Excellent article, Ed. I hope it gets very wide circulation. I remember that there was one line, in one of his speeches where he was talking about the need for ‘balance’ – not too much technology, but just enough to pursue the altruistic ideals he was addressing – in effect, a call to limit technology. It was such a sickening spectacle watching otherwise intelligible talking-heads mentally bend themselves into pretzels trying to find support for things they knew to be good (e.g., free enterprise) in the speeches of the Pope, or to turn their minds into mush pretending that he didn't mean some of the things he actually said. And how sickening to watch secular progressives gleefully pointing to how the Pope was supporting their positions on immigration and climate change, while the Religious Right were so down in the mouth about their holiest of guys not supporting their issues as strongly as they wanted (not so much capitalism, but their holiest of issues: abortion). It is clear that the Catholic Church is the world’s oldest institution because they have learned to not say things clearly, to wrap all of their doings in mystery, ritual and surround themselves with props in order to encourage people to see them as somehow outside of the realm of what one views with reason. The Kardashians appear to be famous because... they are famous. Hillary Clinton was running a campaign where she was going to the nominee of her party because... she is inevitable. And the pronouncements and doings of the Pope are important because... they are important? Mostly, I had a visceral reaction to what I saw… a feeling of sadness for our culture, a feeling of embarrassment for our culture.
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