One spiritual principle I have heard on both sides of the Tiber is the notion that resistance is a sign of effectiveness. That is if you see a lot of spiritual weapons being marshaled against you then you can be pretty sure you are doing something right. This is what I feel about the pope's book. It is like Satan is firing absolutely everything he has to try and stop it. We have everything. There are high level Catholic officials stabbing him in the back. There is the classic "change some key words in the translation" trick that we have seen before. There is the media's inability to read a few hundred words of text and get the real story. There is the cultural obsession with all things sexual. There is the Vatican PR department that takes Sundays off. There is the protestant tendency to take cheap shots on any issue involving the pope and/or contraception.
This book launch seems to have combined absolutely everything that can go wrong. Which more than anything makes me interested to read this book. Why is someone working so hard to distract attention from the real message here? There has got to be some real potential for this book to be very powerful.
What's great is that Ignatius press sent me an email saying "Get the Pope's Controversial New Book!" or something like that--controversy stirs up interest and is good for selling books. I've read the two other interview books he has done with Seewald and am excited to read this one too. Those others were excellent.
ReplyDeleteI wonder about that. It might work out well but you might get the wrong type of person buying it. Someone who wants to read about condoms is not going to like this book. It is more for someone who has a negative view of Catholic spirituality. Are they more likely to read it? I am not sure.
ReplyDeleteOnce you get copies out there you never know where they end up.