Friday, December 3, 2010
It's time for the Pope to clarify statement on condoms
I know, the press and others got it wrong, kept getting it wrong, and continue to get it wrong. That's because they want to. We live in a thoroughly agenda driven age where we don't let a little thing like facts stand in the way of our designs. Nonetheless, the damage control offered by the Vatican didn't do much to help. Possibly because many just didn't want to listen. Or perhaps there was too much Catholic-speak, a strange sort of cant that involves talking around the subject or obscuring potentially bothersome facts with confusing terminology. Either way, it's obvious that many, including Catholics, are jumping on this to say what the Pope was getting at is that we should be handing out condoms by the truckload, while slowly conceding an animal population in human garb that just can't suppress those primal urges. Since this does involve things like eternal salvation, as well as the physical well being of the human race, and since it isn't exactly a back burner issue that is not being talked about, it's time for Pope Benedict to come outside and offer a clarification. Since the 'misunderstanding' has been canonized as the official interpretation of his comments, each day not spent correcting the misunderstanding is another day that goes toward justifying the misunderstanding. Eventually, one will only be able to assume that it was no misunderstanding at all, along with all of the implications that such a revelation would bring.
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To be perfectly honest, I don't see what he can say in clarification that he didn't already say in the interview. Except, perhaps, to repudiate his speculation on possible subjective nuance or perhaps to frame his speculation in explicit terms of moral theology so that the faithful Catholics would have no excuse anymore to argue over what exactly he meant; but the former wouldn't be particularly honest or realistic of him (as much as it may be imprudent to have waded into the waters of nuance and complicated reality in the first place, it would be silly to positively deny their existence) and the latter would only help the inside baseball and not the outside. What reason do we have to believe that the media will get a clue if he repeats the truth of the matter for the umpteenth time? One could argue that things would be better had he not brought in the nuance, but now that the nuance is here I don't see that one can argue that he must repeat the un-nuanced part once again or even that it will undo the obsession with the nuance, for the simple reason that he already included the un-nuanced part in making the initial statement in the interview.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Shakespeare's Cobbler. I think the Pope has said all he needs to say. Anything else said will simply fall on deaf ears. Those who don't listen don't want to listen in the first place.
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