"Pope's Visit" Commercial

[Credo in Deum]

8 hours ago, Pia Jesu said:

Vatican spokesman, Fr. Thomas Resica recently stated that "there are limits to satire and humor" especially in the ways we portray and speak of faith & belief.  Undoubtedly, Pope Francis enjoys being with people and is joyful in the Spirit, but he bears the weight of the Church on his shoulders (especially during this horrific period of history). The media's caricature of him as a rock star and cool dude who "performs" a magic trick diminishes respect for the Holy Office of the Papacy.

Modern society is against anything that resembles patriarchy.  Even in their own secular shows on t.v. the father is always portrayed as some buffoon or bumbling oaf, so it's not surprising that the media would do the same to the Pope. Anyway, I feel your frustration.

[Pia Jesu]

I think there is a cautionary tale here...about the effects of surrendering to what might be described as the spirit of the age.  To what extent do Christian beliefs, institutions, rituals, etc. need a major overhauling?  And to what extent, if any, can tradition accommodate the modern world?  We're steeped in a morass of ethical relativism and subjectivism.  Likewise, whatever tends to discredit authority--tends to discredit all its pronouncements, leaving no system at all!  To read (in an earlier post) that "choosing to scold the world" would make the Church a public absurdity--and ultimately grotesque--suggests this momentum.  In the spirit of aggiornamento the Second Vatican Council focused on radically assessing and rethinking the institutional church because the world had changed.  One of the sad results, however, was/is a decline in church attendance.  On a personal note, my pastor recently promoted the wearing of a badge that said, "Ask me about Jesus."  There were few takers.  I really think that we need to reflect on what it means to be a faith-filled individual.  On the jacket of A Thomas Merton Reader, Merton himself writes that the Christian is "one who sacrifices the half truth for the sake of the whole truth, who abandons an incomplete and imperfect concept of life for a life that is integral, unified, and structurally perfect."