Healing Our Own House First?

A couple of points regarding secular reaction, (and the reaction to the Church's own Mrs. Jellybys,) overtures made by the Vatican to Lefebvrists recently...
From an "analysis" in the NYTimes:
It was just the latest example of how the pope is increasingly focused on internal doctrinal issues and seemingly unaware of how they might resonate in the larger world.
As such, it perfectly captured the theological aspirations — and political shortcomings — of his four-year-old papacy.

"Seemingly unaware?" The presumption of commentators on a man of demonstrable intellectual brilliance, caution, and charity boggles one.

Because the Pope does not share the commentators' aims, he must be "unaware" of the preferabilty of the course of action they would have chosen? if only he were as worldly and wise as they, he would surely have acted as they would have?

And oh, dear... political shortcomings.

We might also mention that he seems unaware that by remaining citizen of somewhere other than the US, he was unable to vote in the last election.
Or that by spending so much time reading and praying and thinking and writing instead of engaging in some serious cross-training, he's doing his physique no good.
Or that by listening to classical music in his spare time instead of practicing with video games he could become a first rate air guitar player.

I mean, he does those things, so he must be unaware of what the results would have been had he not.

If only he had been aware.

And these two sentences from an earlier article in the times:
Among the men reinstated Saturday was Richard Williamson, a British-born cleric who in an interview last week said he did not believe that six million Jews died in the Nazi gas chambers.

and eight paragraphs later:

In a November interview broadcast on Swedish television last week and widely available on the Internet, the bishop said that he believed that....

Although I have seen nothing to indicate Williamson does not still hold, and would not still express reprehensible and evil views, (although denying the accuracy of the numbers, or the methods employed in the Holocaust is not evil in and of itself,) it seems journalistically dishonest to say that "last week he said," as Miss Donadio has.
(Although I am not of the school that is trying to blame the television people rather than Williamson for the tempest rightfully stirred up by his opinions and beliefs.)

By the way, another completely unrelated point: those of you who are parents know that it is virtually impossible to discipline or instruct ones children when they have run away from home and severed all communication.

I'm just sayin'...