(Crisis Magazine. Msgr. Richard C. Antall).
The pope is a pastor more than a thinker. We cannot expect the intellectual rigor of either of his two most recent predecessors. But am I the only one who feels like this “two steps forward, two steps back” is a little confusing? “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” —Walt Whitman.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his famous essay “Self-Reliance” that a “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” I suspect that the Holy Father would not like the full implications of the remark, but I wonder that he doesn’t realize that some people might see in his many different interventions in the broad stream of social commentary similar disregard for said hobgoblin. In his 60 Minutes interview with Norah O’Donnell, he seemed to rule out the morality of surrogate motherhood. When O’Donnell said that sometimes this was the only hope a couple might have, the pope said: