Bruce Fhronen Reviews Martin Rhonheimer's The Common Good of Constitutional Democracy

The Cultural Contradictions of Modern Liberalism

The Common Good of Constitutional Democracy: Essays in Political Philosophy and on Catholic Social Teaching by Martin Rhonheimer, edited by William F. Murphy, Jr. (Catholic University of America Press, 2013)

Who's Betraying Tradition. The Grand Dispute

The discussion is becoming heated over how to interpret the innovations of Vatican Council II, above all on freedom of religion. The traditionalists against Benedict XVI. An essay by philosopher Martin Rhonheimer in support of the pope

by Sandro Magister

It continues

Sandro Magister, Professor Rhonheimer Writes. And the Holy Office Agrees
Exclusive to www.chiesa, an open letter by the Swiss philosopher 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

Chiesa: 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

The Hermeneutic of Continuity: Janet Smith responds to Fr Ronheimer

Fr. Rhonheimer jumping to conclusions?

With respect to how he understands the "condom controversy":

Sandro Magister: On the Condom and AIDS, the Pope Has Come Down from the Cathedra

Sandro Magister on the condom kerfluffle

25.11.10 "Light of the World." A Papal First
A book so "risky" has no precedent for a successor of Peter. "Everyone is free to contradict me" is his motto. On the controversial question of the condom, Professor Rhonheimer explains why Benedict XVI is right

1.12.10 Friendly Fire on Benedict XVI. And a Condom's to Blame
The pope's openness to the use of condoms is provoking lively reactions from some fervent "Ratzingerians." They include Jesuit Fr. Joseph Fessio, his publisher in America, and authoritative members of the Pontifical Academy for Life. Here are their criticisms

4.12.10 Church and Condoms. The "No" of the Diehards
A note from the bishops of Kenya and three authoritative "Ratzingerians" maintain that the pope is also for a condemnation with no exceptions. And those who say the contrary are betraying his thought

Scepter is publishing this book by Fr. Rhonheimer: Changing the World - The Timeliness of Opus Dei.

(Some comments critical of Opus Dei left at Rorate Caeli by a traditionalist. He also claims that Dominus Iesus "is at odds with the traditional doctrine of the unicity of the Church." Even if some of his criticisms of the hype surrounding Opus Dei are valid, his other statements serve to discredit them.)

Spotlight on Martin Rhonheimer

Fr. Rhonheimer is a member of the faculty over at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome (an Opus Dei university). He has been mentioned in the past few weeks because of his position on the use of contraception to stop the transmission of AIDS and other STDS.

Fr. Guevin versus Fr. Rhonheimer on Humanae Vitae
(From Mirror of Justice; this can be found also on Fr. Rhonheimer's homepage at Santa Croce.)
I'm inclined to disagree with his position (which is shared by Fr. Cottier, O.P. -- how disappointing to read that from a Dominican).

His book Natural Law and Practical Reason is published by Fordham University Press.
Although he is not a proponent of the New Natural Law Theory, he shares some similarities with the NNLT theorists, including an advocacy of liberal democracy as the ideal form of government. When I finish reading his book, maybe I will write a critique of it. Otherwise, reviews can be found in The Thomist and the like.

Fr. Rhonheimer in the news and such:
www.cathnews.com/news/605/30.php
"Shouldn't Sexual Sinners at Least Have Safe Sex?"

His original article, from The Tablet.
10/07/2004
The truth about condoms
Martin Rhonheimer

Church leaders have caused a furore by suggesting that even the HIV-infected should avoid condoms. But this is not church teaching, says a leading moral philosopher

Most people are convinced that an HIV-infected person who has sex should use a condom to protect his partner from infection. Whatever one may think about a promiscuous lifestyle, about homosexual acts or prostitution, that person acts at least with a sense of responsibility in trying to avoid transmitting his infection to others.

It is commonly believed that the Catholic Church does not support such a view. As a BBC Panorama programme recently suggested, the Church is thought to teach that sexually active homosexuals and prostitutes should refrain from condoms because condoms are “intrinsically evil” (The Tablet, 26 June). Many Catholics also believe this. One of them is Hugh Henry, education officer of the Linacre Centre in London, who told Austen Ivereigh in last week’s Tablet that the use of a condom, even exclusively to prevent infection of one’s sexual partner, “fails to honour the fertile structure that marital acts must have, cannot constitute mutual and complete personal self-giving and thus violates the Sixth Commandment”.

