WHY DOES a male prostitute use a condom? Does he do so out of genuine concern for his client, as Pope Benedict XVI suggested when he recently spoke of condom use by male prostitutes as a “first step in the direction of a moralization?” I am not an insider to the sex business, but does one have to be an insider to see the simple realities here. It seems logical that the prostitute uses condoms, or requires his clients to use condoms, 1) because he will not get clients otherwise and 2) to protect himself. There is most likely no genuine selfless “concern for the other,” as Vatican spokesman  Fr. Federico Lombardi stated when he backed up the Pope’s comments.

We have reached a new era when the Vatican discerns moral beauty in the act of selling homosexual sex.

If the Pope spoke of the morality of condom use for a married couple when one spouse has AIDS, that would be understandable. But a prostitute? Isn’t there a simple solution to the prostitute’s moral dilemma that has nothing to do with condoms? The Pope’s words are a form of profound sympathy for those in the homosexual sex trade. [Note: See my statement below in which I amend this. It is overblown to say the Pope is expressing “profound sympathy” for prostitutes.]  They are not understandable as a simple attempt to qualify former statements against the promotion of condom use to stem the spread of AIDS. Again, he could have spoken of condom use in a marriage involving AIDS. 

There is a related question here: Why would a Pope give book-length interviews when he already has ample opportunity to express his views and Church teachings? Perhaps he does so because the interview allows him to be more tolerant and open in an unofficial way, to embrace his critics by meeting them halfway. Atila Sinkes Guitamarães writes here about the very significant and conscious turn to the interview as a form of communication with the public at large. He states:

After reflection, I offer some reasons that fit with the progressivist agenda:

• It [the interview format] destroys the image of a monarch Pope who speaks from the summit of the Church hierarchy; the Pope who emerges in such interviews is more democratic, a person like everybody else;

• It removes the dogmatic character associated with his words; his opinions seem like those of an elderly judge, professor or general who shares his views with the public;

• Thus, in practice, he abandons his mission as Vicar of Christ and enters the arena of public opinion like one who says: “Like it or not, here is what I think. If you don’t agree, we can discuss it.”

                                                     — Comments —

Mrs. Cote writes:

This particular post came across as pretty uncharitable considering how the Vatican has been trying to clarify the Pope’s comments to ensure that they do not come across as an endorsement of condoms. To say they promote prostitution of any kind is just silly. I understood the Pope’s comments to mean that he was talking about not compounding sin with a more egregious sin. To knowingly put another person’s life in jeopardy through AIDS is seen here as a sin worse than using a condom. Of course not being a prostitute would be even better, no one there said “Go ahead keep sinning, just use condoms.” That is why condoms were called a first step and not the end of the road. 

In reference to the spouse with AIDS, if they knew at the start that one of them had AIDS they probably should not have married. The primary (NOT the only but the primary) purpose of marriage is to bring new life into the world and that would be a severe risk in a case of a spouse with AIDS. If AIDS was contracted after marriage chastity or celibacy is the best route, the same solution as for the prostitute. It would not be a good choice bring the sin of contraception into a couple’s sacred bond. After all even with condom use there is still the risk of transmission. True love does everything one can to bring their beloved to the highest good not take chances with their lives to satisfy a physical desire. 

You wrote at length about mealy-mouthed Christianity and yet boldly and uncharitably criticized and undermined the one patriarchal authority it does have. It’s like a wife telling her husband he should step up and be a man, in front of others to boot – totally inappropriate and ineffective. I think the Pope does interviews because it is a form of communication the world at large hears and understands. He is trying to get the voice of the Church heard outside of the circles of those who would read papal bulls or buy his books. The apostles not only preached in the streets but they had dinner at people’s homes, talking with them in an informal manner and I’m sure debates came up. They didn’t just publish carefully constructed works to be read by a few. Jesus sat in the homes of those who disagreed with him and talked. He wrote nothing at all. So I would say if as the Vicar of Christ the Pope is trying to do as Jesus would have done then making time for informal interviews is totally appropriate despite the risk that others will take your words out of context and try to mischaracterize them. After all he can’t expect better treatment than that given to the Lord.

