Wow you check the news at lunch and find out that the Church has reconsidered the whole anthropology of the human person and that documents are to be rescinded and a new Catechism issued.

Or at least that is what catechesis by headline would have us believe.

Last week speaking to journalists on the flight to Brazil he said:

It is true that I do not give interviews, but why, I do not know, I can’t, it’s just like that. For me it is quite an effort to do so, but I thank all of you here.

Previously I had commented on this thinking really regardless of the reason this is a good policy since for the most past nothing good comes of these interviews. Mainly journalist gotchas to generate pageviews.

So I was a bit surprised that he did give an informal interview when leaving Brazil.

The part generating the most heat:

“A gay person who is seeking God, who is of good will – well, who am I to judge him?” the pope said. “The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says one must not marginalize these persons, they must be integrated into society. The problem isn’t this (homosexual) orientation – we must be like brothers and sisters. The problem is something else, the problem is lobbying either for this orientation or a political lobby or a Masonic lobby.”

Somehow this has both outraged some within the Church and also became a cause for jubilation within and without the Church.

My first reaction was the Pope should have stuck to not giving interviews for the reasons mentioned above and that his off-the-cuff articulation of this is easily misunderstood. Although he could have read passages directly from the Catechism and from the CDF’s Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on The Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons and it would have been misunderstood. Most of the world is unused to both/and thinking. Treating with respect and love those who suffer from same-sex attraction while also condemning homosexual acts as intrinsically evil. This lack of both/and thinking makes everything seem as a contradiction where none exists.

Jimmy Akin as usual has a helpful article on the subject 7 things you need to know about what Pope Francis said about gays.

So mostly my thinking is the press and revisionist Catholics misconstrues what the pope says, in other words the sun rose again today.

One thing I could wish for is that Catholics not use the word “gay” because of all the baggage now associated with it. I try to avoid it myself, but I can understand how it easily becomes a short-hand term for person with homosexual attraction. Looking at the Spanish language report of what he said the Pope used the English word “gay” which I guess has become the same across languages. Much of our language describing this is rather clumsy and even the tern “homosexual person” found in Vatican documents can imply more than it intends by equating sexual identity as the primary focus of the human person.

Watching Twitter over the day I saw some rather odd things. For one a Traditionalist site retweeting Fr. James Martin, SJ in some-what agreement.

“Anyone who says nothing has changed in the church today is nuts. From “No gay priests” in 2005 to “Who am I to judge?” is a sea change.”

Well call me nuts for actually believing the faith hasn’t changed since yesterday.

“But my dear fellow, this is the twentieth century!” It is worth having a little training in philosophy if only to avoid looking so ghastly a fool as that. It has on the whole rather less sense or meaning than saying, “But my dear fellow, this is Tuesday afternoon.“ – G.K. Chesterton ”The Common Man"

This is what happens when you become an agenda Catholic and see everything via a filtered lens that blocks out part of the truth. In Fr. James Martin’s case this is a bit of a hobby horse for him (or is that gay lobby horse?). He often comments on stories regarding homosexuals while letting you read into it his own opinion. He never comes out directly and says homosexual acts are not intrinsically evil, but to me he seems to dance around it a lot.

While a Tweet does not have room for much nuance, his interpretation is purely wishful thinking. Fr. Martin also seems to have a problem with both/and thinking. So again if Fr. Martin thinks that this is actually a sea change (Holy See change?) and that those with deep-seated homosexual tendencies will now be specifically accepted to the priesthood than he just might want to reflect on his “nut-calling.” That he can believe that the same man who in opposition to Argentina’s move to legalize same-sex marriage said:

“Let us not be naive: this is not simply a political struggle, but it is an attempt to destroy God’s plan. It is not just a bill (a mere instrument) but a ‘move’ of the father of lies who seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”

Or in his first Encyclical approved of or wrote the line “stable union of man and woman in marriage” is now going to approve of homosexual acts needs to check his water supply for contamination.

Moving on, while the media concentrated on the one paragraph there was also many other things discussed in the 80 minute interview.

This is the Google Translate version of a Spanish article on the interview:

Q. You have not spoken yet about abortion or about marriage between same sex. Brazil has passed a law extending abortion rights and another that includes marriages between persons of the same sex. Why has not talked about that?

A. The Church has already expressed perfectly on that, it was necessary to go over that, nor talked about cheating, lying or other things about which the Church has a clear doctrine. No need to talk about it, but the positive things their way to the boys. Moreover, young people know exactly what the position of the Church.

