The Spectator’s Notes | 23 April 2005

I sometimes wonder if the British media know anything at all about the Catholic Church, except that it disapproves of condoms. Every discussion of the late Pope’s reputation and of his successor, Cardinal Ratzinger, is brought back to this question. Obviously it is an important issue, but why does it dominate to the exclusion of everything else (such as Jesus, for example, the nature of redemption, and other questions that have excited the interest of billions for 2,000 years)? One answer is that the condom ban tells lots of modern people that they mustn’t do what they like doing, but this is true of a great deal of religious teaching about money as well as sex. The media don’t seek constantly to know whether Benedict XVI disapproves of owning a second home in the Algarve while millions starve (he probably does, by the way). John Cornwell, one of those professionally anti-Catholic Catholics upon whom the media depend, told the Today programme that his candidate for the triple crown was Cardinal Daneels of Belgium because he (Daneels) thinks that a spouse in a marriage where one partner has Aids should be able to use a condom.