12/22/2010 Professor Rhonheimer Writes.

And the …

Professor Rhonheimer Writes. And the Holy Office Agrees

Exclusive to www.chiesa, an open letter by the great Swiss theologian in defense of the
"understanding and farsighted vision" of Benedict XVI on sexual morality. And to follow, the note
released the same day by the congregation for the doctrine of the faith

by Sandro Magister

ROME, December 22, 2010 – The discussion on sexual morality ignited by Benedict XVI in a
passage of his book-length interview "Light of the World" keeps moving higher and higher.

Yesterday afternoon, Professor Martin Rhonheimer, a priest of Opus Dei and a professor, in Rome,
at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, gave www.chiesa exclusive rights to an extensive
reflection he wrote in elaboration and development on the sketchy comments offered by the pope.

And at the same time, "L'Osservatore Romano" went to press with a note from the congregation for
the doctrine of the faith on "the trivialization of sexuality, regarding certain interpretations of 'Light of
the World'." A note published simultaneously in six languages on the Vatican website.

The note agrees completely with Rhonheimer's positions. But Rhonheimer himself says much more,
especially where he reflects on the encyclical "Humanae Vitae": another theme to which Benedict
XVI has said that "more and better attention must be paid."

Those who - like Luke Gormally of the Pontifical Academy for Life, in an open letter also entrusted
to www.chiesa a few days ago - were urging the congregation to make a statement that would
definitively settle the discussion and quell the "confusion" produced by the pope's words, cannot
help but be disappointed.

The congregation has spoken, but in the opposite direction. It is also encouraging discussion, and
"more and better" exploration.

The following, in the original English text, is the reflection by Rhonheimer, in the form of an open
letter in reply to Gormally.

And to follow, in the language versions produced by the Holy See, the text of the December 21 note
from the congregation for the doctrine of the faith.

____________

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REPLY TO THE OPEN LETTER OF LUKE GORMALLY

by Martin Rhonheimer

Dear Luke,

I agree that at this stage of the debate it is best to address each other publicly and that, indeed, the
time of our “private and friendly email exchanges” about this topic in earlier years is now over. But I
feel a little saddened by the rather unfriendly way you have done so, without first seeking personal
contact. Given that you already addressed me publicly in your 2005 "National Catholic Bioethics
Quarterly" (NCBQ) article, which on your request was also distributed by www.chiesa, I am now
surprised that you actually choose the form of a “letter” to address me. As you will see in the
following, I have a guess about your possible reasons for doing so.

You wonder what might be implied in my statement that the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith
(CDF) “had no problem” with my 2004 "Tablet" article, and then take this somewhat vague phrase
of mine and try to give it a weight it simply does not have. You suggest that I falsely claimed that my
2004 article was formally examined and approved by the CDF, when you know that no such formal
examination took place. It seems that you are publicly pushing such a reading of my words in order
to set the staff of the CDF against me. Rather than asking me what I meant by the phrase, you
write: “There is clearly an urgent need now for the Congregation publicly to clarify its position.”

Let me now explain what lay behind my phrase. What I said about the CDF has to be read in the
context of my interview with "Our Sunday Visitor" (OSV) Newsweekly in which, in response to a
question, I said:

"After publishing that article in July 2004 and becoming aware that, unexpectedly for me, it was
being heavily criticized by some moral theologians faithful to the Magisterium, I sent the article to the
CDF, and was subsequently informed that they had no problem with it."

Neither here nor anywhere else do I suggest that there was a formal examination and approval of
my article by the CDF. Indeed, the Congregation only entered into this matter because I was urged
to seek its advice following the publication of that article.

What happened was this. After the article came out a very good friend of mine, a highly influential
moral theologian who was personally opposed to what I wrote in "The Tablet," came to me also on
behalf of others. He urged me in the strongest terms to retract from what he, and other critics of my
article, considered to be scandalous affirmations opposed to Church teaching. Concerned to
protect my reputation, my friend even urged me to issue a formal statement of submission to the
Magisterium, which, he said, was necessary to allay any doubt about my orthodoxy.

Because all this came from a person who has always merited, and continues to merit, my highest
respect and gratitude, I was very worried, and immediately informed the CDF about the article and
the reactions it had provoked. I also offered to issue a statement of submission, as my friend had
suggested.

The answer I received from two different persons at the Congregation was the following: that in the
CDF my article had not caused any concern; and that I should certainly not issue any public
statement of the sort I was being urged to make. Now, these persons were not consultors but key
members of the CDF staff, close to its then prefect, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. I was therefore
confident that they were speaking with full knowledge of what was going on in the Congregation.

Naturally I was relieved. But I did not think then, nor do I think now, that this advice was anything
other than personal and informal, and by referring to it I never suggested that my article had been
officially examined or its content been formally approved by the Congregation. Nor do I think that
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anyone could possibly read my words to OSV as a claim of formal approval. Had there been a
formal assessment by the CDF I would have said so.

Yet it remains the case that, in contrast to your reaction and that of some others, the Congregation
did not consider the article scandalous or in contravention of church teaching. This is what I meant
with “they had no problem with it” which I think is an appropriate formulation for what happened.

Moreover, when Sandro Magister published my recent article at www.chiesa translated into different
languages, I asked him to change one of the renditions to avoid giving the impression that this
article was officially examined or approved by the CDF.

I hope that with these explanations the question you ask of “what precisely is meant” by my remarks
to OSV in respect of the CDF and my article can now be considered settled.

In your letter you also assert that my recent interventions “amount in effect to renewed public
advocacy of [my] point of view.” You know very well that some time ago I declared in the NCBQ that I
would not further defend in public my view that condomized sexual intercourse can be a marital act,
and would instead await a decision by Church authorities on this topic. Of course, Pope Benedict’s
statement on prophylactic condom use in his interview with Peter Seewald changed the situation in
one very substantial aspect: if I was criticized in 2004 by many because of my views on prophylactic
condom use in morally disordered sexual activity, I am not surprised that now the Holy Father is
criticized by the same people for expressing analogous views. It was obvious that for my critics,
including of course yourself, the Holy Father’s words on condoms were upsetting. Other critics such
as Janet E. Smith and George Weigel have sought to give a particular interpretation of the Pope’s
remarks which in my view is forced and unsustainable. You and others clearly considered the Pope
to be mistaken.

When "Light of the World" was published, I thought it appropriate to help to clarify what the Holy
Father said, not because I sought to add to his words or even put a particular gloss on them, but
because they needed to be defended against interpretations which distorted them. Those
distortions were being aired not just by some journalists and revisionist moral theologians, but also
by those who, while claiming to be faithful to the Magisterium, excoriated the Holy Father. In a letter
to Sandro Magister published at www.chiesa, for example, you accused Pope Benedict of acting
“irresponsibly” by giving “ambiguously phrased responses to Seewald” and describing him as acting
“self-indulgently.”

In light of public admission of attempts to prevent its publication, I had the impression that the
English translation of that passage had been “softened” so as to make it more acceptable to those
who regarded the Holy Father’s remarks as erroneous or imprudent. This, and the imprecision in
the Italian translation, led to the clarification by Fr. Lombardi which those same critics have never
really accepted. George Weigel, for example, has written that Fr. Lombardi’s clarifications “made
matters worse” and has even suggested that the Vatican’s spokesman did not accurately
communicate the Holy Father’s mind.

In order to defend what seemed to me the authentic meaning of the Holy Father’s statement –
which, as I explained in my OSV interview, was a very limited and qualified statement – I could not
avoid explaining again some aspects of my views concerning prophylactic condom use in the case
of prostitutes and other morally disordered forms of sexual activity. Yet I explicitly avoided engaging
the question of condom use in marriage. I mentioned that in 2004 I had not considered your
argument, relying as it did on Canon Law, and that I would prefer to wait for an official decision on
that issue. What I did, and had to do in the present circumstances, was to reformulate the problem
in order to explain the primary point on which I disagreed with my critics. At the same time I made it
clear that the Pope had not touched on the question of the serodiscordant married couple and that
no one could use his remarks to claim that this question had been settled. So what I am going on to
say now should in no way be claimed to be an insight into the Holy Father’s mind on this question. I
honestly don’t know what Pope Benedict thinks about these issues.

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Your publicly addressing me with this question in an open letter forces me to restate my point of
view so as to prevent giving the impression that your position is unchallenged. The first thing I wish
to clarify is that you misrepresent – as did others – what I said on prophylactic condom use by
prostitutes and fornicators. You reproach me for endorsing – in cases where people cannot be
persuaded from abstaining from immoral behaviour – “the ‘common sense’, worldly wisdom” of
“representing as preferable ‘sins against nature’ which are more deeply corrupting of a person’s
sexual dispositions.” This is an erroneous reformulation of my view which is beside the point. It also
reflects your view that what the Holy Father said in his interview is “irresponsible” and actually
mistaken – perhaps even – in your words – “subversive” of Catholic moral teaching.

