Remember, Catholics: never, never, and I mean NEVER trust the MSM when it comes to anything related to the Pope, the Church, the faith, etc. Check, check again, and then triple check their reporting.Unfortunately, this includes many "orthodox" sources, who often try to play "whack-a-mole" with press absurdities before they've read carefully themselves.
I think "Christian witness" ought to include modeling how to read and respond rationally to texts, particularly magisterial texts. Princeton's Robbie George had this to say on his FB page:
"Catholic friends: If I may offer a word of advice, please receive the forthcoming papal encyclical in a spirit of willingness to listen and to be taught by the Holy Father. Do not approach it by simply looking for what one agrees with or disagrees with on matters of climate science or anything else. The gift of the papal magisterium to us, the faithful, is just that: a gift--a charism. We are to receive it as such. We can, and no doubt each of us will, appreciate the fact that different teachings or aspects of the teaching contained in the document will be proposed at different levels of authority. That is virtually always true of teaching instruments of this sort. But there will be plenty of time to sort all that out. It should NOT be our first priority. Our first priority should be to open ourselves to learning what is to be learned from the Holy Father's reflections on the physical and moral ecology in the context of the Church's witness to, and proclamation of, the Gospel. We are about to hear the voice of Peter. Our first and most important task is to listen attentively and with open-hearted willingness to be taught."Many of his followers "shared" that post, and all of them, like the man himself, were met with vociferous protests of, "but not if the Pope says...." Or, "I can't stand it that he's saying....." Well, it will hard to read with an open mind if you "can't stand" what you don't even know if he says!
