Pope Francis' "Big Heart" interview

I started writing something about the 'Big Heart' interview (published in the Jesuit's America magazine) a while ago. Then I read this analysis: The phoney war in the Church: five linguistic thoughts on THAT interview. I think that Ches (the author) explains the problems quite beautifully and his article definitely deserves a read and ponder. The main issue which Ches addresses, and which I think many others have ignored, is: what do the words, the specific language, the pope used, taken in context, actually mean? What is their true significance, as uttered in the present world and in the present environment of competing ideologies? (And what vanity it would be to suppose that Pope Francis speaks pure gospel, in a way that simply transcends ideology.) Too many have decided to be 'charitable' by ignoring the world-historical and ecclesiastical-historical context of the pope's words and pretending that the best way to read him is in accordance with some presumption, of innocence/orthodoxy/liberalism/etc., so that the objective meaning of his words is so obscured by hermeneutical mists that all anybody can really do is to put the 'best' spin on it he can manage - that is, in accordance with however his conscience conceives of the 'best.'

The best way to read Bergoglio, however - that is, the way which accords with true charity, which is absolutely inseparable from truth -, is to see what substantive issues he has chosen to emphasize, which he has chosen to marginalize, and - unfortunately not a null category - which he has distorted using rather clearly identifiable ideological buzz-words (see article linked to above). Surely this kind of analysis is necessary for discerning how it is that the new pope is reading the signs of the times, and which banner - which basic conception of God and man and Church - he is undertaking to take up and march under. It is tempting to say, which ideology he wants to champion, Papa Bergoglio's extremely vague protestations against 'decadent' and 'bankrupt' ideology and in favor of 'genius' notwithstanding. And indeed, it is tempting to say this, to suggest that the pope's comments have an unfortunate air of ideological cant, precisely because of the squishy vagueness of these his protestations.