Laura writes:

I consider myself defending the Church, not speaking uncharitably against it. Catholics have a duty to discuss, analyze and respectfully criticize statements by Church authorities. If we never did this “in front of others” we would be wrong. If you view the press reports surrounding this interview, you will see that this is considered highly significant. I did not criticize the Pope viciously or say that he was promoting prostitution. I looked at the reasoning in his words. The subsequent clarifications of the Pope’s interview by Fr. Federico Lombardi did not substantially alter what the Pope had said, which was that prostitution may involve sensitivity to others. Yes, it’s true prostitution may involve sensitivity toward others, but given the importance and weight of everything the Pope says, and given that we live in a world of widespread homosexual promiscuity, the point that prostitution may sometimes involve sensitivity to others seems too subtle against the larger implication that there can be good in homosexual sex or prostitution. I don’t think the Pope really means that. His words were regrettable but he has not altered them and his spokesman has said he meant what was written in the interview.

 Regarding AIDS and marriage, yes, that is the sort of logic that would be consistent with Church teachings.

You write,

 You wrote at length about mealy-mouthed Christianity and yet boldly and uncharitably criticized and undermined the one patriarchal authority it does have. It’s like a wife telling her husband he should step up and be a man, in front of others to boot – totally inappropriate and ineffective

I’m not sure what you mean by “ineffective.” Do you mean my comments are not effective in preserving and protecting the Church simply because they are critical? I disagree. I emphatically disagree. I may be wrong in the reasoning of what I said about the Pope’s comments, I admit to that. But critical discussion of Papal statements by Catholics does not threaten the Church. Blind, unthinking obedience does. (I’m not accusing you of blind, unthinking obedience. But given my understanding of the Pope’s words, I would be guilty of blind, unthinking obedience if I did not question them openly.) Thomas Aquinas wrote in his Summa Theologiae, “There being an imminent danger for the faith, Prelates must be questioned, even publicly, by their subjects.” The right and duty of believers to question ecclesiastical authorities has been upheld by other theologians and saints as well.

I don’t necessarily think that a Pope should never give interviews of this kind. But given the significance of this incident, it does make me question the practice. Celebrities give interviews. Catholicism is not a brand that must be spread. The Pope is not a celebrity. Besides, the interview format leaves open the possibility, as is seen here, of confusion. It is both informal and formal at the same time because obviously the Vatican reviews what is written before it is published. This format gives the impression of mere discussion when it is not quite that.

Rich Baldwin writes: 

I am troubled by your entry: Condoms and the Pope. I fear that you are putting too much weight on the opinions of the New York Times writers, and not enough on the whole of what was said. May I suggest looking at Edward Feser’s article as an alternative presentation of the Vatican’s position on condom use? I would be interested to hear any thoughts you have about this post.

Laura writes:

Edward Feser cites other portions of the interview in which the Pope says:

[T]he sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality, which, after all, is precisely the dangerous source of the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves. This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also a part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man’s being.

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.

The first paragraph is excellent. And I agree with Edward Feser that the Pope was making no comments about condoms as contraception. This conversation with Peter Seewald was not about the condom as a contraceptive. The idea that the Pope was changing the position of the Church on artificial contraception is just plain silly. He was not.

Mr. Feser then writes:

What the pope is saying is that if a male prostitute happens at least to care enough about his “customer” not to want to infect him with AIDS, perhaps that minimal degree of concern could lead him someday to a more human view of sexuality. That is a psychological observation, not a recommendation or a claim about the ultimate moral character of the actions in question.

I’m afraid I don’t understand this. I don’t see how a prostitute using a condom is any sign of concern for others. And, is it simply a psychological observation the Pope has made? No, it is an analysis of the moral status of the prostitute’s actions. I find it just unsettling for the Pope to be speaking about prostitution in this way. It’s not that I think he is promoting prostitution but rather that he is raising the possibility that profoundly degraded actions may contain an element of moral good. What disturbs me most here has nothing to do with condoms or sex, but with the nature of evil.

It’s important to bear in mind that the Pope is speaking through these interviews to ordinary people. Therefore, we must read these statements as ordinary people read them, not as moral philosophers read them. I think what the ordinary person reads here is, “Gee, even some action that is very wrong can be partly good.” It is true, of course, that very wrong actions can contain an element of good, but that is not what the world needs to hear from the Pope at a time when moral relativism, particularly with regard to sex, is so pervasive. 

Laura adds:

I do agree with Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Feser that too much attention has been paid to these particular remarks and not the other things the Pope said on the issue in the interviews. It’s easy to lose sight of their relative insignificance when they are being constantly amplified in the news.

Also, the Pope does not really alter his position in general on condom use and campaigns against AIDS by these remarks.

Lawrence Auster writes:

You wrote: 

“The Pope’s words are a form of profound sympathy for those in the homosexual sex trade.” 

