Pope Francis Is Talking During Plane Flights Again (And You Know What That Means)

It means some folks will be writing their own encyclicals around his words. Shock!

Remember a few days ago when Pope Francis steered clear of all kinds of controversy by discussing breast feeding in public? I can think of a couple of people, aside from me, who have no problem with those kinds of thoughts whatsoever. Can you guess their names?

Now though, the lightning bolts coming off the plane are Pope Francis’s off the cuff remarks about freedom of expression. You know, where he was shooting the breeze about punching someone in the nose being on the same level as murdering someone who says disparaging things about a person’s faith.

This sounded to me like he might have actually been blaming the victim, which is unfortunate.

I don’t think I’m going so far as to say, “Hey, the Pope is saying something I don’t like, so I’m going to just ignore him.” But when he is playing fast and loose with the press folks during long, around the world flights, killing time by answering their questions? Fuhgettaboutit!

You can read the (unofficial)transcript for yourself (if you’ve got time to burn). As for me? I’m going to take a pass on diving deep on these kinds of shallow comments. Besides, Tom McDonald is already commenting on it, and I agree with him. And though I don’t always agree with John Zmirak ( and his writing partner Jason Jones), when I do…it’s about the sanctity of freedom of expression.

I have to go listen to some music now.

*Photograph belongs to the author.