Benedict as Predicted

Pope Benedict XVI delivered his first major doctrinal speech yesterday. To no one's surprise, it was anti-artificial insemination and anti-same-sex marriage/civil union.

The gist of his 14-page speech was consistent with his previous statements as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the pope's enforcer of dogma. He didn't need his replacement prefect to speak for him on these issues. In effect, any sexual activity that is for pleasure and not procreation is taboo.

He doesn't get into the messy realities. Many married couples are infertile, at any given moment, probably most. They aren't supposed to have sexual contact. That is also the sin of the active homosexuals and reason to forbid gay unions and marriages. As his speech put it:

The various forms of the dissolution of matrimony today, like free unions, trial marriages and going up to pseudo-matrimonies by people of the same sex, are rather expressions of an anarchic freedom that wrongly passes for true freedom of man.

Apparently most Roman Catholics don't take his prohibition of sex for any purpose other than making Roman Catholics seriously. Yet as an absolutist, he stakes out his turf plainly.

He has stated several times he wants a smaller church of more obedient members. He seems intent on ensuring the smaller part.