Lumen Fidei (No?)

Don't forget the chocolate, you Renaissance Prince...

The new four-hand encyclical letter, Lumen Fidei, will be released on Friday. It surely calls for a quiet evening with a glass of brandy, some good chocolate and Beethoven – if you have a “Renaissance Prince” moment – in the background. I can't wait.

It would be easy to make the obvious joke and say the periods with five or six subordinates are Benedict's, and those ending with “eh?” or “no?” are Francis' … I will certainly resist the temptation… If I can.

More seriously, I can't imagine the work has not been revised by some wise theologian's pen, to give it uniformity of style, disguise the obvious gap between the heavyweight and the featherweight and not make it possible to say what is the one's, or the other's. This, assuming the encyclical is exclusively the work of the two, which does not have to be the case.

For the moment, I register with some satisfaction that the official version appears to be in Latin. I had feared Spanish, or perhaps Esperanto.

We shall see. Prepare the brandy.

Mundabor