Media fallout from Martini's comment on condom usage

The associated press has (not suprisingly) picked up on Martini's comments about "legitimate" condom usage for couples where one spouse is infected with HIV/AIDS.

As always, Martini's status as a popularly-reported second finisher to Pope Benedict in the last conclave is mentioned. The article goes on to outline a whole series of ethical questions where Martini advocates practicing the "lesser evil."

For him, examples of the "lesser evil" are many (these are all direct quotes from the article):

• 1) Martini agreed with the questioner that the church could consider condoms a "lesser evil" than the risk of the disease.
• 2) [Martini says] single women could be implanted with frozen embryos if the alternative is letting the embryos die. Church teaching holds that all procreation must take place within marriage; the Vatican also opposes many assisted fertility procedures.
• 3) Martini said Catholic couples seeking in vitro treatments might be able to get around the church's opposition.
• 4) [Martini said] in the zygote stage _ which occurs 18-24 hours after fertilization _ "there are still no signs of singularly definable human life."
• 5) [Martini] acknowledged that in abortion, there were cases when the life of the mother was at risk where abortion might be considered the "lesser evil."

Now, admittedly, there are some aspects of the above-mentioned medical issues that are still open to debate. But for Martini to publically express an opinion on five "hot topics" in one sitting, and then for each one of his opinions to be against the (in my opinion) clear leanings of the Magisterium on these issues is very damaging to Catholic sensibility.

Certainly the press is having a field day with such a high-raking prelate (notice how they continually mention that he was a papal contendor) dissenting on so many important "cutting-edge" biomedical issues. How will the Vatican respond? The press has also been very quick to pull-out file photos of Pope Benedict with Cardinal Martini [here and here], creating a situation where it could be harder for Pope Benedict to even tacitly reprimand Martini as he did Fitzgerald (and I seem to remember somewhere reading that Benedict has praised some of Martini's work in his offhand comments - but that shouldn't really effect anything drastically).

UPDATE: A complete roundup of this topic.