Secondly you seem to me to confound Catholic moral teaching on the one hand and the reasons or
arguments given for this teaching, on the other. You refer to a – certainly very consistent – view
about “sins against nature” in the case of marital acts. I do not in the least deny the existence of
“sins against nature” and have written much about this in defence of St Thomas Aquinas’ teaching
on this topic against revisionist moral theologians. Yet we should keep in mind that in order to
understand what in the case of marital acts a “sin against nature” was, Aquinas, along with many
other theologians before and after him, mainly St. Augustine, depended on the biological knowledge
about human reproduction available at their time. They believed that the entire power of life was in
the male semen, totally ignoring the existence of the female ovum, and that human life comes into
existence through the fusion of the two gametes.

This influential “tradition” is why, even to this day, the majority of canon lawyers – there has been
disagreement about this during the revision of the Code of Canon Law – do not consider
condomized sexual intercourse to be marital acts capable of consummating a marriage, while they
consider a marriage to be consummated in which hormonal contraception is practised, precisely
because the male semen has entered the vagina. This is also why for a long time Canon Law
practically equated contraception and abortion, thinking that the impeding of insemination was a
kind of early stage of homicide and thus a sin against the Fifth Commandment. Though there are
some who also today have based an argument against contraception on this tradition of seeing
contraception as analogous to homicide, this interpretation seems nowadays to be obsolete. Pope
John Paul II’s encyclical "Evangelium vitae" (Nr. 13) explicitly teaches that, unlike abortion,
contraception is not a sin against justice but against chastity: “… from the moral point of view
contraception and abortion are specifically different evils: the former contradicts the full truth of the
sexual act as the proper expression of conjugal love, while the latter destroys the life of a human
being; the former is opposed to the virtue of chastity in marriage, the latter is opposed to the virtue
of justice and directly violates the divine commandment ‘You shall not kill’.”

Let me simply ask whether it is necessary to hold, as an integral component of Catholic moral
teaching, that unless there is actual insemination “into” the vagina (not merely “in,” as is possible
with a condom, but “into”), a sexual act cannot be a conjugal act (the differentiation between “into”
and “in”, and what is really required to consummate marriage, remains a disputed question in
Canon Law which is originally related to the problem of impotence). The tradition of Canon Law to
which you constantly refer is venerable and has its weight. Though expressing an important truth,
namely the truth that sexuality is by nature ordered to the transmission of human life, the concrete
role and significance of this traditional argument is not unchangeable. And it is not undisputed
among canon lawyers themselves (I will spare you with the details).

In reality, it is not so much Canon 1061 §1 itself on which the differences turn but rather its
interpretation: and mainly the interpretation of the concept of “conjugal act” used in this canon as
an act “which is suitable in itself for the procreation of offspring, to which marriage is ordered by its
nature and by which the spouses become one flesh.” Reference to the phrase “suitable in itself for
the procreation of offspring” is the core of your argument. However, yours is a determinate
interpretation of this expression, as is also your interpretation of the expression “one flesh” (which
according to patristic tradition is not related to insemination or to any kind of skin contact not
impeded by latex but rather to the indissolubility of marriage). These are highly technical matters,
but you refer to them as if they were beyond any possibility of being challenged and also as if
canonical jurisprudence were an unchangeable part of Catholic moral doctrine.
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What is unchangeable is that the intentional separation of the procreative and the unitive meaning
of the marital acts by contraception is intrinsically evil because it destroys the natural meaning of
sexuality as being ordered to the transmission of life and therefore simultaneously undermines the
unitive meaning of marital love. Is contraception a “sin against nature”? Yes, certainly. But it is a sin
against nature exactly because it is opposed to the virtue of chastity, and not the other way round: it
is not against chastity simply because it is “against nature” – because you always need a further
specifically moral argument to show why doing something “against nature” is also a sin against
nature. I shall not explain this here in detail – I have written enough about it elsewhere – but the
point is that in order to identify a “sin against nature” one must have an argument which shows that
in this case “nature” which is acted against is a necessary presupposition for the order of reason
(which is the order of the moral virtues). Aquinas also affirms this, even though in the case of sexual
morality his views are obviously influenced by a defective knowledge of the biology of reproduction
(which affects some of his arguments in sexual morality).

What I said has nothing to do with “intentionalism,” as some claim without having studied – or by
clearly misrepresenting – my writings about this subject. Steven A. Long, for example, who has
repeated this charge against me on www.chiesa as well as his blog, despite being repeatedly shown
by me and others that he was wrong in blaming me for this, and that he gravely misrepresented my
views on “object” and “intention.” George Weigel now echoes Long’s charges without apparently
having studied my work on this topic; he writes as if my views were the end of Catholic presence in
health care institutions. Relying on Steven Long, Weigel makes the following wild assertion on his
"First Things" blog: “If the Rhonheimer approach were adopted, [Long] cautioned, that would ‘signal
the end of any distinctive Catholic presence in hospitals, or in the bio-medical conversations of the
day, because intentionalism is frankly a doctrine that can justify anything...’.” This comes near to
slander and is a most regrettable misconstrual of my arguments. These are not methods used in
debates but in political campaigns designed to force change through the application of pressure –
in this case, by raising the spectre of the Church losing its distinctive witness. Long and Weigel’s
remarks are corrosive of the collegiality and mutual respect that should characterize Catholic
intellectual life; that they have been published by people with which I am connected in a friendly way
causes me both perplexity and additional distress.