But this is not a teaching of the Catholic Church. There is no official magisterial teaching either about condoms, or about anti-ovulatory pills or diaphragms. Condoms cannot be intrinsically evil, only human acts; condoms are not human acts, but things. What the Catholic Church has clearly taught to be “intrinsically evil” is a specific kind of human act, defined by Paul VI in his encyclical Humanae Vitae, and later included in No. 2370 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as an “action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible”.

Contraception, as a specific kind of human act, includes two elements: the will to engage in sexual acts and the intention of rendering procreation impossible. A contraceptive act therefore embodies a contraceptive choice. As I put it in an article in the Linacre Quarterly in 1989, “a contraceptive choice is the choice of an act that prevents freely consented performances of sexual intercourse, which are foreseen to have procreative consequences, from having these consequences, and which is a choice made just for this reason.”

This is why contraception, regarded as a human act qualified as “intrinsically evil” or disordered, is not determined by what is happening on the physical level; it makes no difference whether one prevents sexual intercourse from being fertile by taking the Pill or by interrupting it in an onanistic way. The above definition also disregards the differentiation between “doing” and “refraining from doing”, because coitus interruptus is a kind of – at least partial – refraining.

The definition of the contraceptive act does not therefore apply to using contraceptives to prevent possible procreative consequences of foreseen rape; in
that circumstance the raped person does not choose to engage in sexual intercourse or to prevent a possible consequence of her own sexual behaviour but is simply defending herself from an aggression on her own body and its undesirable consequences. A woman athlete taking part in the Olympic Games who takes an anti-ovulatory pill to prevent menstruation is not doing “contraception” either, because there is no simultaneous intention of engaging in sexual intercourse.

The teaching of the Church is not about condoms or similar physical or chemical devices, but about marital love and the essentially marital meaning of human sexuality. It affirms that, if married people have a serious reason not to have children, they should modify their sexual behaviour by – at least periodic
– abstinence from sexual acts. To avoid destroying both the unitive and the
procreative meaning of sexual acts and therefore the fullness of mutual self-giving, they must not prevent the sexual act from being fertile while carrying on having sex.
But what of promiscuous people, sexually active homosexuals, and prostitutes? What the Catholic Church teaches them is simply that they should not be promiscuous, but faithful to one single sexual partner; that prostitution is a behaviour which gravely violates human dignity, mainly the dignity of the woman, and therefore should not be engaged in; and that homosexuals, as all other people, are children of God and loved by him as everybody else is, but that they should live in continence like any other
unmarried person.

But if they ignore this teaching, and are at risk from HIV, should they use condoms to prevent infection? The moral norm condemning contraception as intrinsically evil does not apply to these cases. Nor can there be church teaching about this; it would be simply nonsensical to establish moral norms for intrinsically immoral types of behaviour. Should the Church teach that a rapist must never use a condom because otherwise he would additionally to the sin of rape fail to respect “mutual and complete personal self-giving and thus violate the Sixth Commandment”?

Of course not.

What do I, as a Catholic priest, tell Aids-infected promiscuous people or homosex-uals who are using condoms? I will try to help them to live an upright and well-ordered sexual life. But I will not tell them not to use condoms. I simply will not talk to them about this and assume that if they choose to have sex they will at least keep a sense of responsibility. With such an attitude I fully respect the Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception.

This is not a plea for “exceptions” to the norm prohibiting contraception. The norm about contraception applies without exception; the contraceptive choice is intrinsically evil. But it obviously applies only to contraceptive acts, as defined by Humanae Vitae, which embody a contraceptive choice. Not every act in which a device is used which from a purely physical point of view is “contraceptive”, is from a moral point of view a contraceptive act falling under the norm taught by Humanae Vitae.

Equally, a married man who is HIV-infected and uses the condom to protect his wife from infection is not acting to render procreation impossible, but to prevent infection. If conception is prevented, this will be an – unintentional – side-effect and will not therefore shape the moral meaning of the act as a contraceptive act. There may be other reasons to warn against the use of a condom in such a case, or to advise total continence, but these will not be because of the Church’s teaching on contraception but for pastoral or simply prudential reasons – the risk, for example, of the condom not working. Of course, this last argument does not apply to promiscuous people, because even if condoms do not always work, their use will help to reduce the evil consequences of morally evil behaviour.

Stopping the worldwide Aids epidemic is not a question about the morality of using condoms, but about how to effectively prevent people from causing the disastrous consequences of their immoral sexual behaviour. Pope John Paul II has
repeatedly urged that the promotion of the use of condoms is not a solution to this problem because he holds that it does not resolve the moral problem of promiscuity. Whether, generally, campaigns promoting condoms encourage risky behaviour and make the Aids pandemic worse is a question of statistical evidence which is not yet easily available. That it reduces transmission rates, in the short term, among highly infective groups like prostitutes and homosexuals is impossible to deny. Whether it may decrease infection rates among “sexually liberated” promiscuous populations or, on the contrary, encourage risky behaviour, depends on many factors.

