recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed"…
Explaining this particular statement, Dr. Janet E. Smith, Consultor of the Pontifical Council on the Family, noted that the Pope says "there may be" not "there is basis". This is the "language of speculation" and the Pope is not speculating that "condom use is morally justified". He "is simply observing that for some homosexual prostitutes the use of a condom may indicate an awakening of a moral sense; an awakening that sexual pleasure is not the highest value, but that we must take care we harm no one with our choices. He is not speaking about the morality of the use of condom; but to something that may be true about the psychological state of those who use them. If such individuals are using condoms to avoid harming another, they may eventually realize that sexual acts between members of the same sex are inherently harmful since they are not in accord with human nature".
So let us not immediately jump into conclusion and swallow everything we read in the papers hook, line and sinker like the Malacañang Press Secretary.
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Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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