My position on the questions is very far from “intentionalism”: it is the fruit of an analysis of the
nature of human acts in studies written during the last 25 years. You refer to "Humanae vitae"
section 12 saying that there is “an inseparable connection – established by God and not to be
broken by human choice – between the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning which are
both inherent in the conjugal act” and you think that this quotation is sufficient to end the debate in
your favour. Yet you simply read it your way, without considering the context in which this was said
and which permits also other understandings of this passage.

As I have written in a privately distributed text containing some clarifications about my 2004 article in
"The Tablet", Paul VI’s encyclical "Humanae vitae" – and this was new – defined contraception not
in traditional terms of frustrating natural processes and patterns, but in terms of its intentional
opposition to the bonum prolis, the specific marital “good of offspring”. (Notice that Catholic tradition
has always spoken of the "bonum prolis," the good of offspring, and not a "bonum inseminationis."
Insemination is a morally important good only to the extent it is a means for the good of offspring,
but not in itself.)

The more precise definition of the contraceptive act by "Humanae vitae" was articulated to meet the
need to include in the moral norm prohibiting contraception not only “unnatural” means such as
physical barriers impeding insemination, but also hormonal anti-ovulatory technologies. In their
efforts to have the latter declared acceptable, many theologians in the 1960s argued that ”the Pill”
emulates nature, which renders a woman infertile at times through the hormonal control of the
process of ovulation.

To take an anovulant pill, they argued, does not mean to pervert, in a way considered to be
intrinsically “against nature”, the generative faculty or the act of copulation; hormonal contraception,
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they contended, only does what nature herself does, that is, it interrupts ovulation and therewith
renders the penetration of the male semen generatively ineffective. Because insemination into the
vagina was not impeded by any unnatural barrier when using “the Pill,” the naturally fertile structure
of the marital act was not violated and fertility was regulated much as nature itself does. You will no
doubt notice that the point of departure of the revisionist justification of the pill is close to your way
of arguing!

Revisionists then argued that, instead of nature regulating fertility through hormonal levels, it is now
the spouses who make this choice as a part of responsible parenthood, leaving the natural process
of insemination intact. Hormonal contraception, they concluded, was entirely “natural” – in the sense
of not being “against nature” – and, therefore, morally acceptable. Paul VI rejected this view,
entirely focused on “nature” in the sense of physiological patterns, when he taught in "Humanae
vitae" that the sinfulness of contraception was not the physical “unnaturalness” of the act, but the
very purpose of having sex while simultaneously and intentionally trying to deprive it of its possible
procreative effect. This precisely applies equally and exactly for the same reason both to
mechanical barriers, like condoms, and to hormonal contraceptives.

This is why "Humanae vitae" section 14 is so important. It contains the definition of contraception
which has been included into the "Catechism of the Catholic Church" (Nr. 2370). You and others
who argue in your way seem completely to overlook this passage. It defines the contraceptive act as
an “action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the
development of its natural consequences, proposes (Latin 'intendat'), whether as an end or as a
means, to render procreation impossible”, that is, it is done for the very purpose or proposal of
preventing conception into the definition of the morally evil act.

As "Humanae vitae" states, this doctrine is founded on the inseparable connection between the
procreative and the unitive meanings of the marital act. This means that the unitive meaning of this
act includes its procreative significance, and vice versa. To be an act of true marital love, the sexual
union between the spouses must include both their mutual and unitive self-giving and their
openness to serve, through their love, the task of transmitting human life. This is why “intention” –
the end or purpose sought in the action – is so important to define the very contraceptive act: this
openness of the spouses, and therefore the openness of their sexual acts – as human acts – to the
task of transmitting human life, depends on their willingness to responsibly serve this task whereas
a contraceptive act is precisely opposed to doing so.

As you very well know, the official Latin text does not speak about “openness” but says that each
and every marriage act has to be “per se orientated ('per se destinatus') towards the transmission
of life”. In other words, the required “openness” of each marital act to procreation is not a property
of marital acts insofar as they are physical acts, but considered as intentional actions, that is,
insofar as they are the object of a choosing will. Such intentional openness means that every
marital act must always be chosen and carried out as an act which embodies the spouses’
commitment to responsibly serving the task of transmitting life. This intentional openness rules out
an intentional act against the transmission of life, but it does not rule out marital acts that cannot be
physically generative independent from one's intentions (e. g. for natural reasons).

