Pope says condoms not right, but ...

Pope Benedict XVI holds the pastoral staff Saturday during a consistory inside St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.
Pope Benedict XVI holds the pastoral staff Saturday during a consistory inside St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.

— Pope Benedict XVI now says that condom use can be justified in some cases to help stop the spread of AIDS, the first Vatican exception to a long-held policy condemning condom use. The pope made the statement in a series of interviews with a German journalist, part of an effort to address some of the harshest criticisms of his papacy.

The pope made clear that he considered the use of condoms a last resort and not as a way to prevent conception. The example he gave of when they could be used, as translated from German into English, is in the case of male prostitutes.

Amid his defense of the church, Benedict also acknowledged some of the church’s failings, such as sexual abuse by priests, which he calls “a volcano of filth” sent by the devil.He pointed to a “readiness for aggression” among those who criticized him for revoking the excommunication of a bishop who denied the scope of the Holocaust.

Benedict also discussed his 2006 speech in Regensburg, Germany, which provoked the ire of the Muslim world; denounced drug abuse; explained what he described as the impossibility of ordaining women as priests; and said that if he did not feel up to the task of being pope, he would resign.

The revelations come in the first book-length interview ever to be granted by a sitting pontiff, conducted in July by Peter Seewald, the author of two previous books of interviews with Benedict when he was still a cardinal.

Benedict, 83, has faced several big challenges during his five-year papacy, including the sexual abuse of children by priests. Even his greatest defenders concede that his papacy has had substantial communication problems.

The book titled Light of the World “proves once again that Benedict XVI is his own best advocate,” said George Weigel, a papal biographer who wrote the introduction for the English-language edition. The book is to be published Tuesday. The Vatican’s newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published excerpts of it online Saturday afternoon.

Benedict made the comment about condoms in response to a question about Africa, where the spread of heterosexual HIV is rampant.

Seewald, who interviewed Benedict over six days last summer, asked Benedict if it wasn’t “madness” for the Vatican to forbid a high-risk population from using condoms.

In the book, Benedict upholds the view that the Roman Catholic Church does not see condoms as “a real or moral solution” and says that they are “not really the way to deal with the evil ofHIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.”

But for the first time, he opened the door for at least some open debate on the issue.

“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,” the pope said.

Elsewhere in the book he reaffirmed church teaching that opposes artificial contraception.

“How many children are killed who might one day have been geniuses, who could have given humanity something new, who could have given us a new Mozart or some new technical discovery?” he asked rhetorically.

Still, the pope said, sexual ethics today pose a big question. “It is correct there is much in this area that needs to be pondered and expressed in new ways.”

He championed the church’s advocacy of the “rhythm method” of birth control, by which a married couple who don’t want to conceive can avoid intercourse on days when the woman is likely to be fertile, saying that is “not just a method but a way of life.”

“And that is something fundamentally different from when I take the pill without binding myself interiorly to another person, so that I can jump into bed with a random acquaintance,” Benedict said.

Condoms have been a contentious issue ever since Pope Paul VI denounced birth control in his 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae. In recent years, bishops in Africa and elsewhere have been calling on the Vatican to relax its stance to allow for condom use as part of a broader approach to fight the spread of HIV and AIDS.

The Rev. Joseph Fessio, a former student of Benedict and the editor in chief of Ignatius Press, which is publishing the English-language edition of the book, said the pope’s remarks on condoms were among the most surprising in the volume.

“It’s very carefully qualified,” he said. “It would be wrong to say, ‘Pope Approves Condoms.’ He’s saying it’s immoral but in an individual case, the use of a condom could be an awakening to someone that he’s got to be more conscious of his actions.”

However, the Rev. Jim Martin, a Catholic writer, said the comments were certainly a departure, an exception where there had never been an exception before.

“While some bishops and archbishops have spoken in this way, the pope has never affirmed this,” Martin said. “And it’s interesting that he uses as an example someone who is trying to act morally to someone else by not passing on an infection, which was always the stance of those people who favored condoms in cases of HIV and AIDS. So it does mark a departure.”

The English translation of the original German specified “male prostitute.” The Italian translation in L’Osservatore Romano, however, used the feminine “prostitute.” The discrepancy wasn’t immediately clear.

Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans said the pope wasn’t encouraging condom use.

“I think the pope has been very strong in saying condoms do not solve the problem of morality and do not solve the problem of good sex education. But if a person chooses not to follow the teaching of Christ in the church, they are at least obliged to prevent another person from contracting a disease that is deadly,” he said.

The book devotes an entire chapter to the topic of priests’ sexual abuse, which roared back this spring, likening it to a natural disaster that marred a year he had intended to celebrate priests.

He said he was not surprised by the scandal, having spent 25 years as the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that handles doctrinal and disciplinary questions, and which victims and critics have accused of not acting swiftly and decisively enough in tackling abuse or punishing abusive priests.

In the book, Benedict said of the abuse, which came to light in the United States in 2001, “We responded to the matter in America immediately with revised, stricter norms. In addition, collaboration between the secular and ecclesiastical authorities was improved.Would it have been Rome’s duty, then, to say to all the countries expressly: Find out whether you are in the same situation? Maybe we should have done that.”

He acknowledged that the scandal had undermined the moral authority of the Catholic Church. “It is not only the abuse that is upsetting, it is also the way of dealing with it. The deeds themselves were hushed up and kept secret for decades. That is a declaration of bankruptcy for an institution that has love written on its banner.”Information for this article was contributed by Laurie Goodstein of The New York Times; and by Nicole Winfield, Frances D’Emilio, Katharine Houreld, Godfrey Olukya, Janet McConnaughey and Rachel Zoll of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/21/2010

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