Is The Pope Catholic? Redux

My Hanukkah gift came early this year with the Pope's announcement that some condom use was morally justified, for example, to prevent the spread of AIDS by male prostitutes. Today, I feel like I spun the dreidel and got gimmel for the jackpot! Benedict XVI outdid himself by further stating that condoms are "the lesser of two evils" when used to curb the spread of AIDS even when their use may prevent pregnancy! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Vatican, in a stunning shift of policy, has put human life before church dogma! What's next? Women priests? Nah, that's way too radical!

The Catholic Church hastened to add that condom use is still considered immoral as is any means of artificial contraception. By making this announcement, however, the Pope is opening up grounds for debate on the issues of condom use, birth control, AIDS, and other urgently significant topics. Lest we liberals don our party hats too soon, George Weigel, a conservative Catholic writer, wanted to make clear that the Vatican was certainly not endorsing condom use as a method of AIDS prevention. Weigel stated, "... someone determined to do something wrong may be showing a glimmer of moral common sense by not doing that wrong thing in the worst possible way — which is not an endorsement of anything." Uh, okay, George.

Whatever the Pope's detractors and George Weigel may say, this is HUGE! The Vatican is now declaring that a form of contraception is more morally acceptable than possibly passing on a potentially lethal virus to another person. Of course, this is just common sense to most of us, but to strict Catholics, this is a seismic shift in their way of thinking. Now, about those women priests....