Theocons rush to limit the damage from the Pope's recent gaffe:
If someone was going to rob a bank and was determined to use a gun, it would better for that person to use a gun that had no bullets in it. It would reduce the likelihood of fatal injuries. But it is not the task of the Church to instruct potential bank robbers how to rob banks more safely and certainly not the task of the Church to support programs of providing potential bank robbers with guns that could not use bullets. Nonetheless, the intent of a bank robber to rob a bank in a way that is safer for the employees and customers of the bank may indicate an element of moral responsibility that could be a step towards eventual understanding of the immorality of bank robbing.
Alrighty then. This is the nub of the matter:
The Holy Father is not articulating a teaching of the Church about whether or not the use of a condom reduces the amount of evil in a homosexual sexual act that threatens to transmit HIV. The Church has no formal teaching about how to reduce the evil of intrinsically immoral action.
My italics. What this means is that the church has no moral teaching for gay men in their sex lives and relationships except total celibacy. And yet even the Pope found some room for a spectrum of morality in the actions of an HIV-positive prostitute. You try making sense of that.