Okay, Pope Francis, I’m confused.

ear read­er, I have always said: Go to the tran­script. Don’t go to the main­stream media; what­ev­er you do, don’t go to One Peter Five or Life­Site News or any sim­i­lar such out­fit. Go to the tran­script. Look at the con­text. So here, then, is the full exchange between Pope Fran­cis and a reporter on his flight from Mex­i­co back to Rome:

Palo­ma Gar­cía Ove­jero, Cade­na COPE (Spain): Holy Father, for sev­er­al weeks there’s been a lot of con­cern in many Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries but also in Europe regard­ing the Zika virus. The great­est risk would be for preg­nant women. There is anguish. Some author­i­ties have pro­posed abor­tion, or else to avoid­ing preg­nan­cy. As regards avoid­ing preg­nan­cy, on this issue, can the Church take into con­sid­er­a­tion the con­cept of “the less­er of two evils?

Pope Fran­cis: Abor­tion is not the less­er of two evils. It is a crime. It is to throw some­one out in order to save anoth­er. That’s what the Mafia does. It is a crime, an absolute evil. On the ‘less­er evil,’ avoid­ing preg­nan­cy, we are speak­ing in terms of the con­flict between the fifth and sixth com­mand­ment. Paul VI, a great man, in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion in Africa, per­mit­ted nuns to use con­tra­cep­tives in cas­es of rape.

Don’t con­fuse the evil of avoid­ing preg­nan­cy by itself, with abor­tion. Abor­tion is not a the­o­log­i­cal prob­lem, it is a human prob­lem, it is a med­ical prob­lem. You kill one per­son to save anoth­er, in the best case sce­nario. Or to live com­fort­ably, no? It’s against the Hip­po­crat­ic oaths doc­tors must take. It is an evil in and of itself, but it is not a reli­gious evil in the begin­ning, no, it’s a human evil. Then obvi­ous­ly, as with every human evil, each killing is con­demned.

On the oth­er hand, avoid­ing preg­nan­cy is not an absolute evil. In cer­tain cas­es, as in this one, or in the one I men­tioned of Blessed Paul VI, it was clear. I would also urge doc­tors to do their utmost to find vac­cines against these two mos­qui­toes that car­ry this dis­ease. This needs to be worked on.

The over­all gist of the pope’s response seems to be: Abor­tion is always and every­where evil, but there are lic­it means to avoid preg­nan­cy. Good enough. I would like to think—I real­ly would—that by “avoid­ing preg­nan­cy” in the case of Zika, the pope means absti­nence dur­ing fer­tile peri­ods. But the dif­fi­cul­ty with that inter­pre­ta­tion is that the only spe­cif­ic method of avoid­ing preg­nan­cy any­one brings up dur­ing the exchange is contraception—and it is Pope Fran­cis who intro­duces it into the dis­cus­sion, not the reporter.

Anoth­er dif­fi­cul­ty: I have found no one who can point me to any pri­ma­ry evi­dence that the prece­dent Pope Fran­cis cites—Paul VI per­mit­ting nuns in dan­ger of rape to use contraception—ever occurred. The clos­est any­one has come is John Allen, in this arti­cle, where he notes that in Decem­ber 1961, a group of the­olo­gians pub­lished an arti­cle in the Ital­ian jour­nal Stu­di Cat­toli­ci argu­ing that con­tra­cep­tion could be jus­ti­fied in such cas­es.

Here’s the rub: In 1961, Car­di­nal Mon­ti­ni was not yet pope; John XXIII was. And nei­ther he, nor Paul VI after 1963, approved the pro­pos­al in Stu­di Cat­toli­ci. They did not reject it either. Mr. Allen inter­prets this non-rejec­tion as “tac­it approval,” but that is an uncon­vinc­ing argu­ment. I don’t both­er refut­ing every post over at Rorate Cæli, but that hard­ly sug­gests I approve of them all.

Now, do not mis­take: I am not fault­ing Pope Fran­cis for being mis­tak­en on this point. But I am unclear what rel­e­vance it has to the ques­tion about Zika; that is what the reporter asked about. She did not ask about nuns in the Con­go in the 1960s. With Zika we are talk­ing about pre­sum­ably mar­ried cou­ples (at least, no one sug­gests oth­er­wise) and nor­mal, con­sen­su­al mar­i­tal rela­tions. Why would the pope have pos­si­bly thought of the dubi­ous Con­go exam­ple in con­nec­tion with the reporter’s ques­tion?

It also does not work to sug­gest that the pope may have had in mind some­thing like the law of dou­ble effect, where the pri­ma­ry pur­pose is to pre­vent the spread of dis­ease, and the avoid­ance of preg­nan­cy is a sec­ondary, unin­tend­ed effect. It does not work for two rea­sons:

• The ques­tion was not about pre­vent­ing the spread of Zika from one part­ner to anoth­er, as is the case with such things as AIDS;
• The only inten­tion dis­cussed by both the reporter and the pope was “avoid­ing preg­nan­cy”

But if avoid­ing preg­nan­cy is the goal, because of a poten­tial birth defect, why does the pope cite some sup­posed allowance of con­tra­cep­tion, in very dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, as a prece­dent? Why does he not say, “Paul VI, in Humanae Vitae, per­mit­ted absti­nence dur­ing fer­tile peri­ods”? It is just as easy a prece­dent to cite, and has the added advan­tage of hav­ing actu­al­ly hap­pened.

Then papal spokesman Fr. Lom­bar­di tried to clar­i­fy. (This is a rough trans­la­tion from Google.)