This is why "Humanae vitae" stresses that natural infertility, which is outside the agent’s intention,
does not prevent naturally infertile acts from being “open” (or "per se destinatus") – precisely not in
a biological, but intentional sense – to the task of transmitting human life. This also applies to other
cases in which nothing is intentionally done to prevent sexual acts from being procreative, that is, in
which nothing is done intending the end or goal that procreation be impeded. This specifies the real
evil of contraception: to want to have sex and at the same time to prevent its procreative
consequences; to avoid, therefore, modifying one’s bodily, sexual behavior for reasons of
procreative responsibility, thus depriving sexual acts of their full marital meaning which includes
both the unitive and the procreative dimensions.

Finally, consider that "Humanae vitae" (Nr. 15) affirms that “the Church does not consider at all illicit
the use of those therapeutic means necessary to cure bodily diseases, even if a foreseeable
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impediment to procreation should result there from – provided such impediment is not directly
intended for any motive whatsoever.” I quote this passage not to suggest that condoms used for
prophylactic reasons are a therapeutic means, but because this passage implies that intending the
therapeutic end is not a further intention rendering good an otherwise evil act (impeding
procreation) but is instead the proposal or intention that specifies the very object of the act. So by
extracting a cancerous ovary, for example, one directly does something which will impede
procreation. The therapeutic end, however, is what defines the object of this act as an act of
healing (This follows the clear teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas that the human act has a single
proximate end from which it gets its species and that the relation to a natural end is accidental to
the morality of the act. See "Summa Theologiae" I-II, q.1, a.3, ad.3). The same physical act of
extracting the ovary therefore may be an act which is different by its moral object depending on the
proposal (or intention) with which it is done: it can be an act of sterilization or a therapeutic act of
healing a cancer (the fact of the ovary being cancerous is a circumstance with a special relation to
reason making the choice – or proposal – of extirpating the ovary to be therapeutic by its object).
"Humanae vitae" therefore considers licit those acts which by their physical nature directly impede
procreation yet which, in terms of their moral object, are not acts of contraception (or in this case: of
sterilization), and this because of the different end they seek and proposal they embody. This again
manifests how central for "Humanae vitae" is the consideration of contraception as an intentional
action, defined not only by what occurs physically, but also by the end for which it is carried out.

Now, what I have summarized above is simply a different interpretation of the texts of "Humane
vitae", one which, I suggest, has a wider textual basis and more thorough theoretical grounding than
your own (for a thorough treatment see Part I of my "Ethics of Procreation and the Defense of
Human Life," CUA Press 2010). My interpretation affirms the traditional teaching that contraception
is intrinsically evil, but with a different rationale, yielding some different applications in special cases.
The point of it all, as you say– and here we agree – is to live the virtue of chastity. Now it seems to
me that your conception of chastity is very much tied to “refraining from sinful acts,” and to an
emphasis on the absolute inviolability of insemination. But this is not the classical concept of
chastity; at least, it is only a marginal part of it.

Considered as a moral virtue, chastity is part of the cardinal virtue of temperance. According to
Aristotle and Aquinas, temperance is essentially about relating to one’s sensual drives – including
the sexual drive – according to right reason, by imprinting right reason in one’s concrete bodily
behaviour. Contraception is against nature because it impedes the virtue of chastity (especially the
subset of it which I call procreative responsibility) by rendering superfluous the need to imprint right
reason into bodily behaviour (by acts of refraining from sexual intercourse for reasons of
procreative responsibility). A sinful act must be defined from the starting point of the requirements
of the virtue of temperance and, in the present case, chastity, and not vice versa, as you propose.
This, after all, is the methodology Aquinas has taught us: that to know whether an act is sinful you
must know to which virtue it is opposed. It is the ends of the virtues – which coincide with the
principles (or precepts) of natural law – which, by looking at what opposes them, define sinful moral
behaviour.

I am aware that, as you wrote in your letter, your “critique did not rest on any claim that the use of a
condom is necessarily contraceptive” but rather on the argument that condomistic intercourse “is an
essentially non-reproductive sexual behaviour.” You perhaps can accept what I say about
contraception, but you want to distinguish – from any form of contracepted acts – those acts which
in addition are behaviourally essentially non-reproductive and therefore “against nature.” In my view
"Humanae vitae" has rendered obsolete this distinction.

