There are many things to appreciate about Pope Francis. "Go to the margins"–yes. "The shepherd should smell like the sheep"–yes. And much more. But he also creates a great deal of confusion, and the controversy that followed his remark a week or so ago that the Church should apologize to homosexuals has brought me to a point where for the sake of my own spiritual health I am going to have to stop paying attention to him. Yes, if you seek out the full text and read the remark in context, it doesn't mean that the Church should apologize for saying that homosexual acts are wrong, and doesn't really say anything that isn't already normal Catholic teaching. But the whole thing followed a disheartening and now established pattern.
First, the pope, often but not always when speaking off the cuff, says something that gets attention for its departure, whether real or apparent, from Church teaching. The press turns it into a sound bite. Theologically and politically liberal Catholics applaud and say "Take that, you bastards" to conservatives. Secular liberals say "It's a baby step but better than nothing." Theologically and politically conservative Catholics say "Oh no." Among the latter group, those who already detest Francis (sadly, the word is not too strong) charge him with heresy and demand that he resign. Those who are more sympathetic to him go to a lot of trouble to analyze his words and to put the best possible construction on them. Then the fuss dies down till next time.
I don't know whether all this is beneficial to anyone's spiritual life, but it certainly is not to mine. Of the parties I named, I'm most usually in the "sympathetic conservative" group. I don't like being critical of the pope. I don't think it's my place to pronounce on his orthodoxy. Yet I can't pretend that I think all is well when Francis says things that I believe are at best unsound and needlessly confusing. Three years into his papacy it's pretty well established that confusion and division are notable features of it and likely to remain so. You may say that's because he's a bad pope, and the people who resist him are good, or because he's a good one, and the people who resist him are bad. But the facts of confusion and division are undeniable.
As I know I've said here before, this development is deeply saddening to me. Just when I thought we had gotten past the divisions within the Church, they have been reopened and deepened. It's not only saddening but troubling: am I going to find myself before this is all over having to choose between what the current pope says and what the tradition of the Church says?
I'm not a theologian and am not in a position of authority or influence. I'm just a Catholic layman trying to live his faith in an increasingly anti-Christian culture. These controversies are making that more, not less, difficult. I have work to do. I don't have time to do the kind of careful reading and analysis required to separate the wheat from the chaff in remarks that are sometimes almost incoherent. And so, out of a sense of self-preservation, I'm going to start ignoring these periodic eruptions. In fact I think I'll just kind of withdraw from the whole Catholic controversy scene. I do not see any benefit to attending to it, and I see a certain amount of harm.
Light On Dark Water 
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