Daily Inspiration Quote by Godfried Danneels

A Catholic cardinal, of all people, is drawing a bright line between abstinence as ideal and harm reduction as moral duty. Danneels’ phrasing is careful: “he doesn’t have to do that” preserves the Church’s traditional preference for sexual restraint, especially outside procreative marriage. But the second sentence is the real pivot. “When he does, he has to use a condom” turns a once-taboo object into an ethical instrument, not because sex is suddenly endorsed, but because recklessness becomes indefensible.

The intent is surgical: protect life without appearing to rewrite doctrine. Danneels isn’t selling condom use as liberation; he’s framing it as an obligation triggered by foreseeable harm. The subtext is a quiet challenge to absolutism. In the AIDS era, “no” is not the only moral option; minimizing damage can be a form of responsibility. That’s a consequentialist argument smuggled into a deontological institution, wrapped in the language of duty (“has to”) rather than permission (“may”).

Context matters: European Catholicism in the 2000s was wrestling with credibility amid public health crises and a rapidly modernizing sexual culture. Danneels, often seen as part of a more pragmatic wing of the Church, is speaking to couples who are already choosing intimacy. The quote admits an uncomfortable reality: moral teaching that refuses to engage with actual behavior risks becoming performative. By making condom use mandatory in this scenario, he recasts compassion as prevention - a pastoral move that tries to keep doctrine upright while bending its posture toward survival.