The Vatican, apparently like God, works in strange ways, writes Gerard Henderson in the Sydney Morning Herald.
A
series of official meetings at the Holy See last week served as a
reminder that, in its governance function, the Catholic Church is very
bureaucratic.
Yet Pope Benedict has just done what few government or religious
leaders would do. He gave six interviews of one hour's duration each to
the German journalist and author Peter Seewald.
The product of this conversation is contained in Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times
(Ignatius Press), which has just been published.
In the Western world,
which is increasingly subsumed with sex and celebrity, media attention
has focused on the Pope's answers to two questions about HIV/AIDS in
Africa and the church forbidding condoms.
Commentators have homed in on Benedict's comment that in the case of
some individuals - he cited the case of a male prostitute - the use of
condoms may amount to "a first step in the direction of a moralisation, a
first assumption of responsibility, on the way towards recovering an
awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever
one wants".
That was about it.
But commentators tended to ignore a more significant papal refrain in Light of the World. Namely that "people can get condoms when they want them anyway".
And that's the essential point. The Pope recognises that not all
Catholics follow the teachings of the church. Moreover, Africa is by no
means a Catholic zone.
The unfashionable fact is that HIV/AIDS is rife
in large parts of Africa because many African men have multiple sex
partners. Only some of them are baptised Catholic.
The Catholic Church has a good understanding of the devastation of
HIV/AIDS.
It is estimated about 15 per cent of the world's population is
Catholic and that 25 per cent of all
AIDS victims around the world are
treated in Catholic institutions.
That's an impressive statistic.
SIC: CTH/AUS