From Conrad Black's interesting commentary on the Pope's recent speeches:
What the pope was really saying was that the Roman Catholic Church must not allow its critics to continue to portray it successfully and falsely as obsessed with the vagaries of people’s sex lives, and as fanatically and principally preoccupied with such matters; that it must be clear that all human life is sacred, that all people are souls to be cared for and respected, and that it is a reasonable surmise that any plausible characterization of God would not be a deity who approved the creation of life that was condemned to be irredeemably evil from the start and would not be deserving of any consideration. At the same time, the Church must be seen by all, despite these efforts to smear it as a neurotic gaggle of prurient scolds and hypocrites, as really in the business of caring for and about everybody. This is not a new interpretation: It is a new counterattack on those who have said or implied that Roman Catholicism was incompatible with anything except the personal life of eunuchs, and eunuchs who kept their hands to themselves.
I sympathize with the Pope's traditional attitude of "love the sinner, not the sin," but the idea that all souls should get my care and love is utterly beyond my capacity. I steer clear of malignant things in the same way that I avoid rocks on a boat.
