/johnny
“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.
"The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus.
"We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow."
I fear the pope is naive at best, as to how the media and the modern age will snatch at his words. Did he really mean that the Church's moral teachings are "disjointed?" Does he not realize that by saying in this particular context that not all moral teachings are equivalent, which of course they are not, he affirms those who decide for themselves that abortion is a minor sexual transgression, unimportant, and not murder?
As Rod Dreher says, imagine if the pope had said the Church spends too much time talking about the poor and powerless, when all that matters is Jesus gave us salvation. The media and the libertines would not be saluting him, oh finally we have a good pope.
Not at all. I saw the actual interview, and the media was if anything, understating what he said.
The Pope himself used those words, and they were used in context of evil conservatives trying to enforce orthodoxy.
He says elsewhere that he is amazed by how many complaints Rome gets from people complaining of orthodoxy not being followed! Unreal!
What a total disaster. He will have to answer to God when he dies!