As bishop, it is his responsibility to teach, and the fact that the biased press can cherry-pick his words and present them from their point of view is simply something that’s going to happen, no matter how much or how little he says.
Look at poor BXVI, who was depicted at one point as supporting condoms because of a couple of words he said on a plane - while actually in the midst of arguing against condoms as a solution to AIDS. There’s nothing one can do.
What should happen is that priests should be talking to their parishes about these things and explaining them to those who are foolish enough to believe everything CBS or worse sources tell them.
Surprisingly enough, at mass this morning one of our priests who is normally a terrible homilist who never says anything worth listening to and in fact often tells offensive jokes in his homilies, told everybody to stop listening to the press on the subject of the Pope. Read it yourself, he said, and remember that the Pope’s only message was the same as that of Matthew: the message of someone being called by mercy and truth, and the duty of the Church to heal people. This will mean showing them the right way, but they’re never even going to be willing to hear the call and come to the hospital if the doctor starts off by telling them right away everything that’s wrong with them rather than by offering them happiness and safety.
I find comments of both of you to be helpful and insightful; we’ll just have to see what works, I guess.
It might be that in these end times when Satan is so powerful the nice approached will get steamrolled, although it could still work on an individual basis. These days, the sinners have organized into blocs ready with Alinsky tactics to turn the message back against the Church and toward their own purposes (look, the pope accepts us just the way we are now).