In African countries condom-based anti-Aids campaigns are generally ineffective, partly because for an African man his manliness is expressed by making as many children as possible. For him, condoms convert sex into a meaningless activity. Which is why – and this is strong evidence in favour of the Pope’s argument – among the few effective programmes in Africa has been the Ugandan one. Although it does not exclude condoms, it encourages a positive change in sexual behaviour (fidelity and abstinence), unlike condom campaigns, which contribute to obscuring or even destroying the meaning of human love.

Campaigns to promote abstinence and fidelity are certainly and ultimately the only effective long-term remedy to combat Aids. So there is no reason for the Church to consider the campaigns promoting condoms as helpful for the future of human society. But nor can the Church possibly teach that people engaged in immoral lifestyles should avoid them.

Papal theologian weighs condom use against AIDS

Vatican, Feb. 01, 2005 (CWNews.com) - Cardinal Georges Cottier, the theologian to the pontifical household, has said that condoms can be used in the battle against AIDS-- but only under highly limited circumstances.

Cardinal Cottier is the highest-ranking official at the Vatican to suggest that the use of condoms could be justified. But he emphasized that he was giving his own "strictly personal" opinion, and not speaking for the Holy See.

Speaking to the Italian press agency Apcom-- in a talk that was reported by the newspaper Corriere della Sera-- the Swiss cardinal said that the use of condoms "could be considered legitimate" when people are "prisoners" of unusual ircumstances, and the condoms are used solely for the purpose of preventing the spread of disease.

Cardinal Cottier emphasized that only the presence of these unusual conditions would justify condom use. In ordinary circumstances, he said, the only morally acceptable means of fighting AIDS are through sexual continence. He also argued that the promotion of condom use "contributes to the risk of contagion" by encouraging promiscuous behavior.

The cardinal said that condom use is legitimate when it is a means of avoiding the transfer of the HIV virus during sexual intercourse. He observed that "along with life, there is the risk of also transmitting death" when one sexual partner is HIV-positive. In those circumstances, he said, "one must respect the defense of life," and heed the command, "Thou shalt not kill." Cardinal Cottier noted that many theologians take the same view, although there is a considerable difference of opinion among Catholic moralists on the topic.

He took pains to clarify that he was not suggesting the use of condoms under ordinary circumstances, but only by those who are HIV-positive and sexually active. He reminded his interviewer that in Africa, where the AIDS epidemic is most advanced, several episcopal conferences have condemned condom-distribution campaigns. He observed that these campaigns "reflect the general cultural situation, marked by a very permissive approach to sexual practices."

The condom is certainly not the best means of curbing the epidemic, the cardinal continued. "It diminishes the danger of contagion, but that danger remains," he observed. The international organizations that are pressing for wider condom distribution are taking an approach that denigrates the dignity of human life and love, he said.

Moreover, Cardinal Cottier went on, the widespread use of condoms tends to aggravate the problem, by encouraging greater sexual activity. "We should not forget," he said, "that it was this same permissive approach which was indubitably a factor in the spread of the virus."

Cardinal Cottier made his statement at a time when prominent Church leaders have been engaged in a public discussion of the use of condoms. Last January, Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Brussels suggested that the use of condoms by HIV-positive individuals might be a "lesser evil" than the spread of AIDS. More recently, a spokesman for the Spanish bishops' conference said on January 19 that condoms have a legitimate role to play in the fight against the disease. Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care, responded to the Spanish statement by arguing that condom use is an "unacceptable" means of fighting AIDS.

Cardinal Cottier pointed out that Pope John Paul II (bio - news) has not spoken out on this particular topic, nor has he addressed the question of condom use in any teaching document. "He has, on the contrary, always insisted on the principles of respect for one another, for the meaning of marriage, for chastity, for one's own body, and for the importance and protection of human life," the cardinal observed.

As theologian to the pontifical household, Cardinal Cottier's task is to read papal statements and documents in advance, calling the Pontiff's attention to any theological questions or problems. As he emphasized, he does not speak for the Pope.

The new theologian of the Pontifical Household is Fr. Wojciech Giertych, O.P., who was a faculty member over at the Angelicum. His Fundamental Moral Theology is online.

I noticed that Daniel McInerny has a new book coming out from Fordham as well, The Difficult Good--it might be useful for the thesis... Fordham says it will be available in May, Amazon says it will be available at the end of June. I hope I have access to it sooner rather than later.