Change of Heart?

Has the Catholic world gotten a new Pope? I don't recall seeing a tower of black smoke billowing from Vatican City, but it seems like the former Benedict XVI- you know, the one who said last year that condoms increase the AIDS problem in Africa- has disappeared and been divinely replaced by a Pope who has some sort of a grasp on reality.

It seems difficult to believe that a Pope would have any semblance of sensibility when it comes to issues of dirty, scary, sinful s-e-x, but it seemed as if the public health fairy had knocked him on his highly-hatted head when comments that he made on HIV and condom use were publiziced this past weekend. The comments came from a book which is to be published by Ignatious Press, titled "Light of the World: The Pope, The Church, and Signs of the Times." In it, Pope Benedict addresses the controversial issue of contraception and the AIDS epidemic by saying that there MAY be SOME situations where condom use is SORT OF accepted.

Whoa. That's a big step, no? The Vatican actually endorsing condom use? Ok well no not exactly. What the Pope REALLY said was that condom use is the "first step" on a sort of moral ladder... that using condoms in cases of, say, prostitution, is a way of assuming responsibility and acknowledging that what one is doing is wrong. Sure. Leave it to the Vatican to instill some sort of plaguing guilt on what would otherwise have been a solid ethical lesson. Here's Benny's words, in context:

"There could be single cases that can be justified, for instance when a prostitue uses a condom, and this can be a first step towards a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, to develop again the awareness of the fact that not all is allowed and that one cannot do everything one wants."

It seems tricky, but somewhere in there is a light of hope for AIDS activists and others around the world who see condoms as a solid, albeit not exclusive, means of combatting the disease. Because even though his holiness spoke in very vague and confusing language, his statement was a reversal of the Church's typical outright denunciation of contraceptives. And for an institution that bases its belief system on a 2,000 year old moral code, in which global epidemics and HIV did not exist, these statements made by their glorified leader are quite a miraculous step forward.