THE HAPPY HOOKER

If you are a male prostitute who uses a condom to protect against the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, the Pope says you are in good moral territory. If you are a heterosexual married couple, where one of you may be HIV positive, using a condom to protect against infection is morally wrong. This is the upshot of the Pope's comments to a German journalist.

This kind of moral shape shifting is necessary because of the Church's nonsensical position on contraception. The Pope twisted into a pretzel and picked a male prostitute so he could avoid commenting on the use of condoms by heterosexual couples. Neither the male prostitute nor his partner can procreate, so allowing condom use is a morally grey area to the Pope. The prostitute may use the condom because it could be the first step towards taking responsibility for his actions and an awakening realization of how actions have consequences. The condom protects him and the Pope finds that acceptable. What about a married couple who want to protect themselves? The Pope is silent. What about a married couple where another pregnancy could cause serious mental or physical harm to the mother? Silence. What about a married couple whose family will be economically devastated by another child? Not a word. In fact, in each of these cases, the Pope would counsel the couple to live like brother and sister and never have sexual intercourse again...ever, a sure recipe for a healthy relationship.

In 1968, Pope Paul VI had set up a commission to study changing the Church's approach on birth control. The majority of the commission supported changing the Church's stance. After originally going along with their recommendation, the Pope was counseled if he adopted the majority view Catholics would leave the Church in droves. The authority of the papacy would be undermined. He would cause moral confusion. He eventually caved and issued an encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae, (on human life), in which he reiterated the Church's belief contraception is "intrinsically evil". The result was exactly as predicted. Well sort of...many did leave the Church, but thousands of them were priests and nuns who left in protest. Catholic lay people ignored the Pope and opted to use birth control to plan their families. The Pope and the bishops saw their authority under minded and found themselves irrelevant to this crucial debate about life.

In Africa, where the spread of HIV is devastating whole populations, some Catholic bishops, seeing condoms as one of the few ways to stop this epidemic, began giving tacit approval for married couples to use them. Others condemned the practice and exposed themselves to accusations of insensitivity and moral absolutism at the cost of human lives. Husbands and wives could not use condoms to prevent the spread of the disease even though the ensuing pregnancy could result in a child born with HIV as well.

According to Humanae Vitae, every act of intercourse has to be both unitive and open to procreation. How can a marriage be united if the two people can never make love, or when they do, they do so in utter fear of what the results of a pregnancy could do their family? Any unity which may have existed will be destroyed and the marriage over.

So, the Pope takes a mini step to acknowledge condom use and its applicability to preventing the spread of disease and death. In doing so, he looks to be as out of touch with reality as his predecessors were in their antagonism to Galileo. When a couple uses the "rhythm" method, which is approved by the Church, they use the calendar to chart the days when having sex will not produce a pregnancy. Their "intent" is to have sex but not procreate. This violates Humanae Vitae but is allowed because it's "natural". The "intent" of a couple who use a condom or pill is exactly the same, but their action is intrinsically evil. You can hear robes and stoles bending and twisting in the Vatican even now.

Does God care if a couple in a loving marriage...a marriage committed to permanency, to loving each other, to sacrificing for each other and being faithful to each other...uses contraception in order to control their fertility while maintain a strong marriage? NO. She does not care. God created us to love Her and ourselves and to treat other with the same attitude.

The Church lost touch with the Spirit when Paul VI didn't listen to God, but rather to Vatican apparatchiks concerned about maintaining the status quo and with it their power. The theological yoga the Pope is currently engaged in, is a result of that failure to heed God's Spirit and it will continue as long as the Church puts rules ahead of loving common sense.