The Pope then dis­tin­guish­es clear­ly the rad­i­cal nature of the evil of abor­tion as the tak­ing of a human life and on the oth­er hand the pos­si­bil­i­ty of recourse to con­tra­cep­tion or con­doms as may relate to cas­es of emer­gency or spe­cial sit­u­a­tions, where then do not sup­press a human life, but a preg­nan­cy is avoid­ed. Now it is not that he says that is accept­ed and used this action with­out any dis­cern­ment, indeed, made it clear that can be con­sid­ered in cas­es of spe­cial urgency.

The exam­ple that has made Paul VI and the autho­riza­tion to use the pill to the reli­gious who were at very seri­ous risk, and ongo­ing vio­lence by the rebels in the Con­go, to the times of the Con­go war tragedies, sug­gests that it is not that it was a nor­mal sit­u­a­tion in which this was tak­en into account. And also — remem­ber for instance — the dis­cus­sion fol­lowed a pas­sage from the book of Bene­dict XVI inter­view “Light of the World”, in which he spoke about the use of con­doms in sit­u­a­tions at risk of infec­tion, for exam­ple, AIDS. Then the con­tra­cep­tive or con­dom, espe­cial­ly in cas­es of emer­gency and sever­i­ty, may also be the sub­ject of a seri­ous dis­cern­ment con­scious­ness. This says the Pope.

This unfor­tu­nate­ly does not make the pope’s words any clear­er to me. I appre­ci­ate that Fr. Lom­bar­di, in the sec­ond para­graph, refers to instances (such as the one Bene­dict XVI had in mind) where a law of dou­ble effect may be said to apply. The prob­lem is, as I have already said, that is not at all the case with Zika. We are not talk­ing about pre­vent­ing trans­mis­sion of dis­ease from one part­ner to anoth­er, as we are when we talk about AIDS; but pre­ven­tion of preg­nan­cy itself, which could be accom­plished with NFP. That was the context—the only context—of the reporter’s ques­tion.

Nor is there any place where the Church spec­i­fies what would count as “emer­gen­cies” or “spe­cial sit­u­a­tions.” The Church has made no such state­ment. What we do have are the words of Humanae Vitae, as quot­ed in the Cat­e­chism, §2370:

[E]very action which, whether in antic­i­pa­tion of the con­ju­gal act, or in its accom­plish­ment, or in the devel­op­ment of its nat­ur­al con­se­quences, pro­pos­es, whether as an end or as a means, to ren­der pro­cre­ation impos­si­ble is intrin­si­cal­ly evil.

I do not sug­gest in any way—and I want to make this absolute­ly clear—that the pope has said some­thing hereti­cal or unortho­dox. There are far too many gaps, too many gen­er­al­i­ties, too much miss­ing detail in the pope’s brief answer to make me con­clude any­thing like that. Any such charge should require the high­est stan­dard of proof; and it should only be made by some­one with the com­pe­tence to judge. I am not that per­son, and no lay blog­ger is that per­son.

So I do not take the path of some who say that bish­ops need to invoke Gala­tians 2:11 against the pope, or who say that Catholic apol­o­gists who try to find ortho­dox expla­na­tions are liars—liars!—rather than hon­est peo­ple with a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion. Such things are not only unhelp­ful but con­temptible.

But I would ask the pope these ques­tions; for I can not make an approach to under­stand­ing what he did or did not have in mind unless I had these clar­i­fi­ca­tions.

• Holy Father, did you mean to sug­gest that con­tra­cep­tion can be used by mar­ried cou­ples to pre­vent a poten­tial birth defect? Or are you think­ing of NFP?
• Holy Father, what is the source for your state­ment that Paul VI per­mit­ted nuns to use con­tra­cep­tion? Why is it a prece­dent here?
• Holy Father, if you think con­tra­cep­tion can be used by mar­ried cou­ples to pre­vent birth defects, in what oth­er cir­cum­stances would it be okay? Or do you agree it’s wrong what­ev­er the cir­cum­stances?
• Holy Father, how is what you are say­ing con­sis­tent with Humanae Vitae?
• Holy Father, did you have some­thing like the law of dou­ble effect in mind when you made your remarks; and can you explain how that applies to Zika?

I do not mind being con­fused from time to time. There can be a val­ue in it, in that it chal­lenges me. I find a lot of what Jesus says dif­fi­cult; and so I give the pope the ben­e­fit of the doubt. I have defend­ed him before; I will defend him again. But I just do not know how to explain this with­out more infor­ma­tion.

In any case, papal inter­views are not infal­li­ble. No author­i­ta­tive, set­tled teach­ing is defined, still less changed, by them. (Author­i­ta­tive teach­ing may not be changed in any con­text, not even by the pope. Let that be clear.)

And I would point out one last thing. No one, as far as I know, has called atten­tion to the fol­low­ing words from the very same inter­view. The pope was asked about com­mu­nion for divorced and remar­ried Catholics:

Inte­grat­ing in the Church doesn’t mean receiv­ing com­mu­nion. I know mar­ried Catholics in a sec­ond union who go to church, who go to church once or twice a year and say I want com­mu­nion, as if join­ing in Com­mu­nion were an award. It’s a work towards inte­gra­tion, all doors are open, but we can­not say, ‘from here on they can have com­mu­nion.’ This would be an injury also to mar­riage, to the cou­ple.

Yes, Pope Fran­cis, about whom all the hand-wringers pre­dict­ed oth­er­wise, said that.

Let not your heart be trou­bled. All shall be well.