To begin with, the Devil made liars. That was for practice. Then he made journalists.

[fpb]

Sorry, shezan. But I find it agonizing and repulsive to watch a whole profession, member after member, repeating a complete misinterpretation of a passage that is not even so hard to understand, in order to invent a papal "trend" that does not, never did, and never will, exist, so as to be ultimately able to castigate the Pope when he tries to pull them back to reality. The fraudulency, the deliberate manipluation, the conscious (how can it not be conscious?) misrepresentation, and the driving energy of forcing events and discourse in a false and lying direction, are all so abjectly, so loathsomely immoral. I have rarely seen men so close to Hell.

Comments

[affablestranger.livejournal.com]

What happened?

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

The pope made a rather commonsense remark in his book "Light of the World" that in certain limited circumstances (for example, male prostitutes, at risk for HIV transmission) the use of a condom could represent a faint but positive movement towards sexual responsibility. Engaging in a potentially life-threatening sexual act while employing protective measures is obviously preferable to doing so without, though neither is licit.

The press has pretty much warped this into suggesting that the Pope is relaxing the Church's stance on contraception.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

Well, and then there were also the Pope's comments in praise of Pius XII's role in saving Jews during the Holocaust. The press didn't like that at all, and have been doing everything it can to repeat the typical slanders.

[affablestranger.livejournal.com]

Ah. I've seen it reported now, though the reports I've seen, both UK and US, report it essentially how you did there. Perhaps I'm not casting wide enough a net, which is not unknown. Several of the blog posts I've read mentioning it lament that he's not going far enough in his opinion for their liking. Of course, they'd rather he just gave license and was done with it.