Q. But where you stand on these issues?

A. of the Church, I am a son of the Church.

Funny how “I am a son of the Church” did not make it into headlines or when the Pope reaffirmed the teaching regarding ordination to the priesthood or concerning Communion for civilly divorced Catholics who remarried without a declaration of nullity. We will not be seeing a headline saying “Pope affirms Catholic teaching” anytime soon.

Media coverage of the Pope is mostly good for a laugh. At times it is so awkward when the reporter has no frame or reference or even basic understandings of what is common to Catholicism.

Latest example is from Time in an article titled “Like a Rock Star, Pope Francis Calls For “Disorder” In Rio”

A giant cross—without a Christ’s body—hung front and center.

Surely the words crucifix or corpus or something else could have been worked into that clumsy sounding sentence.

What is it that I expect as a consequence of World Youth Day? I want a mess. We knew that in Rio there would be great disorder, but I want trouble in the dioceses! […] I want to see the church get closer to the people. I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves, in our parishes, schools or structures. Because these need to get out!

The English translation of his speech to the young people of Argentina who had travelled to World Youth Day:

Let me tell you what I hope will be the outcome of World Youth Day: I hope there will be noise. Here there will be noise, I’m quite sure. Here in Rio there will be plenty of noise, no doubt about that. But I want you to make yourselves heard in your dioceses, I want the noise to go out, I want the Church to go out onto the streets, I want us to resist everything worldly, everything static, everything comfortable, everything to do with clericalism, everything that might make us closed in on ourselves. The parishes, the schools, the institutions are made for going out … if they don’t, they become an NGO, and the Church cannot be an NGO. May the bishops and priests forgive me if some of you create a bit of confusion afterwards. That’s my advice. Thanks for whatever you can do.

Although looking at Google Translation of the speech as it was delivered in Spanish, the translation into “noise” might tone down the words used.

Regardless the Pope intends that things be shaken up by knowing and living our faith. From the same speech comes a plea to not water down the faith and to realize what that faith means:

Among the Argentine people, I ask the elderly, from my heart: do not cease to be the cultural storehouse of our people, a storehouse that hands on justice, hands on history, hands on values, hands on the memory of the people. And the rest of you, please, do not oppose the elderly: let them speak, listen to them and go forward. But know this, know that at this moment, you young people and you elderly people are condemned to the same destiny: exclusion. Don’t allow yourselves to be excluded. It’s obvious! That’s why I think you must work. Faith in Jesus Christ is not a joke, it is something very serious. It is a scandal that God came to be one of us. It is a scandal that he died on a cross. It is a scandal: the scandal of the Cross. The Cross continues to provoke scandal. But it is the one sure path, the path of the Cross, the path of Jesus, the path of the Incarnation of Jesus. Please do not water down your faith in Jesus Christ. We dilute fruit drinks – orange, apple, or banana juice, but please do not drink a diluted form of faith. Faith is whole and entire, not something that you water down. It is faith in Jesus. It is faith in the Son of God made man, who loved me and who died for me. So then: make yourselves heard; take care of the two ends of the population: the elderly and the young; do not allow yourselves to be excluded and do not allow the elderly to be excluded. Secondly: do not “water down” your faith in Jesus Christ. The Beatitudes: What must we do, Father? Look, read the Beatitudes: that will do you good. If you want to know what you actually have to do, read Matthew Chapter 25, which is the standard by which we will be judged. With these two things you have the action plan: the Beatitudes and Matthew 25. You do not need to read anything else. I ask you this with all my heart. Very well, I thank you for coming so close. I am sorry that you are all penned in, but let me tell you something. I experience that myself now and then. What an awful thing it is to be penned in. I openly admit it, but we’ll see. I understand you. I would have liked to come closer to you, but I understand that for security reasons, it just isn’t possible. Thank you for coming, thank you for praying for me; I ask you from my heart, I need it. I need your prayers, I need them very much. Thank you for that. Well then, I want to give you my blessing, and afterwards, we will bless the image of the Virgin that is to travel all over the Republic. And also the Cross of Saint Francis, which will travel on that same missionary journey. But do not forget: make yourselves heard; take care of the two ends of life, the two ends of the history of peoples: the elderly and the young; and do not water down the faith. And now let us pray, so as to bless the image of the Virgin, and then I will give you the Blessing.

As far as the coverage of World Youth Day goes, it is par for the course. Phil Lawler in his article Invisible people popping up in Rio notes:

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but the crowds at World Youth Day (WYD) in Rio are much larger than the mainstream media predictions.

