For the record:
UPDATE: It appears the folks at La Repubblica may not have been as careful in their translation as the folks at America. Nun Blog notes:
I’ve only scanned the interview and found two eyebrow-raisers. A bit of research into the Italian original showed me that both are translation issues. And serious ones, to my mind. (What? Did they use Google Translate?) So I am going to just hurry to post the differences between the English as published and my own rather literal Italian.
If “everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them,” is the Pope saying that there is no such thing as objective truth, or objective right or wrong? This is where it is really, really helpful to know Italian: “Ciascuno di noi ha una sua visione del Bene e anche del Male. Noi dobbiamo incitarlo a procedere verso quello che lui pensa sia il Bene” is more literally (and helpfully?) translated as “Each one of us has his/her own vision of the Good or even of Evil. We must encourage him/her to move toward that which he/she sees as the Good.” The Pope is not leveling the difference between truth and untruth, right and wrong: he is saying that we all have a duty to encourage people to pursue the Good, knowing that the true Good will not fail to manifest himself, even if “through a glass darkly.”
Here’s another whopper: “The Son of God became incarnate in the souls of men to instill the feeling of brotherhood.” Um, the Son of God did not become incarnate in souls. He became incarnate in human nature, in his own human flesh and blood. The Italian is ” Il Figlio di Dio si è incarnato per infondere nell’anima degli uomini il sentimento della fratellanza”: “The Son of God became incarnate to infuse into the soul of men [could say “the human soul”] the feeling of brotherhood.”
Take the rest of the interview with a grain of salt–and with the Catechism at hand, knowing–as Pope Francis told Father Spadaro– that he is a “son of the Church” and that everything he says should be interpreted in the light of Church teachings.
patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2013/10/first-reaction-to-pope-francis-interview-context/
I’m finding that the extreme liberals and extreme traditionalists are not too far from each other. They seem to be reading into these interviews what’s not there. Not only that, but they’re not putting together the whole picture.
As you have pointed out above, there is a mistranslation. I read the Italian. I read fluently. I saw the mistranslation. At the same time, it did not move me one way or another, because I also know Pope Francis’ history.
This is the man who went toe to toe with the president of his country over abortion, same sex marriage and gay adoptions. This is the man who wrote the Aparecida Document for the bishops of South America. It’s a masterpiece of ecclesiology. He also said that he will not respond to dumb questions about abortion, homosexuality, etc, because everyone knows what the Church teaches and everyone knows that he is a son of the Church. He has said this three times, not just now. He said on the trip home from Rio.
I realize that today the media uses software to translate, because it’s faster than human translators. Software is going to falter. I would expect modern people who deal in the world of technology to remember this.
In addition, people seem to forget that Pope Francis is an excellent preacher, but that does not mean that he’s good at interviews. Some people just don’t have good interview skills. They speak in such a way as if the other person were inside their head and understood exactly what they mean. I get this sense from Pope Francis when he speaks in interviews. He speaks in a way that requires that one know the rest of the sentence.
The issue here is that he is who he is. Rather than judge him or panic over what he says, we must take reality as it is: bad reporting, bad translating, a person who is an excellent preacher, but not a good interviewee, and a man who has a history of orthodoxy as long as the Church. On top of all this, he’s a Jesuit. He’s going to speak like a Jesuit and use Jesuit pedagogy. In fact, one of the things that the Jesuits were saying today is that Pope Francis would very much like to introduce Jesuit systems into the Vatican, because St. Ignatius would expect this. They were referring to the Council of Cardinals. St. Ignatius always felt that the popes should govern with councils. He set up his order so that no superior may ever act without consulting the council. However, no council has authority over a superior. Councils, in the Ignatian model, are advisory and passive. They do not vote on anything, nor do they exercise any authority. All authority is vested in one person. In the case of the Jesuits, that would be the superior general. In the case the Church it would be the pope.
Putting all these things together, none of this drama makes sense to me. It’s over the top. We have to get back to living our lives and get back on our journey to heaven rather than become so overwhelmed that we cripple ourselves in the process.