As I have written in my recent response to Janet E. Smith, “[i]n light of a new challenge posed by the
anovulant pill, which forced the Church to make clear that the evil of contraception was not
essentially located in the interruption of insemination, I believe that the encyclical 'Humanae Vitae' is
best understood as opening the way toward a new perspective giving greater attention to intentional
human actions and moral virtue, a more personalistic emphasis reflected in the Second Vatican
Council which in its Pastoral Constitution 'Gaudium et Spes,' No. 51, demanded an approach by
‘objective standards… based on the nature of the human person and his acts,’ which ‘preserve the
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full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love,’ a goal which
‘cannot be achieved unless the virtue of conjugal chastity is sincerely practiced’.”

The teaching remains; the arguments are modified, and some concrete applications may change,
as perhaps what canon lawyers understand as consummating marriage, that is, how they will
interpret the phrase “suitable in itself for the procreation of offspring.” It seems to me that – like
many more traditionalistic than traditionally thinking people – you tend to conflate the arguments
with the teaching itself, confusing what is contingent and accidental with the substance of the
teaching. In my view, this confusion is a serious impediment for understanding the encyclical
"Humanae vitae" which still needs to be discovered and made understood to the world. It is
prophetic and is full of wisdom, a wisdom not tied to a certain view about nature contingent on
knowledge of biological facts – which are morally relevant, but not yet a moral argument – but rather
the wisdom of a morality rooted in the virtues as moral perfection and fulfilment of what human
nature essentially is. This allows us to discuss sexual morality in light of a rich understanding of
conjugal chastity as expressed in the full truth about marriage.

That is why what you call subversive to my ears sounds rather promising – and not just to me but to
many others faithful to Church teaching. Pope Benedict XVI himself notes in "Light of the World" that
the “basic lines of 'Humanae vitae' are still correct” but that finding ways for people to live it are a
“further question”. We need to express that teaching, he notes, “in the context of today’s studies of
sexuality and anthropology.”

So it is a debate which needs to be carried on. I would not have entered into this question had you
not forced me to do so by addressing me in an open letter. You and others have publicly demanded
“an authoritative clarification” of this issue, hoping for a statement by the CDF which directly or
indirectly suggests that my view is opposed to catholic moral teaching. It was in the light of that
demand that I have sought to clarify once more exactly what I am saying, and what is at stake in this
question. As is obvious, I certainly do not think that your position is opposed to Church teaching;
but I do see it as a different approach, more traditional in certain respects but with serious
disadvantages (and the roots of my approach in Aristotelian virtue ethics are far from novel). As I
see it, both views can coexist with the traditional Catholic rejection of contraception; it would be
regrettable if, at this stage, the debate were simply be closed by an authoritative decision. But as I
have constantly repeated, if this happens I will readily adhere to any such decision.

I am conscious that with this letter, under challenge from your letter, I have been forced to again
publicly expose my view on this issue. I do not want to insist that I am right. As everybody who is
convinced of his own point of view I must and actually do consider that I can be mistaken. I have
great respect for your argument and always thought that you were setting it forth it in a very
consistent way. However, I know that many prominent moral theologians – who for different reasons
cannot, or have not chosen to, give me public support – agree with me. I also feel supported by
declarations in the past and the present by Church prelates who have issued similar views, some of
them having privately congratulated and encouraged me. I say this because you and others try to
give the impression of my being a solitary voice, opposed by the large majority of moral theologians.
This is simply untrue.

But while I welcome this debate, and believe it should continue, I am worried by your tendency – and
that of others who take your view – simply to repeat over and over again their positions like a kind
of mantra, without listening to counterarguments. Some years ago I challenged your argument,
referring to it in an important footnote in an article published in the NCBQ. You never replied to my
argument, but recently you have publicly repeated, and distributed via the Internet, the original
article without having addressed my counter arguments.

Lastly, and this is important, my agenda is absolutely not to promote the use of condoms, either for
married or for unmarried people. Although my views were clearly stated from the beginning, many
have somehow misunderstood what I wrote and therefore now wonder why I assert – as I already did
in 2004 – that I would never advise either unmarried or married people to use a condom for
prophylactic reasons but rather try to convince them to completely abstain from sexual intercourse.
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There are many good reasons to do so. But my real agenda is quite different: it is to defend and
promote the teaching of the encyclical "Humanae vitae" on contraception and chastity. I am
convinced that the kind of argument you are promoting is actually harmful to a right understanding
of this encyclical; and that this argument was one of the reasons it was so heavily misunderstood
and contested. Revisionist theologians precisely started from the kind of view which you still defend,
using its flaws and weaknesses to undermine the authority and intelligibility of Paul VI’s teaching.
Pope Benedict XVI says in "Light of the World" that there is now a great and urgent need to take a
fresh start in understanding "Humanae vitae" and communicating its message to the faithful and the
entire world. I am personally convinced that to do so we need to overcome the kind of argument you
rely on, and to deepen our understanding of both the meaning of the moral virtue of chastity, and of
why contraception is opposed to this virtue.

