Weigel on Papal Condoments

A (4-week) retrospective:

...While the media misreporting and over-reporting of radical change has played its usual, mischievous role over the past four weeks, it cannot be doubted that a certain lack of clarity has characterized the Holy See’s response to the controversy. That lack of clarity could impede the possibility of a genuine deepening of Catholic moral insight as the internal theological debate unfolds. There is little question that it will put Catholic bishops who have taken a strong line in defending the Catholic integrity of Catholic medical institutions and Catholic health care professionals in a very difficult position vis-à-vis an increasingly aggressive and secularist ambient culture.

Thus, both to ensure that the theological debate generated by Light of the World is a genuine advance rather than a moment of retreat from the truths taught in Veritatis Splendor, and to provide armor for those bishops who are determined to defend the integrity of their institutions and the consciences of those members of their flocks who are medical professionals, it would seem opportune for an indisputably authoritative voice, capable of speaking in the name of the Church, to publish a substantial clarification of the issues that have surfaced over the past month.

Such a clarification might usefully touch several key points. It would reaffirm the Church’s classic teaching on marriage and human sexuality, underscoring that the basic principles at stake here are true and can be known to be true by reason. It would reiterate the intrinsic wrong of contraception. It would endorse educational and pastoral programs affirming chastity and fidelity as the morally appropriate and empirically effective response to HIV/AIDS, while recommitting the Catholic Church to the relief of those already suffering from HIV/AIDS.

It would also be helpful if such a statement would reaffirm that what the Catholic Church teaches in these complex and delicate areas of human life is not a matter of “positions” that can be changed if sufficient public pressure is brought to bear. Rather, the Church brings the light of both reason and revelation to bear on these questions, in the certain conviction that the truth liberates us in the deepest meaning of human liberation.