Amen

And amen.  I understand the difficulty of living in a fish bowl.  That's what pastors do.  Even on a microscopic scale like I did in my smallish congregations.  I can't imagine what it is like for the pope.  So I know it takes nothing at all for someone to be bothered by something.  Someone to hear something wrong.  Someone to take offense at an imagined slight.  I understand.

Nonetheless, there are times when you also have to evaluate your approach to things.  If what you are doing causes no end of problems, then it is time to stop.  So having these inflight, off the cuff interviews that Pope Francis seems to love needs to come to an end.

Amen.  If you think about it, probably half of the uproar and misunderstandings have arisen from these.  Assuming that they have been interpreted incorrectly, these are where people have gotten the idea that sin is no longer an issue unless you are a Capitalist or a Conservative.  Otherwise, indulge in all the sex and paganism and hedonism you ever wanted, and God just loves. 

Not that Pope Francis actually said it, or even came close to meaing it.  But his shoot from the hip style, seen most clearly in his impromptu interviews during flights, leaves so much room for vagueness and unclarity that you literaelly have people quoating these more than anything else to buttress the idea that Pope Francis says Catholic is passé.

Of course there is the greater point of Pope Francis weighing in on anything and everything under the sun.  I'll leave that to folks with more experience studying just what popes do and don't do when it comes to commenting.  I just know if he wants to comment on everything from the proper color of cocker spaniels to the plight of Tibet, he needs to be more cautious, and he certainly needs to do it in a setting more controlled than the chaos and turmoil of a media packed airline cabin.