This is not breaking with tradition, as some think. The way I argue is in many aspects more rooted in
tradition than reliance on the scientifically mistaken idea: that for a conjugal act to be a generative
kind of act and essentially reproductive behaviour, the penetrating of male semen into the vagina is
the only requirement. On the basis of modern knowledge of the biological process of reproduction
and, thus, “nature,” your understanding of the relevance of insemination is counterintuitive because
it disregards the contribution of the female ovum. I know that you will try to rebut this by saying that
it is the external behavioural pattern that counts. But, with such an argument, you will incur the
difficulty of promoting an even more one sided view of sexuality, which focuses only on the male
contribution to the conjugal act. You should then admit that, according to your approach, a marital
act intentionally rendered infertile by the anovulatory pill is still an act of a generative kind because
the behavioural pattern of depositing semen into the vagina remains unaltered, despite the fact that
the allegedly generative character of that deposition is now an utter farce! It takes pre-modern and
pre-scientific biology to render such a claim intuitively appealing.

Nor is my approach to the analysis of human action and its moral specification – which is firmly
grounded in the teaching of Aquinas – to be dismissed as “intentionalism”; what I hold is certainly
not a relativistic notion that intentions are independent from objective givens and circumstances.
Intentional actions are shaped by the object of the human act as it is presented to the choosing will
by reason. The human will cannot shift at whim deciding what is the moral object and therefore the
basic moral quality of one’s act. I know that on this last point we both agree. But we disagree about
how to make out, in this single case, what is according to right reason. Such a disagreement is not,
in my view, a tragedy. In any case, I could very well live with your argument being the right one. But I
think your understanding of the decisive role of insemination is really not the point of "Humanae
vitae," and such an understanding makes it difficult to grasp the essence of its teaching about the
virtue of marital chastity.

I think, however, that there is a deep truth contained in the traditional argument which you defend,
namely a deep awareness of the holiness of human life and the conviction that the sexual union
between man and woman united in marriage serves not only a biological pattern or necessity in the
course of evolution, but a divine and holy design. This is, as I should wish to emphasize, what
confers to contraception – the intentional separation of sexuality and procreation – its character of
an especially grave moral disorder. This is the tradition we have to uphold and announce to the
world, even if the arguments evolve or change in certain aspects.

I hope that someday we will be back to the good old days when we friendly and privately exchanged
emails instead of publicly debating in open letters.

In the meantime, please accept my warm best wishes for a blessed and happy Christmas and a
fruitful 2011

Fr. Martin Rhonheimer

December 21, 2010

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ON THE TRIVIALIZATION OF SEXUALITY – REGARDING CERTAIN INTERPRETATIONS OF

"LIGHT OF THE WORLD"

Note of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

Following the publication of the interview-book "Light of the World" by Benedict XVI, a number of
erroneous interpretations have emerged which have caused confusion concerning the position of
the Catholic Church regarding certain questions of sexual morality. The thought of the Pope has
been repeatedly manipulated for ends and interests which are entirely foreign to the meaning of his
words – a meaning which is evident to anyone who reads the entire chapters in which human
sexuality is treated. The intention of the Holy Father is clear: to rediscover the beauty of the divine
gift of human sexuality and, in this way, to avoid the cheapening of sexuality which is common today.

Some interpretations have presented the words of the Pope as a contradiction of the traditional
moral teaching of the Church. This hypothesis has been welcomed by some as a positive change
and lamented by others as a cause of concern – as if his statements represented a break with the
doctrine concerning contraception and with the Church’s stance in the fight against AIDS. In reality,
the words of the Pope – which specifically concern a gravely disordered type of human behaviour,
namely prostitution (cf. "Light of the World," pp. 117-119) – do not signify a change in Catholic
moral teaching or in the pastoral practice of the Church.

As is clear from an attentive reading of the pages in question, the Holy Father was talking neither
about conjugal morality nor about the moral norm concerning contraception. This norm belongs to
the tradition of the Church and was summarized succinctly by Pope Paul VI in paragraph 14 of his
Encyclical Letter "Humanae vitae," when he wrote that "also to be excluded is any action which
either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent
procreation—whether as an end or as a means." The idea that anyone could deduce from the
words of Benedict XVI that it is somehow legitimate, in certain situations, to use condoms to avoid an
unwanted pregnancy is completely arbitrary and is in no way justified either by his words or in his
thought. On this issue the Pope proposes instead – and also calls the pastors of the Church to
propose more often and more effectively (cf. "Light of the World," p. 147) – humanly and ethically
acceptable ways of behaving which respect the inseparable connection between the unitive and
procreative meaning of every conjugal act, through the possible use of natural family planning in
view of responsible procreation.

