…or at least, follows Pope Francis up to the gates and peeks inside.
Hendrik Hertzberg is willing to give the Pope the benefit of the doubt. That’s good.
What’s remarkable to me is how much attention the modern world pays to this barely-living relic at the head of a dying institution. I mean, American Catholicism is pretty well assimilated, right? Why do people still notice this celibate white male who dares to wear white as he presides over a vast network of sexual abusers, along with the few backward dupes who still think God not only exists, but cares about who we know in the Biblical sense.
Okay, did the Pope really say that, because it seems rather theologically soft-minded. I know he wasn’t speaking “from the chair” (the New Yorker’s ignorance isn’t in question). But still, that seems like the kind of thing I would say out of wishful thinking or to avoid an argument.
Thanks Lickona.
Why still notice? Because, silly: The Pope’s word may be a dead letter in a few, advanced countries, but his Church’s patriarchal crusade continues apace in the developing world, spreading HIV and pregnancy.
Or was your question sarcastic? It can be hard to tell on the Internets.
Yes, yes it can. You old fox.
It is easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for Eustace Tilley to enter the Kingdom.
Universalism is the age’s hyper-heresy.
Kierkegaard got it right: If everyone is Christian, no one is Christian.
JOB
Lord have mercy.