Perhaps, paraphrasing George W. Bush on the subject of single mothers, the Pope should have said, “Homosexual prostitutes have the toughest job in the world.”

Laura writes:

I would amend my words. I don’t think they are a form of “profound sympathy,” just sympathy. 

J.T. Sharpe writes:

I usually agree quite strongly with much that you have to say, but I find you contribution to the misunderstanding surrounding the badly contextualized Papal quotes released to the press.

You said that: “I don’t see how a prostitute using a condom is any sign of concern for others. And, is it simply a psychological observation the Pope has made? No, it is an analysis of the moral status of the prostitute’s actions. I find it just unsettling for the Pope to be speaking about prostitution in this way.”

I think your concern is misplaced. You are implying that the Pope sees a sort of “saving grace” in prostitution when the hooker turns out to be nicer than average. The Pope said no such thing. If Mr. Feser’s “psychological observation” thesis does not seem plausible (and I do not think it is merely a “psychological” one), let me present an alternative from Jimmy Akin:

“It’s easy to see how one could look at that situation and say, “Male homosexual prostitutes are at high risk of both contracting and transmitting HIV; it would be better if they gave up prostitution altogether, but if they are engaging in this activity then the use of a condom would reduce the risk of HIV transmission, and it wouldn’t make the acts they are performing any less open to life than they already are.”

The trouble would be how to present this judgment in a way that does not cause more problems than it solves.

Pope Benedict’s remarks in the interview seem to be an attempt to do just this. He could have phrased himself more clearly, but (a) this was an interview, and in interviews one does not have the kind of leisure to carefully craft one’s remarks that writing allows and (b) he’s straining to find words that communicate the basic moral insight without leading to headlines like “Pope approves condoms!” and “Pope changes Church teaching on sex!””

In his follow-up article on the same topic, Jimmy Akin also says:

“From what I can tell the “first step” language can be taken in one of two ways, which are as follows:

1) The decision to use a condom represents a first step toward a moral exercise of human sexuality in that it shows the person is inwardly aware that not everything in the sexual sphere is permissible (e.g., risking the life of the other).

2) The decision to use a condom represents a first step toward a moral exercise of human sexuality in that a person is concretely limiting the danger to another.

These two senses are not mutually exclusive. One can view condom use as a first step toward morality in both senses.

The first understanding speaks to the inner attitude and awareness of the person using the condom. On this view one might say, “It’s a good thing that the condom user has at least some awareness of the limits of what is moral. It’s still not justified for him to use a condom—even in the context of an act of homosexual prostitution—but at least he has some kind of moral awareness that may grow with time.”

One also could hold sense (1) and simply not address the issue of whether the use of a condom is justified in such a context. One might simply be noting that the awareness of some moral limits is a good sign and not address the question of whether the condom use is justified.

Or one could say that the moral awareness is good and that using a condom limits the evil of the sex act in question: It may still be an act of homosexual prostitution that poses some risk of HIV to the other, but at least the risk is limited. It’s thus “less evil” than it would be without the condom. This converges with sense (2), above.

Even then, though, it is still misleading to say that the use of condoms is “justified.””

Or, to put in another analogy, this one care of sci-fi author Mike Flynn:

“There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a bank robber uses an unloaded gun, 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 bank robbery. That can really lie only in a humanization of economics.”

At most, the Pope is saying that a prostitute using a condom is taking the first step to realizing that prostitution is wrong. After all, awareness that you are going into a place that requires a hazmat suit just to be safe is an awareness that such a place is a bad place to be in.

In no way is the Pope trying to find anything redeeming in the act of prostitution. It would be a shame if you leave your readers with the impression that you think so.

Laura writes:

Thank you for writing.

I fully understand the Pope does not approve of prostitution. I know he does not in any way condone prostitution.  And, as I should have pointed out in the original entry, the Pope emphatically said that condoms are not a solution to AIDS and represent “the banalization of sex,” words that were entirely ignored by the press.

But, let’s remember this is the Pope and so everything he says is important. It is right and proper to consider everything he says if it is certain that he said it. In this case, the Vatican has affirmed what he said in the interviews and reiterated his point.