On the pages in question, the Holy Father refers to the completely different case of prostitution, a
type of behaviour which Christian morality has always considered gravely immoral (cf. Vatican II,
Pastoral Constitution "Gaudium et spes," n. 27; Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 2355). The
response of the entire Christian tradition – and indeed not only of the Christian tradition – to the
practice of prostitution can be summed up in the words of St. Paul: "Flee from fornication" (1 Cor
6:18). The practice of prostitution should be shunned, and it is the duty of the agencies of the
Church, of civil society and of the State to do all they can to liberate those involved from this
practice.

In this regard, it must be noted that the situation created by the spread of AIDS in many areas of the
world has made the problem of prostitution even more serious. Those who know themselves to be
infected with HIV and who therefore run the risk of infecting others, apart from committing a sin
against the sixth commandment are also committing a sin against the fifth commandment – because
they are consciously putting the lives of others at risk through behaviour which has repercussions
on public health. In this situation, the Holy Father clearly affirms that the provision of condoms does
not constitute "the real or moral solution" to the problem of AIDS and also that "the sheer fixation on
the condom implies a banalization of sexuality" in that it refuses to address the mistaken human
behaviour which is the root cause of the spread of the virus. In this context, however, it cannot be
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denied that anyone who uses a condom in order to diminish the risk posed to another person is
intending to reduce the evil connected with his or her immoral activity. In this sense the Holy Father
points out that the use of a condom "with the intention of reducing the risk of infection, can be a first
step in a movement towards a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality." This affirmation
is clearly compatible with the Holy Father’s previous statement that this is "not really the way to deal
with the evil of HIV infection."

Some commentators have interpreted the words of Benedict XVI according to the so-called theory of
the "lesser evil". This theory is, however, susceptible to proportionalistic misinterpretation (cf. John
Paul II, Encyclical Letter "Veritatis splendor," n. 75-77). An action which is objectively evil, even if a
lesser evil, can never be licitly willed. The Holy Father did not say – as some people have claimed –
that prostitution with the use of a condom can be chosen as a lesser evil. The Church teaches that
prostitution is immoral and should be shunned. However, those involved in prostitution who are HIV
positive and who seek to diminish the risk of contagion by the use of a condom may be taking the
first step in respecting the life of another – even if the evil of prostitution remains in all its gravity.
This understanding is in full conformity with the moral theological tradition of the Church.

In conclusion, in the battle against AIDS, the Catholic faithful and the agencies of the Catholic
Church should be close to those affected, should care for the sick and should encourage all people
to live abstinence before and fidelity within marriage. In this regard it is also important to condemn
any behaviour which cheapens sexuality because, as the Pope says, such behaviour is the reason
why so many people no longer see in sexuality an expression of their love: "This is why the fight
against the banalization of sexuality is also part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as
a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man’s being" ("Light of the
World," p. 119).

December 21, 2010

_____________

The previous articles from www.chiesa, with the main contributions to the discussion ignited by the
words of Benedict XVI in "Light of the World":

> Sexual Ethics. Six Professors Discuss the Ratzinger Case (18.12.2010)

> On the Condom and AIDS, the Pope Has Come Down from the Cathedra
(11.12.2010)

> Church and Condoms. The "No" of the Diehards (4.12.2010)

> Friendly Fire on Benedict XVI. And a Condom's to Blame (1.12.2010)

> "Light of the World." A Papal First (25.11.2010)

> The Pope on the Pope. A Preview (22.11.2010)

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The latest three articles from www.chiesa:

20.12.2010
> The Pope's Merry Christmas: "Only the Truth Saves"
In his pre-Christmas address to the curia, Benedict XVI is actually speaking to the whole world.

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12/22/2010 Professor Rhonheimer Writes. And the …
Sexual abuse by the clergy, he says, is the effect of the inability to distinguish between good and
evil. And he recalls the lesson of Newman: conscience is made to obey the truth

18.12.2010
> Sexual Ethics. Six Professors Discuss the Ratzinger Case
Luke Gormally, of the Pontifical Academy for Life, replies to Martin Rhonheimer, of the Pontifical
University of the Holy Cross. Then two Italian Catholic philosophers. And an Argentinian. And
George Weigel... All started by something the pope said

16.12.2010
> With Maciel Buried, His Centurions' Fires Are Burning Out
The leaders who covered up the misdeeds of the "false prophet" continue to occupy their positions
of command. But their end is in sight. Among the Legionaries of Christ, revolt is stirring. The slow
but inexorable pace of the papal delegate

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22.12.2010

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