Sunday, November 28, 2010

The Pope, condoms and the Vatican’s PR travesty

The Roman Catholic Church has 1.2 billion members, produced some of the world’s most brilliant thinkers and has allowed men and women to draw so close to God they can be honored as saints. 

It is also in the midst of a successful 2000-year run with no signs of slowing down.

But even with all this glorious history and experience the Vatican simply continues to stink a public relations. 

Yes, stink.

Sounds harsh? Then look at how the event unfolded since Nov. 20 when “condomania” broke out.

Last Saturday, L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s own newspaper, broke an embargo on Light of the World — a book-length interview between German journalist Peter Seewald and Pope Benedict that contained the condom quote. 

Everyone else in the world was respecting the embargo but not the paper in the Vatican’s backyard.

What the Pope said in The Light of The World was this: “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. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.”

Presumably some in the Vatican knew for weeks, if not months, that the quote was in the book. 

Anyone who had ever used the Internet would have known the words “Pope” and “sex” and “condoms” would elicit a huge reaction.

On Monday, Vatican press secretary Father Federico Lombardi assured the world that nothing had changed in Church teaching and the remark on condoms should be interpreted in the narrowest sense.

On Tuesday, though, Fr. Lombardi told Associated Press that the pope knew his comments would provoke debate.

“He did it because he believed that it was a serious, important question in the world of today,” Fr. Lombardi said.
 
“I personally asked the pope if there was a serious, important problem in the choice of the masculine over the feminine. He told me ‘no.’ The problem is this … It’s the first step of taking responsibility, of taking into consideration the risk of the life of another with whom you have a relationship.”

What does the word “relationship” mean in this context? 

A purely sexual relationship? 

A relationship between a prostitute and client? 

A marriage?

Could the Vatican have not organized a press conference in which Benedict’s comments could have been clarified? 

Could they not have issued a clear document — not in Latin — that would have helped the ordinary folks in the pews, not theologians, understand what the Pope was getting at?

Author and scholar George Weigel, who coined the term “condomania,” did what many other Catholic intellectuals did  this past week: helped to try to clarify what the Pope “really” meant. 

Mr. Weigel, one of the great Catholic writers,  made three main points: the teachings on sexual morality “has not changed and it will not change because it cannot be changed,” not all papal statements carry the same weight, and “no pope with his wits about him would use the vehicle of an interview with a journalist to discuss a new initiative, lay out a pastoral program, or explicate a development of doctrine.”

This may make perfect sense, but how many ordinary Catholics across the globe read every essay George Weigel?

Father James Martin, an American Catholic commentator and writer, had the courage this week to state what everyone else appeared to be dodging:

“It’s the first admission from a pope that a condom can be used for a good intention,” Fr. Martin told the National Post. 

“Just a few years ago, the Vatican would have rejected these ideas outright, even though they had great currency among theologians. Clearly, something has changed.”

In the past few years the list of Vatican PR screw-ups has become legendary but not that funny.

In January 2009, the Pope began a reconciliation process with bishops of the ultra-conservative Priestly Society of St. Pius X, but no one seemed to know — though it was on the Internet — that one of the bishops was an odious Holocaust denier and someone who spouts crackpot conspiracy theories.

Earlier this year the Pope was pilloried for saying that condoms were not the answer in AIDS-riddled Africa. 

In fact, what he said was that condoms were not the solution but behaviour was. 

He was right, but once again the Vatican did not prepare for what someone should have known would create a firestorm. 

Worse, the Vatican had received the question four days in advance so had ample time to get ready.

When the Vatican issued its new rules on reporting sexual abuse this year, it decided to also attach another decision on female ordination — leading most of the world’s media to conclude the Vatican was equating the sexual abuse of children with making women priests. 

That was not the Vatican’s intent, but who cares about good intentions.
 
This latest fiasco was worse because it hits nearly ever Catholic personally. 

Tens of millions of loyal faithful Catholics have wrestled with the issue of condoms and birth control in general for generations.

They also look to the Church to be a shepherd, not a moderator at a debating society.

Someone has to finally realize that and behave accordingly.

SIC: NP/INT'L