That darn traditional family

Jay Anderson catches a unintentionally funny bit of prose from the Washington Post on Pope Benedict XVI.

Benedict’s persistent defense of the "traditional family" based on marriage between a man and a woman has emboldened Italy’s bishops, who are waging a fierce battle against the government’s proposal to extend some rights to unmarried couples, including same-sex unions.

Yes the traditional family in scare quotes and the pope daring a persistence defense of it. What’s next – teaching that Jesus is the Son of God?

Enrique Miret Magdalena, a respected moderate Spanish theologian who is himself 93, said Benedict, who turned 80 on Monday, is "an old man, and the papacy weighs heavily upon him. He’s afraid of change."

Yes the 93 theologian who must be an "old man" afraid to leave his moderate theology gets the "Kettle meet Pot award."

Before his Germany trip in September, Benedict told a German TV interviewer that "Christianity, Catholicism isn’t a collection of prohibitions." But in March he issued a 131-page "exhortation" to ensure that bishops, priests and the world’s 1.2 billion faithful strictly follow church teaching.

It included a nostalgic note about Latin, which has been in sharply declining use since the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s. He suggested that the faithful be taught to recite the more common prayers in Latin.

First off I think every time the media talks about Sacramentum Caritatis the number of pages in it gets longer as a kind of discouragement to actually read it – something this reporter obviously did not do. I do wonder how a document with 97 paragraphs makes it to 131 pages? Maybe the have a specially issue with larger text and pictures made just for journalists. You can spot this version because it has Mother Goose on the cover.

The second thing is a style guide issue that requires anytime the word Latin in used it must be associated with nostalgic?