Comments on the mark for this:
* Thanks for the perceptive reading, Amy. I scanned the letter earlier and just couldn’t cut through the fluff.
* Unfortunately, the personal “philosophy” which the Pope expresses (don’t impose abstractions, “time is greater than space”, etc.) is itself an abstraction and even a mystification.
* I couldn’t finish reading the letter. I know this isn’t the first Pope in my life time to speak elliptically or be difficult to follow, but I’m just so tired of the delicacy of the writing, the “We shepherds must always be careful” language. No, that’s not what this sheep wants. This sheep wants the courageous, driven, single minded shepherd who loves us enough to sacrifice for us. It is not careful. It is not gently finding unity where there is division. I see all the time what they call “prudence” is only prudent for shepherds, not for the sheep. Whenever I hear words like this, I think “The vast majority of bishops and cardinals are still not even sorry.”
* The line in the Holy Father’s letter that sent chills down my spine was this:
“Clearly, a living fabric has come undone, and we, like weavers, are called to repair it.”
The first thing that came to mind was the motto of the Bohemian Club – “Weaving spiders come not here” from A Midsummers’ Night Dream. The thought of the bishops as “weavers” seems… odd.
even moreso if the fabric is living. Does that call for surgeons, not weavers? Weavers don’t generally repair – they patch. New cloth over the old. How else does weaving repair a cloth that has come undone?
It’s a very odd analogy.
* I think one of the Jesuits surrounding PF wrote this in an attempt to preserve the status quo. I hope our bishops will see the reality under the fluff and act appropriately.