Who said, "A lie can get halfway around the world while truth is still putting its boots on"? (I'm NOT saying YOU lied. The Lamestream Media did.)
The following is an inadequate analogy for what the Pope was talking about:
Suppose I were a bank robber. Suppose my M.O. were to enter a bank and wave a firearm around and threaten mayhem and slaughter if my demands were not obeyed.
Now suppose one day I decided not to put any cartridges in my magazine, because I'd decided that I really didn't want to take the risk of hurting anyone.
That would be a moral step forward for a bank robber. He's still wrong to rob banks, to 'assault' people with a firearm, loaded or not. But he IS showing some faint sign of a moral sensitivity.
To make it a better analogy, suppose that instead of injecting each person in the bank with a drug which would immobilize them, I decided I'd just tie them up, because it's safer.
It's better because tying people up is wrong, as is condom use. But my entertaining the idea of this wrong thing is motivated by a heightened awareness of the needs of others. So it is (a) a moral step forward but (b) still immoral and illicit.
Prostitution is wrong. Using condoms is wrong. But IF a male prostitute uses condoms with the intention of protecting clients - he is still intending a great many deeds which are objectively wrong. BUT he is also showing the faint flicker of an ember of conscience which MIGHT, by the grace of God, one day be fanned or blown into a fire.
IN Elliot's Murder in the Cathedral Becket turns away from what he terms "the greatest treason, to do the right thing for the wrong reason."
Here our subject is doing the wrong thing not for THE right reason, but for a reason which nonetheless exhibits some moral awareness.
I think that, sitting around in private with a bunch of well -educated Thomistic - trained fellow Catholics, there would be nothing whatsoever wrong with throwing out his comments for some robust heart-felt debate on a Friday night over a few brews.
On the other hand, throwing out these comments in a post/anti-Christian pop culture, out of context, without clarification, as L'Osservatore Romano did, was not only grossly imprudent but represents the malfeasance that has come to typify L'Osservatore Romano and the Vatican bureacracy in general since VII.
The Pope should have known better than to use a book targeted at a largely secular audience to introduce such a difficult and nuanced discussion. L'Osservatore Romano did know better than to throw out that excerpt out of context, without clarification. They had an agenda, and clearly derailed the launching of the Pope's book as a result.
The Pope should have known better!
It was grossly imprudent to introduce this issue in this manner, and he should have foreseen that.
And L'Osservatore Romano should be shut down completely for their treachery in this regard.