Male Catholic prostitutes rejoice

Male Catholic prostitutes around the world are celebrating, following a slight relaxation of Vatican rules on the use of condoms for anything other than making balloon animals or ingesting small quantities of cocaine for international transport.   "There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility," Pope Benedict said in an interview excerpted yesterday by L’Osservatore Romano. "Those perverts are already damned, so I suppose that throwing in a rubber isn't going to make much of a difference."   The Pope partially walked back these comments today after receiving some rather shocking news from Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, the French archbishop of Bordeaux.   "It has come to my attention that there is a subspecies of male prostitutes sometimes referred to as gigolos," said the shaken Primate of Italy. "Hard as it may be to believe, these are male prostitutes that have unholy intercourse with women, often with women who may still have the capability of becoming pregnant. Furthermore, even though it is surely the usual case, there are a certain number of these male prostitutes who may not already be inflicted with AIDS. So to clarify my earlier remarks, there may be a basis in the case of some individuals, such as homosexual male prostitutes who are HIV positive, where use of a condom won't get them any deeper into Hell than they're already going."