Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Human

It’s Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 and the child Samuel is on his way.

Also, hitting the Roman Catholic news and blog circuit today is the cancellation of Pope Benedict’s planned speech this Thursday at a Rome University because of student and Professor protests. It might be instructive to remember Benedict’s revulsion to the student protests in the 60s and 70s, and, of course, Italian politics.

I am surprised about the Manichean plots so many see in this, possibly including the Pope himself. Actually, I don’t think Pope Benedict sees conspiracies in this situation but given his demonstrated ability to not foresee consequences to his public statements it will be interesting to follow this story as it develops. I will be interested to read the text of his intended talk when it becomes public, which I hope is soon.

1 comment:

Fred said...

so, what did you think of the text of B16's speech? I don't think it's paranoid to observe the cynical manipulation of people by their leaders. At La Sapienza, for example, the original letter was drafted by among others a professor who has written a hagiography of Galileo. The remarks cited in the letter were gotten not from Ratzinger's speech, but from a Wikipedia article. Italian secularists and communists hate the pope whom they see as a symbol of all they hate.