Too Much Information ... Tell-all books and interviews from the popes.

Super-Ratz

It's all so confusing.

No wonder everybody foams at the mouth these days, with criticism and nasty comments about two popes and orthodoxy and all the daily pull-quotes and sound bites, apparently trying to prove they are more Catholic than the pope.

It hit me yesterday when I read:

Retired Pope Benedict XVI reveals in a new set of interviews that he was among those who were dissatisfied with Pope Paul VI's 1968 teaching prohibiting Catholics from using artificial birth control. - Benedict reveals dissatisfaction...

So?

Did you know Bl. Pius IX was a liberal before he became pope?  Did you know that as Cardinal, Pope Francis criticized Pope Benedict for his Regensburg speech?  Benedict was a liberal - he says progressive - explaining he was not like the heretical progressives - but they were friends.  He was a liberal/progressive - we knew that.  He loves Pope Francis - it's the hermeneutic of continuity.  Popes are popes.

Careful reading and close examination of the men who sit in the Chair of Peter is not necessary for salvation.  It may even be harmful to the faith.  It's too much to think about or get involved in for ordinary Catholics.  Even for professional Catholics.  For me it is amazing that churchmen have any faith at all when everything is nit-picked to theological tedium and they get themselves embroiled in papal intrigue and gossip.

Just pray, go to Mass and confession and communion and let them write and talk and give interviews - it doesn't affect me.

Oh.  And then Benedict says he struggled with celibacy or something?  Like he had a girlfriend before becoming a priest?  (I didn't read the book - just a headline.  What?)  So.  Who wants to know that?  Not a need to know.  I was content thinking he and Ganswein were close friends and that he had a cat.

Cardinal Ratzinger slaps Brian Ross.

He should have slapped Fr. Z too.

What?