Note to Tom Kreitzberg

Live forever!

I am perpetually astonished at how pundits can *instantly* render sweeping verdicts on papal encyclicals before the ink is even dry. And even more on how they can actually exegete such encyclicals like 19th century German scholars purporting to know, down to the word, which passages are written by the Yahwist, Elohist, Priestly and Deuterocanonical authors.

I’m always reminded of Fr. Benedict Groeschel’s favorite biblical scholar, Mrs. Sandoc, the Jewish lady who lived across the street from him when he was a kid in New York. Her son came home, full of the latest scholarship and announced that Israel had crossed the Red Sea at low tide. She replied, in archetypally Jewish New York mother fashion: “You were there?”