Commentaar uit Amerika

Charles "witte veder" Chaput, aartsbisschop van Denver en de eerste bisschop van de Prairie Band Potawatomi-stam, die uw bloghouder - dit terzijde - vorige week de eer had hoogstpersoonlijk te ontmoeten - een humoristisch en intelligent iemand - heeft een statement geschreven naar aanleiding van het verschijnen, vandaag, van het boek van de paus en de condoomcommotie eromheen.
Enkele citaten (maar lees het hele stuk en vooral het hele boek van de paus!):

One comes away from this text with a mix of exhilaration and sympathy. The exhilaration springs from meeting in Benedict an extraordinary Christian intellect, articulate and unfiltered; a man prudent, generous, and penetrating in his judgment, candid in his self-criticism, brilliant but accessible in his thinking, and unshakeable in his faith. The sympathy flows from knowing that, in the current media climate, almost anything Benedict says may be hijacked to serve other agendas. And exactly this happened even before the book's formal release. [...]
Ironically, the message of this good and brilliant Pope has been hobbled nearly as much by the baffling failures of some of his own aides as by unfriendly coverage from the world's media. One of the sensitive issues that Benedict treats in this book is the question of AIDS in Africa and the use of condoms to prevent the spread of infection. No institution in Africa has done more to combat AIDS and support its victims than the Catholic Church.
But intense controversy—at least in Europe and the United States—has always surrounded the Catholic rejection of condom use in AIDS prevention. The Church holds that condom use is morally flawed by its nature, and that, equally important, condom use does not prevent AIDS and can actually enable its spread by creating a false sense of security.
In the context of the book's later discussion of contraception and Catholic teaching on sexuality, the Pope's comments are morally insightful. But taken out of context, they can easily be inferred as approving condoms under certain circumstances. One might reasonably expect the Holy Father's assistants to have an advance communications plan in place, and to involve bishops and Catholic media in a timely way to explain and defend the Holy Father's remarks.
Instead, the Vatican's own semi-official newspaper, l'Osservatore Romano, violated the book's publication embargo and released excerpts of the content early. Not surprisingly, news media instantly zeroed in on the issue of condoms, and the rest of this marvelous book already seems like an afterthought.
Don't let that happen. Don't let confusion in the secular press deter you from buying, reading for yourself, and then sharing this extraordinary text. It's an astonishing portrait of an astonishing man.

Over condoomgate hier ook nog een artikel van George Weigel in de National Review, aanbevolen door aartsbisschop Dolan van New York.