{"id":135,"date":"2010-12-14T13:28:52","date_gmt":"2010-12-14T13:28:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/the-pope-and-the-lesser-evil.html"},"modified":"2010-12-14T13:28:52","modified_gmt":"2010-12-14T13:28:52","slug":"the-pope-and-the-lesser-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/the-pope-and-the-lesser-evil.html","title":{"rendered":"The pope and the “lesser evil”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The AP report<\/a>
\non Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi’s clarification of Pope
\nBenedict’s notorious condom-and-AIDS remark concluded with the following
\nportentous penultimate graph:<\/p>\n

\n

\nLombardi said the pope didn’t use the technical terminology “lesser
\nevil” in his comments because he wanted his words to be understood by
\nthe general public. Vatican officials, however, said that was what he
\nmeant.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

No so, says Martin Rhonheimer, the Opus Dei moral theologian who has emerged as something of a progressive hero for having once written a less than absolutist article on the Church’s teaching on condoms. In an article<\/a> written for Sandro Magister’s popular inside-the-Vatican blog Chiesa, Rhonheimer declares that it is<\/p>\n

\n

wrong to assert principles in this case such as “lesser evil”, which
\nholds that in order to avoid a greater evil a lesser evil may be chosen
\nif there is a proportionate reason. This moral methodology, known as
\n“proportionalism”, is not a teaching of the Church, and was rejected by
\nPope John Paul II in his 1993 encyclical “Veritatis splendor” – with
\nwhich Pope Benedict XVI is in full agreement.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, maybe. But then comes a mysterious “Catholic philosopher,” writing a “Dear Magister” letter<\/a> under the Falstaffian pen name Giovanni Onofrio Zagloba, to contend
\nthat the pope’s recognition of a “lesser evil” of prophylactic condom
\nuse did not amount to “consequentialism” (of which “proportionalism” may or may not be<\/a> a subspecies)–and indeed that the pope has opened a “fissure” (spiraglio<\/i>) for “a new (and traditional) way of thinking about moral problems,” such as to recognize condom use as lawful. To which Professor Alessandro Martinetti pushes back<\/a> in a Rhonheimerian mode.\n<\/p>\n

So who has the better access to the pope’s mind? Benedict, who from time to time displays a mischievous intellectual streak,
\nmay let this game go on awhile. Sooner or later, though, you figure
\nhe’ll have to issue a more magisterial pronunciamento of his own. There actually are lives at stake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The AP report on Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi’s clarification of Pope Benedict’s notorious condom-and-AIDS remark concluded with the following portentous penultimate graph: Lombardi said the pope didn’t use the technical terminology “lesser evil” in his comments because he wanted his words to be understood by the general public. Vatican officials, however, said that was what…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nThe pope and the "lesser evil" - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/the-pope-and-the-lesser-evil.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The pope and the "lesser evil" - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The AP report on Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi’s clarification of Pope Benedict’s notorious condom-and-AIDS remark concluded with the following portentous penultimate graph: Lombardi said the pope didn’t use the technical terminology “lesser evil” in his comments because he wanted his words to be understood by the general public. Vatican officials, however, said that was what…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/the-pope-and-the-lesser-evil.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-12-14T13:28:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The pope and the \"lesser evil\" - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/the-pope-and-the-lesser-evil.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The pope and the \"lesser evil\" - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"The AP report on Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi’s clarification of Pope Benedict’s notorious condom-and-AIDS remark concluded with the following portentous penultimate graph: Lombardi said the pope didn’t use the technical terminology “lesser evil” in his comments because he wanted his words to be understood by the general public. 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After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}