Feeling Temporarily Underbussed By The Pope

Yesterday's papers ran stories of an interview with Pope Francis with excerpts talking about how the Church needs to stop yapping about things like gay marriage, contraception and similar minor issues and focus instead on spreading God's love. I had three reactions in succession.

1. Seriously? We need to stop talking about gay marriage? I've been pretty active in the Church for decades and gays and contraception are not things we talk about voluntarily. The topic is being relentlessly rammed down our throats. Even with all the popular culture emphasis on semen-coated feces* being indistinguishable from our children, we still don't talk about it at Mass. I'm pretty confident that of the last 50 homilies I've heard at Mass, the topic of gays came up in no more than three sentences and those as a member of a set of examples of self-worship. We don't bring the topic up on our own.
2. OK, I get it. Even if the topic is brought up, it's still a peripheral one. Just because some dingbat starts baiting you with, "Have you finally stopped hating gays?" it doesn't mean you need to respond. Dismiss the subject and move on to the things that matter. It's not that important. If it were, we'd have been talking about it already. See #1.
3. Duhh, it's the press. Who knows that the pope really said. The press is so gay-besotted that the pope's quote could easily have been taken out of context, blown up, printed on poster board, stapled to a long pole and waved around. I've seen a few references on Twitter and other blogs that this is exactly what happened.

At a higher level, all popes are tough dudes. That's part of the reason they get the job. I don't mean tough for non-Catholics, I mean tough for the faithful. #2, whether that's what Pope Francis really meant or not, is the correct response and it's very, very hard to do.

Focus on Christ's love and God's forgiveness. Got it. Will do, sir.

* - Yes, I know this is terribly crude. However, I'm trying to get with the spirit of the secular science crowd and call things by their proper name. You wouldn't want to be a prude, you know.