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I've been thinking of one of Bergoglio's cryptic mottoes, "Time is greater than space." The idea here is that, rather than to forcefully grab new territory now (to take over a "space") , it's more important to plant one little seed of change, to set one little process going, and see how it plays out in the long run ("time").

If this sounds murky, well, it IS murky.

Here's how it fits this situation. I think Bergoglio is stealthily putting doctrinal deviations out there in rudimentary form (call them "heresy seeds") to see how they'll play out, to gauge people's reactions, to plant little parasitic worms of doubt.

To change the metaphor, he thinks it's more effective to plant a lot of hidden depth charges now, which will slowly play out later, than to straight-out try to officially change a doctrine ("There is no hell") which would provoke a strong immune reaction and cause outrage throughout the Church.

Because there is not one Pope nor one Canonized Saint over the past 2,000 years who would agree with "There is no Hell."

But if he can immunize people with these tiny pin-pricks of doubt, if he can simply insinuate something and then half-deny it, and then re-assert it (again in an unofficial and equivocating way), he figures that in time people will be desensitized, and the heresy will become first, non-shocking, then non-surprising, then somehow ho-hum and mainstream, just another theological opinion. In time.

I trust I have made myself sufficiently obscure.

It's insidious. Deviltry, really.