Pope Benedict XVI's recent statements on the use of condoms to spread AIDS signals an important shift in the church's approach to this vexed issue. In 2000, two Jesuits--a doctor and a theologian--wrote an article for America detaling what they perceived to be tolerant signals coming from Rome on the use of condoms. Citing an article in L’Osservatore Romano, they argued that the Roman Curia was more tolerant on the matter than individual bishops:
While many readers may be surprised by the article’s tolerance, we are not. Admittedly, the Vatican has intervened otherwise, as in 1988, when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith raised questions about the U.S. Catholic Conference’s pastoral letter The Many Faces of AIDS: A Gospel Response (1987), and again in 1995, when the same congregation acted against a resource pack on H.I.V. education published with an imprimatur by the archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh. However, health care workers and moral theologians have encountered an implicit tolerance from the Roman Curia when they have first asserted church teaching on sexuality and subsequently addressed the prophylactic issue. For instance, more than 25 moral theologians have published articles claiming that without undermining church teaching, church leaders do not have to oppose but may support the distribution of prophylactics within an educational program that first underlines church teaching on sexuality. These arguments are made by invoking moral principles like those of “lesser evil,” “cooperation,” “toleration” and “double effect.” By these arguments, moralists around the world now recognize a theological consensus on the legitimacy of various H.I.V. preventive efforts.
Without known interference, the Vatican has allowed theologians to achieve this consensus. Vatican curial officials now seem willing publicly to recognize the legitimacy of the theologians’ arguments. Hesitant local ordinaries will in turn, we hope, note Monsignor Suaudeau’s tolerant signals and more easily listen to the prudent counsel of their own health care and pastoral workers and their moral theologians.
The same can be said of the two principles of marriage. The Church says that a couple can be closed to procreation on a marriage level, after children are had for good reasons. However, after a couple satisfies their procreative responsibilites they must be open to procreation during each marital act. This is counter-intuitive and contradictory as well. The remote end of sexual intercourse, under these circumstances, is the greater common good of the family. This reorders or replaces the proximate end of sexual intercourse (where condoms or contraception prevents procreation during fertile periods).
To clarify (not to take sides) I believe that B16 said that condom use was a step toward taking responsibility. That is a little different than a total acceptance of condom use. It says more about his pastoral approach than it does about the theology of the issue.
The morality of an action is its moral species, which is determined by its object and end. This is a debate about morality, not pastoral theology. Benedict XVI did not specify that this was simply a pastoral suggestion. He said it was licit to use condoms under certain circumstances and sigthted the male prostitute as an example. He also said it was a step towards taking responsibility! The only responsibility here was to stop the very high possibility of spreading a disease such as AIDS. It was about the greater common good of love thy neighbor.
As for pastoral suggestions; consider the Vatican's way of dealing with contraception. Contraception is intrinsively evil according to the Vatican, yet priests grant absolution to those who practice contraception as "habitual sinners" under the principle of gradualization. In other words, it is expected that they will eventually become aware of their evil ways and stop sinning after much prayer and receiving the sacraments. For many theologians and bishops, this seems like a contradiction since those that practice contraception have no real intention of stopping (they have no firm purpose of amendment). Once absolved, there is no reason to go to confession again for contraception. This is likely one of the reasons why 90% of Catholics don't confess contraception as sin. The other is that they don't think it is a sin.
How is this point lost on men who address the abstract?
And that, by the way, is the difference between the pastoral and the theological - the difference is between the the concrete lived experience of real human persons, and the abstract ideas of disinterested persons.