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Monday 12 May 2014

Cardinal Kasper to American Catholics --

"Relax, you don't need to listen to what anyone from the Vatican says.... oh, except me."

At least that's pretty much what we're being told he said.
I understand the reasons for using quotation marks around a phrase, like.... oh, let's just say, "pope's theologian."
It means, presumably, that we know the pope's theolgian isn't really the loose cannon we're gushing about, that that post it taken up by Wojciech Giertych or someone Dominican, not Cardinal Walter Kasper.
And I know writers aren't responsible for the headlines.
But in the body of the puff piece we have
The German cardinal who has been called the “pope’s theologian” said fresh Vatican criticism of American nuns was typical of the “narrower” view that officials of the Roman Curia tend to take, and he said U.S. Catholics shouldn’t be overly concerned.
So I guess my question is, called by whom?
So far as I have discovered, other than the author David Gibson, a single person in a blog combox has gone on the record, and he seemed to think Kasper actually was.

Now, you might think that there is a distressing tendency for "journalists", (I'm thinking of the currently sidelined Tablet writer,) to go about their business thusly -- I want to give the impression that there's buzz about something I really, really, really wish were so, so voila! I myself will say this, and I'm "people" aren't I, so now I can truthfully claim, "some people say...."
You might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment"

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