Friday, July 05, 2013

New Encyclical: Lumen Fidei

The encyclical carries the name of Pope Francis, who acknowledges in it that actually it was substantially the work of Benedict XVI, nearly completed in its first draft before his resignation to supplement what he (Benedict) had said about charity and hope. Francis gratefully acknowledges the work of Benedict, adding that he (Francis) took up this work and added "a few contributions of my own."



ENCYCLICAL LETTER
LUMEN FIDEI [The Light of Faith]
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
FRANCIS
TO THE BISHOPS
PRIESTS AND DEACONS
CONSECRATED MEN AND WOMEN
AND ALL THE LAY FAITHFUL
ON FAITH

[Hat tip to Rorate Caeli]

3 comments:

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

So, what is it?

Is it something really really long that never gets around to defining what Faith is?

Is it something really really really long and prolix that quotes nearly everybody from Camus to Hank Kimball, County Extension Agent of Green Acres fame?

Is it really really really really really long and is a brilliant display in intellect and learning that reminds one of the last display at a Fireworks; and like the Fireworks, leaves behind nothing solid?

I refuse to read such texts anymore. they make me as crazy as Tim Benzedrino ("Bored of the Rings)

"Snorting, sporting! Speeding through the arbor,
Pushing till the folk you burn toss you in the harbor!

Screeching like a dying loon, zooming like the thrush!
Follow me and very soon, your mind will turn to mush!

Higher than the nowhere birds grooving in the air,
We'll open up a sandal shop where everyone will share!

Flower folk are springing up, wearing bead and boot,
And if you down me you can stick a flower up your snoot!

To Love and Peace and Brotherhood we all can snort a toast,
And if the heat is on again, we'll all split to the Coast!"

Lynne said...

I think it's telling that no one has commented on this...

Sheldon said...

"Bored of the Rings," ha! That says it all.

Reading these encyclicals is a drag. For every tiny insight you find, you have to drag yourself through pages and pages of circuitous, elliptical, convoluted Teutonic prose, which looks like it's been translated multiple times from German to Latin and then finally into our vernacular English.

And the insights often seem so banal that you question whether the thing was worth writing in the first place. I'm truly sorry to say this, because I don't think these popes are bad men. They are simply and perpetually confused by the intellectual atmosphere of their times.

Well, at least, maybe ...