pope francis

Evangelii Gaudium - Joy of the Gospel

Pope Francis released his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (Joy of the Gospel), today.

I'm having a quick read through it, but as with all other Papal writings, I'm pretty sure it requires a deeper reading sometime when I have a quiet period of time to reflect on it.

There's already some chatter about certain statements the Pope makes in this Exhortation, and many others can summarize and scrutinize much better than I.

In other news, I found out about this release pretty soon after it was published, since I've been beta-testing the Catholic News Live mobile app for iOS 7... it will be released shortly! (More to come...).

Pope Francis is not the anti-Benedict

It seems the media has taken every opportunity to spin Pope Francis' words as being veiled criticisms of his predecessor's own words, especially when it comes to liturgical and theological topics. While it's great seeing the media show meager support at times, rather than destructive criticism for a Pope at every turn, it's misguided and not really that helpful.

All the press is saying is that what makes Catholicism Catholic (liturgy, ritual, priesthood, catechesis, etc.) is irrelevant, and we should worry more about the poor and such instead—and they're taking many translated quotes from Pope Francis out of context to support their theories. This horse has been beaten to death by many well-intentioned cafeteria Catholics throughout my lifetime, and I'm quite sick of it.

James over at the Forum has written about this a few times, and his most recent post, "Criticism" of Benedict in Rio? is spot-on:

Ever since Francis was elected, the media has been relentlessly billing him as the anti-Benedict. [...]