Opus Dei Fr. Martin Rhonheimer

[The following excerpt is from the May 5th edition of John Allen's The Word from Rome.  (For the whole letter, click here.)

From the earlier posts on contraception, you may remember that Opus Dei Fr. Martin Rhonheimer is the moral theologian according to whom Humanae Vitae teaches this position:  It is not intrinsically immoral for a married couple to use a condom during sexual intercourse.  Their intent in using the condom makes all the difference.  If their intent is to prevent conception, their action--i.e., their engaging in condomized sexual intercourse--is immoral; but if their intent is to prevent the spread of HIV, their action is not immoral.

Now, the excerpt:]

One footnote from the Vienna gathering. Opus Dei Fr. Martin Rhonheimer, widely recognized as a provocative and unpredictable thinker, argued for a kind of "Christian secularity," by which he meant the capacity of Christians to recognize democratic institutions as legitimate and accept their outcomes even when they contradict Christian religious convictions.

Paradoxically, Rhonheimer said this act of humility actually facilitates a Christian "superiority complex," in the sense that once the secular world accepts the universality of human dignity and the bundle of absolute human rights it implies, it will sooner or later discover that the Christian gospel provides the strongest cognitive basis for explaining and defending those rights.

As part of this discussion, Rhonheimer got tongues wagging by suggesting that American Catholics have made a mistake by exalting the abortion issue above virtually everything else, neglecting other important human and social rights issues. As one participant later said, it sounded reminiscent of the "seamless garment" argument once made by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago.
_______________
mp