Laudato Eve... Almost.

Given all the frenzy surrounding Thursday's release, you'd think the encyclical to come is the programmatic manifesto of this pontificate....

Oh wait.

In any case, as noise pollution isn't just an environmental concern, but a spiritual and moral one too, where it counts, we're still on the clock:



Meanwhile, of course, such are the days that no Francis Event can be complete without a right sideshow. (All anticipation and prognostication exhausted by this point, see, something's gotta fill the gaping news-hole 'til the Main Event.)

Simply put, Church, if you've been on this beat long enough, you know how one's batting average isn't merely what you swing at, but what you don't. Along those lines, a 2,000 year-old church can teach the 24-hour news-cycle a thing or two more often than it gets credit for, and yet again, this is one of those moments.

And through it all, oddly enough, the main point of this whole exercise seems to remain lost to the fray. Lest anyone forgot, the call the Original Francis received – the mandate that formed the core of his mission – wasn't "hug animals." To quote one key voice close by the first Roman pontiff to take his name, however, perhaps the prime key to the Poverello's effectiveness in his time (an attribute that's clearly endured well beyond his earthly life) was his charism as "universal brother"... and, with it, his commitment to "repair[ing] the church" precisely by means of the work that Seán O'Malley has so often and fervently embraced in even more ancient words: "Tikkum Olam" – that is, "to repair the world."

All that said, everybody ready?

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