The late Nelson Rockefeller liked to use the phrase in his speeches: Brotherhood of Man under the Fatherhood of God. His aides used to privately refer to this as Bomfog: a substance free platitude that sounded good and meant absolutely nothing.
The Pope is quite the Bomfog Artist. A recent example:
What does he gain by this? Favorable coverage in the Left leaning media which seems all important to him.
What does this obligate him to do? Nothing.
What does the phrase mean? Mean? Glittering generalities are not supposed to mean anything substantive.
Much of this Papacy can be summed up by this observation from the first volume of Asimov’s Foundation trilogy:
“The analysis was the most difficult of the three by all odds. When Holk, after two days of steady work, succeeded in eliminating meaningless statements, vague gibberish, useless qualifications – in short, all the goo and dribble – he found he had nothing left. Everything cancelled out.
Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion didn’t say one damned thing, and said it so you never noticed.”
Please all read “Auctorem Fidei” by pope Pius vi to see the most discouraging similarities coming from the Vatican these days. one quick excerpt; “Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements that disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic truth is camouflaged.”
Ambiguity seems to be this pope’s sole means of clarifying things.
Perhaps it reads differently in Latin? Should we blame the translator? At any rate, let’s hope the free marketplace of ideas will consign the Bergoglio’s (sp?) writings to the literary garage sales that are their natural home.
That bit from Asimov has been one of my favorites since I first read it in Junior High School.
So the mission of the church is to build a culture of peace? I could have sworn that Jesus said just the opposite.