Maybe The Pope Really *IS* Smoking Dope
Of course you've all seen this.
Old Popey says it's OK for male prosititutes to use condoms! Yay! I know many of them were waiting for the go-ahead.
But I guess it's still not OK for female prostitutes. Or their johns.
I don't know. Just as Benedict claims the use of condoms among male prostitutes is a "first step on the road to a more human sexuality", his "allowing" them to use them might be a first step on his road to understanding human sexuality.
I mean, it's not that it's not a start, it's just that male prostitutes is a strange place to stop.
I know! Is this weird or what. Just hypothetically, suppose the male prostitute had a female client. Would all bets be off? No condoms if women are involved, I bet.
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OK, let me start by saying that my parents sent me to twelve years of strict Catholic education, so I went through the whole indoctrination, and while I managed eventually to flush all the inhibition and imposed guilt out of my system, I still remember all the rants and sometimes hysterically shouted denunciations.
Much of the Pope's new statement is incomprehensible in and of itself let alone in light of official Catholic teaching. Let's start with:
Elsewhere in the book he reaffirmed church teaching opposing artificial contraception.
"How many children are killed who might one day have been geniuses, who could have given humanity something new, who could have given us a new Mozart or some new technical discovery?"
"Killed"? Nobody is killed when contraception is in play during sex. The Pope seems to be equating contraception with abortion here but it won't hold water, because you can't kill something that doesn't yet have life. The Church's teaching is that a soul enters the fetus AT THE INSTANT OF CONCEPTION; individual eggs and sperms carry no component of a soul. It is true that one Marist teaching brother did tell my class of 16 year old boys that one reason masturbation was a sin was "that you're dealing with life here", a totally idiotic argument that was treated as the joke it was (and we all kept pumping away), but no statement I know of by the Church claims that life is present any time before the union of egg and sperm in a uterus. The Pope's statement here is self-contradicting.
Second point:
Referring to his approval of condoms for male prostitutes, the Pope calls it, "a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality." Say WHAT?
The sexuality expressed by ANYTHING other than a married heterosexual couple having non-pleasurable sex specifically for the intention of making a baby is condemned by the Church. As the Pope mentions male prostitutes without defining whether their clients are male or female and as he specifically mentions AIDS, it has to be assumed he's including homosexual sex in this part of his pronouncement. Homosexual sex is one of the major abominations in the Catholic Church, and homosexuals are declared to be intrinsically disordered and evil. We're in sin just because we are! Therefore he's putting himself in the position of telling us how we can perform a thoroughly sinful and immoral act in more moral way. And if gay hustlers, why not gay men engaging in totally consensual sex where AIDS is also a concern?
I suspect he's throwing a real problem at those who are expected to teach and hear confessions based on these statements (not that I believe for a minute there are too many gay escorts who are practicing Catholics and will actually care what the Pope says on anything). And Catholic theologians will probably go gleefully into "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" mode, parsing every word, to try to figure out what the hell he's saying.
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Pope says condoms OK for the bitches and the hoes too:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40331930/ns/world_news-europe
Whew.
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Yes, as an afterthought, women too! I'm so relieved.
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