Papa & Rolling Stone

Our underground correspondent we keep on retainer in a dark Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep it's secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye, wired in the following observations a couple days ago under the header: "On the cover of the Rolling Stone":

Wow. That is all I can say.

OK, not really! ...

When I was a rebellious twenty something and would be journalist, I began reading Rolling Stone.

The writing was and often remains colorfully outstanding (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/bangerz-20131004). I can still remember lines from various reviews.

So this very much gobsmacked me.

... I still read [Rolling Stone] intermittently. I have bought copies occasionally ... but found the copy radioactively anti-Chrisian, to put it mildly. It is among the most unflinchingly liberal and anti-Christian publications out there, and whenever I pursue it I feel like I have been frontally assaulted. In a far more aggressive and yes, contaminating way than something like Mother Jones and the NCR. It may be the perfect merging of ideas, images, entertainment, commerce, and information, which together seem very much like the Spirit of the World writ large with the additional punch Annie Leibowitz photography.

Fr Z weighs in thusly:

The editor of Fishwrap (aka National Schismatic Reporter), Tom Fox, nearly has an embarrassing moment of ecstasy in his commentary on the cover of the Rolling Stone.

Pope Francis continues to take the world by storm. His latest media triumph, a cover story on, yes, the Rolling Stone this week.

“The Times They Are A-Changin’: ?Inside the Pope’s gentle revolution,” is a 7,700-word profile by contributing editor Mark Binelli, who writes, “In less than a year since his papacy began, Pope Francis has done much to separate himself from past popes and establish himself as a people’s pope.”

In the last few months Francis has appeared on the covers of Time (“Person of the Year”), The New Yorker, The Advocate (“The Person of the Year”), and Vanity Fair (Italian issue), among a dozen or more others — to say nothing about Catholic publications such as America and the National Catholic Reporter(Of course). [Such prestigious journals!]

The real climax of the NSR piece comes when Fox quotes the Stoner‘s bashing of Pope Benedict

After the disastrous papacy of Benedict, a staunch traditionalist who looked like he should be wearing a striped shirt with knife-fingered gloves and menacing teenagers in their nightmares, Francis’ basic mastery of skills like smiling in public seemed a small miracle to the average Catholic.

Don't be fooled. He's not really smiling>

[Fr. Z remarks:]

Smiling in public! No Pope ever smiled in public before Francis! Ehvur!