The problem is, as I said above, his words give the impression that homosexual prostitution may contain elements of virtuous concern for others and that an action that is very degraded may contain good if it is the first step toward moral betterment. As for the first point, I  was under the impression that male prostitutes use condoms for the same reason food service workers wear latex gloves. That is, not out of sincere concern for other people but as a necessary business practice. In any event, let’s say a prostitute did use a condom purely out of concern for another person. Is this a sign of moral progress? I guess so. But then one could argue that a woman who has an abortion but feels unhappy and sad about it is on the path to moral progress or that a couple who uses artificial contraceptives for years but feels a vague disquiet about it are morally progressing. It is true that we are often, in the process of committing sins, realizing what sin is and thus perhaps in some sense moving away from sin.

But this is too confusing. We need moral clarity from our Church authorities. Let them tell us again and again what is wrong and not get us bogged down in relativistic complexities because there is already too much of a pull toward relativism in our world.

There’s no question that the Pope also has said many, many things that directly contradict this relativistic message.

What he has said here is given more weight than many of the other things he has said that are contrary to this. Here again we come to the problem of the interview format and its potential for creating confusion and fogginess in a world that needs light and clarity. This is the Pope. His words will always be given great weight and there will always be many eager to misinterpret them.

I would be very surprised  if the Vatican did not review these interviews before publication. If the Vatican did not review them, and allowed off-the-cuff interviews with the Pope to be published in a book that will last for many years and be read around the world and be taken as authoritative by many people who do not understand the difference between encyclicals and interviews, it seems that the Vatican is risking just the sort of misinterpretation and exaggeration that has occurred here. 

J.T. Sharpe writes:

Thank you for responding. However, I still do not understand what you mean when you say:

“his words give the impression that homosexual prostitution may contain elements of virtuous concern for others and that an action that is very degraded may contain good if it is the first step toward moral betterment.”

The Pope says nothing that would even remotely imply that homosexual prostitution (or prostitution in general), or even the act of putting on a condom, may contain elements of virtuous concern for others. A degraded act can never contain any elements of virtuous concern for anything. People, on the other hand, may have such concerns, even ones who commit degraded acts. After all, a food service worker may choose not to wear latex gloves. One who wears a pair, even when it is, as you put it, merely standard business practice, is in a superior position than one who doesn’t, even if slightly. Neither person’s actions would have any overall bearing on the moral standing of food service, or even on the act of putting on gloves.

The most bleeding-hearted interpretation one can reasonably get out of the Pope’s words is that he is separating the sinner from the sin. Its not even that he is “tolerating condom use” as Damon Thompson so obtusely put it, or tolerating prostitution. What he is doing is something liberal ideologues rarely ever do: treating people as human beings. He is implying that even the most degraded of us has a little bit of the Divine Spark in them.

At the end of the day, the only sexual act the Church considers moral is the marital act between husband and wife. Nothing the Pope said changed that. Prostitution and condom use are still immoral things. It is just that we can say that those who practice such things are not beyond redemption, even if it comes in tiny increments, progressing from greater evils to lesser ones. After all, even the woman who sanctions an abortion and feels bad about it afterward is in a better position to repent than one who does so with carefree abandon. I highly doubt that embracing the former would be interpreted as an upgrade of the moral standing of abortion.

So, what exactly is unclear, or gives any indication that the Pope gives the impression you say he is giving? What is confusing? Personally, I find the hardening of categories (such as distinguishing moral hierarchies between similar acts with different intents) to be a better clarification than if we just left everything up to shades of gray. But, I might be wrong.

This Pope has been more Hero and Warrior than most public figures of his age. (See the Regensburg Address, and I challenge you to find anybody of similar stature saying anything as bold.) Even as Cardinal, it was he who spearheaded the vocal opposition to Turkish entry into the European Union. His best opponents (such as secular philosopher and Frankfurt School giant Jurgen Habermas) have conceded intellectual ground to him, which is why his lesser opponents resort to character smears. That he is magnanimous to the lesser should not be seen as a sign of weakness. No man supposedly so weak and mealy-mouthed can afford to give mercy to his enemies.

If nothing will shake you from your disturbance, then at least be fair to the man. He has carried the shield even in times when his glorious predecessor could not, such as during the liberation theology crisis and the Marcial Maciel scandal. That L’Osservatore Romano and the Vatican Publishing House made massive communication blunders should not be laid at his feet.

By the way, will you read the book in question? You might find some stuff that surprises you. For example, he reaffirms in the book the ban on female ordination and the ban on the ordination of homosexuals, even virtuous ones. I surmise that those who will read the book thinking the Pope changed anything radically will be in for quite a shock. I suspect that this will be one “silver lining” in the blunder cloud.

Laura writes:

Yes, I will definitely read the book. I agree. Benedict has taken many courageous stands.

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