Randy Engel Comments on Pope's Condom Statement

When I read the pope's comments a few days ago, even in the longer context, I immediately thought how they would be used to promote "safe sex." The comment seemed imprudent to me, at best, better left to the spiritual counsel of a priest working with a hardened sinner. The pope's statement, in the context of an interview, is certainly ripe for misinterpretation. Frankly, I wish he hadn't said it. The faithful are already fighting tooth and claw to hold our ground.

 I posted Janet Smith's comments a few days ago on the matter. Now I'm posting Randy Engel's who I respect very much.

The Lambeth Conference of 1950 should be studied by every Catholic because it set the stage for the Protestant churches, all of which opposed contraception at the time, to fall like dominoes into embracing contraception and "the contraceptive mentality." From use by married couples for serious reasons, contraception quickly became the family limiter espoused by Planned Parenthood, especially with the advent of "the pill" ten years later. So Randy's concerns are legitimate. And I add my lament: "Your Holiness, Why?"

"Shades of Lambeth"
by Randy Engel
(11/21/2010)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ -
Having woken this morning, as if from a bad dream, to the reality of Benedict XVI's remarks in favor of condom use for male prostitutes engaging in sodomy, I thought it my duty to set forth the Catholic Church's timeless condemnation of sodomy as enunciated by Saint Peter Damian in his Book of Gomorrah. This medieval treatise on clerical sodomy and pederasty, and the abuse of the Sacraments of Holy Orders and Penance by homosexual bishops, priests, and religious in the Roman Catholic Church was written in the 11th century. Saint Damian believed the vice of sodomy surpassed the enormity of all other vices:

Without fail it brings death to the body and destruction to the soul. It pollutes the flesh, extinguishes the light of the mind, expels the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart, and gives entrance to the devil, the stimulator of lust. It leads to error, totally removes truth from the deluded mind. ...It opens up hell and closes the gates of paradise. ...It is this vice that violates temperance, slays modesty, strangles chastity, and slaughters virginity. ...It defiles all things, sullies all things, pollutes all things. ...This vice excludes a man from the assembled choir of the Church. ...it separates the soul from God to associate it with demons. This utterly diseased queen of Sodom renders him who obeys the laws of her tyranny infamous to men and odious to God. ...She strips her knights of the armor of virtue, exposing them to be pierced by the spears of every vice. ...She humiliates her slave in the church and condemns him in court; she defiles him in secret and dishonors him in public; she gnaws at his conscience like a worm and consumes his flesh like fire ...this unfortunate man (he) is deprived of all moral sense, his memory fails, and the mind's vision is darkened. Unmindful of God, he also forgets his own identity. This disease erodes the foundation of faith, saps the vitality of hope, dissolves the bond of love. It makes away with justice, demolishes fortitude, removes temperance, and blunts the edge of prudence. Shall I say more? *

In 1930, at the 7th Anglican Lambeth Conference, approval was given to married couples for the use of birth control in hard cases thus opening the door to the pollution of the marriage bed, and to contraception's handmaidens - sterilization and abortion. In light of Benedict XVI's recent comments in favor of condom use for male prostitutes engaged in sodomy, one may, I think, legitimately ask if Catholics are being prepared for a Lambeth-like attack on the Natural Law and Catholic morality - one which will open the door to sodomy and other homosexual acts which have always been condemned by the Church?


I find it passing strange, that one of the arguments put forth in favor of this paradigm shift in Catholic morality by Vatican sources is that lives will be saved by condom use. Really? I believe that one would have to be an
anatomical jackass to believe this. The biological truth is that the act of sodomy is so violent that condoms
habitually tear during anal insertion. If, on the other hand, lubricants are used to reduce the pain of insertion, these lubricants contribute to the disintegration of the condom, leaving the anal cavity open to increased rupture and infection from AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases associated with sodomy.

But more to the point, I believe that a pope's primary mission as the Vicar of Christ, is not to dispense "safe-sex" advice to male prostitutes and their sodomite customers, but to call these unfortunate souls to repent and
reform their lives as Saint Damian did more than a 1000 years ago. "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." (Luke 8:8). R.E.

[*Note: Here the term "vice" (Lat. Vitium) is used in its traditional sense as a habit inclining one to sin. This habit or vice, which according to St. Thomas Aquinas, stands between power and act, is the product of repeated sinful acts of a given kind and when formed is in some sense also their cause. While St. Thomas Aquinas holds that, absolutely speaking, the sin surpasses the vice in wickedness, he also states while the sin may be removed by God the vice or vicious habit may remain. One conquers vice by the continuous practice of all virtues, but particularly that virtue to which it is opposed. In the case of the vice of sodomy that particular virtue is chastity.]