Dear Editor,

This is in regard to the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s official clarification of Pope Benedict’s recent comments regarding prophylactics.

I commend the Vatican for clarifying the Pope’s recent comments while affirming that condoms can never be used – even in exceptional cases to prevent the spreading of AIDS. The Pope’s words were deliberately manipulated and perverted by a secular media for selfish ends and interests which are entirely foreign to the Catholic Church and Catholic belief.

The Catholic Church clearly teaches that one can never do something that is evil in itself to achieve something good or to avoid some evil, even a greater evil. All the Pope was saying, in claiming that condom use “can be a first step in the direction of a moralisation, a first assumption of responsibility”, is that God can come to us at any time and in any circumstance and enlighten our consciences as to what is right and wrong. Even in the midst of sin God can rescue us from ourselves for no man is wholly evil and with God all things are possible. (Mark 10:27.) In this sense, the Pope’s comments serve not only to strengthen the church’s teachings against contraception – it holds out the hope of salvation to those still firmly in the grip of sin.

Paul Kokoski

Ontario, Canada

pkokoski@mountaincable.net