Grammar experts needed for pope comment on condoms
Male prostitutes? Did Pope Benedict actually say that only male prostitutes can use condoms to avoid transmitting the HIV virus? Why did he limit this unsuspected flexibility only to men?
Well, it’s not actually clear from the new book Light of the World, where this statement appears, that he is only talking about male prostitutes. In fact, the Vatican’s own daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, has him granting this conditional dispensation to female prostitutes. And his spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi has made a statement that supposedly clarified the pope’s comments but skirted around the gender isssue altogether.
The problem is that the pope gave the interview in his native German, which is not 100% clear on this issue. The key phrase about condom use reads in the English translation: “There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be the first step in the direction of a moralisation.”
In German, Benedict says “ein Prostituierter,” which signifies a prostitute of the masculine gender. This could refer literally to a man. But he could also be using the grammatical masculine gender, the default when speaking about any human individual in general. A phrase like “Every citizen has the right …” would be expressed in the grammatical masculine gender — “Jeder Bürger hat das Recht…” — but it would not disqualify half the population. Benedict could have made himself clearer by expressly saying “male prostitute” — “ein männlicher Prostituierter” — but he didn’t.
English can get way with simply saying “a prostitute” because we don’t signal genders with specific word endings. German forces the speaker to indicate a grammatical gender, often regardless of the sex or sexlessness of the object involved. So tables, trains, dreams and dishes are gramatically masculine in German without any hint of secondary sex characteristics. By contrast, a German could call a sultry 16-year-old actress “das Mädchen” — neuter gender for “the girl” — and refer to her as “it” with perfect grammatical accuracy.
The English translator got around this by adding the adjective “male.” The French translator was able to follow the German example and write “un prostitué” in the masculine gender rather than “une prostituée.” But Italian grammar apparently doesn’t allow such an easy switch, so the Vatican daily referred to “una prostituta” in the feminine gender.
The difference isn’t just grammatical. If Pope Benedict means only male prostitutes, he is speaking about gay sex, which cannot lead to procreation. The Church rejects artificial methods that block procreation, such as condoms and contraceptive pills. Since that doesn’t apply between two men, a condom could be condoned even though the Church thinks homosexual sex is wrong anyway.
Pope says saving heterosexuality like saving the rainforest
Pope Benedict took an unconventional approach today to stand up to what he sees as gender-bending, saying protecting heterosexuality was as important as saving the rainforest.
“(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed,” the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration.“The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less.”
The Pope stressed that the Church would defend the traditional roles of “a man and woman, and to ask that this order of creation be respected”.
He turned his attention to those people who call themselves in Italian “gender” or “transgender” — a broad term that includes anyone who doesn’t identify entirely with their assigned sex and can include homosexuals, bisexuals, pansexuals and others.
“What’s often expressed and understood with the term ‘gender’, is summed up definitively in the self-emancipation of man from the created and the Creator … But in this way, he lives in opposition to truth, he lives in opposition to the Creator,” the pope said. Here’s a link to the full text in Italian and a report on it by the leading daily Corriere della Sera (also in Italian),
The New York-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission reacted promptly, saying: “In a season in which the immorality of genocide, lawless governments, lust for money and power and the destabilization of the world’s economy are destroying the lives of hundreds of millions around the world, the Pope’s obsessive focus on gay, lesbian and trans people who simply seek the right to live and love is out of touch with what humanity needs right now from its religious leaders.”
What do you think of Benedict’s idea of an “ecology of man”?
What is he going to do with all the clearly non-heterosexual people in the Church then?
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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Additional information: does Italian grammar allow such an easy switch? Answer: it could, even though such a word could sound a bit “out of register” in a Pope’s speech; even though, if required to choose, faithfulness to the original in such a delicate matter should probably prevail on style. The logical solution would probably have been a periphrasis like “uomini dediti alla prostituzione” or similar (I miss the full German sentence therefore it’s just an example). This is just to mean that, if they had wanted it – or realised it – they could have specified it rather easily.