Just last week we were hearing that WYD might be a disappointment. Early registrations were lagging behind expectations. The Brazilian government didn’t want to kick in extra funding. Lots of young Brazilians disagreed with the Pope. Those gloomy predictions didn’t even take into account the spectacularly bad weather that has turned outdoor meeting places into bleak acres of ankle-deep mud.

Doom! Disaster! But wait. When the curtain rose on WYD, there were 500,000 enthusiastic young people standing patiently in the rain. When the Pope made his first appearance last night, 1 million people were cheering and waving banners. If this is gloom, let’s have more of it! How many of the world’s celebrities would be disappointed by a crowd of 1 million?

… Could it be that faithful Catholics are invisible to the secular media? Reporters are familiar with the young people who watch MTV, who love rock concerts, who buy the latest fashions, who go bar-hopping on Friday nights. You’ll see them all in the Style section. But you won’t see the kids who go to Mass, say the Rosary, or slip off to Confession. They won’t be in this week’s newspaper. They’re missing. Maybe they’re in Rio.

Part of the Special world of Pauline Kael syndrome.

Spanish version

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis greeted some seventy journalists aboard the papal plane Monday as it flew from Rome to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for World Youth Day celebrations. The reporters included 10 Brazilians, 10 from the U.S., 9 from France, 6 from Spain, plus journalists from the U.K. Mexico, Germany, Japan, Argentina, Poland, Portugal and Russia.

In a brief exchange with the journalists, the Pope expressed particular concern about the risk of an entire generation of people without jobs.

Pope Francis told reporters “this first trip of mine is to meet young people, (to see them) … not as isolated young people but immersed in their social context, in society. Because when we isolate young people, we do them an injustice: we take away their ‘belonging.’” (source)

I had previously seen references to Pope Francis not normally wanting to give interviews. That this also dates back to his time as a bishop. So while the Pope greeted the reporters he was traveling with there was no question and answer session as with Pope Benedict XVI.

Mostly I think this is a good thing since often those airplane Q&A sessions generated more heat than light since reporters don’t usually ask actual interesting questions, but ones tied to generating a headline. “Can I get the Pope to say something controversial” seem to be the intent of the whole exercise.

On the other hand I also greatly enjoyed Pope Benedict XVI openness to interviews with extended throughout his life and several times into book form. He also said a number of quite insightful things during some of these Q&A sessions while travelling. Yet of course only only the question on something like condom use got any real coverage. Selfishly as a blogger I like the grist for the mill such interviews can generate.

More from the Catholic News Agency

During the pontificates of Blessed John Paul II and Benedict XVI, it was traditional for the Pope to hold an in-flight question and answer session with the press onboard the plane.

But Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s press office director, explained to journalists at a July 17 pre-World Youth Day briefing that the Pope will instead spend part of the flight getting to know the journalists traveling with him and have informal discussion with them.

Maybe just another case of headline writers aiming for page views instead of accurately summarizing in a title.

Vatican offers ‘time off purgatory’ to followers of Pope Francis tweets

The article itself is not as bad as the headline and at least tries to get some things right.

Still it is rather interesting considering the social media dimension.

Mindful of the faithful who cannot afford to fly to Brazil, the Vatican’s sacred apostolic penitentiary, a court which handles the forgiveness of sins, has also extended the privilege to those following the “rites and pious exercises” of the event on television, radio and through social media.

“That includes following Twitter,” said a source at the penitentiary, referring to Pope Francis’ Twitter account, which has gathered seven million followers. “But you must be following the events live. It is not as if you can get an indulgence by chatting on the internet.”

The actual decree from the Apostolic Penitentiary say in part:

a. – is granted a plenary indulgence, obtainable once a day under the usual conditions (sacramental confession, Eucharistic communion and prayer for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff) and also applicable to suffrage to the souls of the faithful departed, through the faithful truly repentant and contrite, who will devotedly participate in the sacred rites and religious practices which will be held in Rio de Janeiro.

The faithful legitimately impeded, they may obtain the Plenary Indulgence if, by complying with the usual spiritual, sacramental and prayer, with the purpose of filial submission to the Roman Pontiff, to participate spiritually in the sacred functions in certain days, provided follow these same rites and pious exercises while performing, or via television and radio, always with due devotion, through the new means of social communication;

Note: This is via Google Translate since the English translation of this document has not yet been provided.

No word yet if an indulgence is given for retweeting the pope.