Before you excommunicate me, know that I’m not saying you’re fallible. Without your infallibility, I would lose the model that lets me know perfection is indeed obtainable. I know you’re right; that’s not even up for consideration, so I’ll drop it. I just think you’re going about it in the wrong way.

All I’m saying is, you confused a whole lot of people when you first told us that it’s OK for a small group of people like male prostitutes to use condoms if they are an HIV carrier and are trying to prevent its spread.

Actually, that wasn’t too confusing in itself; just the way people took it. I remember the first reactions I heard: I was walking to see the pagan Harry Potter film with two of my friends. Both of them seemed to believe that the proclamation would mean that Fordham would soon be handing out free condoms to students “because there’s no reason not to, now that the pope said they’re OK.”

I see your “Home Alone” face and I understand. I know, I was shocked, too. How could someone get “Pope OK’s Condoms” from your extremely qualified statement that basically amounted to a lesser of two evils choice?

You see Benny, you’re the Church’s leader, the top dog, the Best Shepherd, if you will. And what’s more, you’re not the pope of just any church—you’re the pope of the Church, one of the most conservative institutions in the world. Catholicism has been known for its staunch anti-condom stance for roughly always. When you mention the words “condom” and “OK” in the same decade, someone is going to make a big deal out of it.

Even so, this would all have blown over if you could’ve just left it with that. People would’ve realized eventually that you were just saying that when it comes to the choice of unprotected sex that spreads AIDS or protected sex that spreads immorality, you’d give a papal hi-five to someone who chooses the latter. Everyone would see what a wise instrument of God you are.

Oh, but you just couldn’t leave it at that. You just had to go and say all that stuff about it not mattering if a person is a man, a woman or a transsexual, what matters is that you’re preventing the spread of HIV. This is where people are getting their hopes up. Heterosexual Catholics in the first-world are talking about this as if it means a proclamation lifting the ban on condoms is not too far down the line.

Personally, I know that your statement is really not that big of a deal. If anything, you were just making up for the ill-will of your “condoms won’t prevent AIDS, they’ll spread it faster” statement in 2009. You just wanted to assure people in dire situations that the Church is not going to make them decide between preventing the infection of others and adhering Church law.

But not everyone is as levelheaded as I am. Believe it or not, people like to have sex. A lot. And they don’t to have a child every time they smush. So they use condoms, even if they’re Catholic. It hurts them, because it makes them a bad Catholic. So when your Holiness even hints at relieving them from some of this guilt, they get a little excited.

I hope you also see where the confusion happened. In the future, maybe make your announcements a little clearer to the easily excitable masses. Like a Papal Cartoon. Maybe get a Twitter account. I’d follow you—to judgment day.

Your humble sheep,