Sandro Magister: "This benevolence of the media toward Pope Francis is one of the features that characterize the beginning of this pontificate. The gentleness with which he is able to speak even the most uncomfortable truths facilitates this benevolence. But it is easy to predict that sooner or later it will cool down and give way to a reappearance of criticism." A very nice examination of PF's rhetorical habits, illustrated in his morning homilies.
Pope Francis and the Reform of the Laity | NCRegister.com "We priests tend to clericalize the laity. We do not realize it, but it is as if we infect them with our own disease. And the laity — not all, but many — ask us on their knees to clericalize them, because it is more comfortable to be an altar server than the protagonist of a lay path. We cannot fall into that trap — it is a sinful complicity.
RealClearReligion - John Allen: The RealClearReligion Interview When the National Catholic Reporter’s senior correspondent John L. Allen, Jr. was called upon to put a question to Pope Benedict XVI in 2008, the Vatican press officer said: “Holy Father, this man needs no introduction.” So very true, and the interview gives a model of what sober reporting should look like.
Bipartisan protip: if you want to be a prophet, or if you revel in it, you’re not. And if a President is in your audience, and you’re agreeing with him or telling him things that he doesn’t mind hearing, you’re definitely not. Rev. Leon and Prophecy - Michael Sean Winters “I am tired, very tired, of people, clerical or lay, who pat themselves on the back by articulating their positions on this issue or that and claim that they are taking a prophetic stance.
John Thavis on the pope’s ‘reform’ project Pope Francis came into the Vatican with a mandate to change the way its bureaucracy functions (or disfunctions), in the wake of scandals, leaks and power struggles that have embarrassed the church. It seems to me that he’s taking that task seriously, by laying the spiritual groundwork for change. He’s approaching the various Vatican environments not so much as the new boss, but as the new pastor.
Tightwind.net has it right: Google makes relatively little from Android while one company—Samsung—makes more operating income from Android than Google as a whole. Think about that! Google is doing the hard work of developing the operating system and applications, but Samsung is capturing all of the revenue and income. Google’s Android strategy failed. The only problem with the notion that Google's exit from the trap is selling devices (Glass, Chromebooks, Motorola-made Google-branded phones) is that we have very little evidence that Google will be any good at it.
Luis Palau: Why It Matters that Pope Francis Drinks Maté with Evangelicals: "One day I said to him, 'You seem to love the Bible a lot,' and he said, 'You know, my financial manager [for the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires] … is an evangelical Christian.' I said, 'Why would that be?' And he said, 'Well, I can trust him, and we spend hours reading the Bible and praying and drinking maté [an Argentine green tea].
Pope Francis I - Ross Douthat: "First, whatever correlations of factions and forces within the conclave produced this result, Bergoglio won relatively swiftly, which — joined to his runner-up status last time, in a conclave that had a very different slate of cardinal electors — suggests a man with deep reservoirs of support and goodwill among his fellow prelates. Even if he was a compromise choice of some sort, his fellow electors were clearly quite happy to make it.
Undoubtedly the beginning of a mighty flood, here’s John Allen from last week with a pre-election profile of the man would be Francis. It’s a good take from one of the premier US reporters on things Vatican.
Something more rare than rubies... Penn Jillette provides a sterling example of intellectual integrity. He's an atheist, but he's more capable of taking people at their word and respecting the content of beliefs he does not share than Piers Morgan could ever be. There's a few theological bobbles here and there, but that would be nitpicking. Well worth three minutes of life to watch it. http://www.cato.org/longtail-iframe/node/45125/field_longtail_player/0