The photo says “friendly exhibition.” Leo XIV smiling, racket up, crowd behind him, like we’re about to watch a lighthearted set on a sunny parish court.
But the last few days of headlines feel like a different kind of tennis: the kind where the same rally keeps restarting because the officials keep changing the rules mid-point, then insisting they’re only “protecting unity,” while the spectators are told to applaud the very thing that’s draining the game of meaning.
There is a politically incorrect joke that my old barber once told me. He asked what do you call a tennis match between Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles? Answer? Endless Love.
Leo’s pontificate and his Bergoglian revolution is like such a tennis match. A pointless exercise where nobody wins, it never ends, and everybody who has to watch it loses.
Leo XIV’s “direction” is not hidden in one dramatic quote. It’s visible in the routine selections and the routine punishments.
When the Church is supposed to speak clearly, the ball goes soft and floating: “welcome,” “inclusion,” “accompaniment,” “peace and justice.” When Catholics try to live the faith with a bodily reverence that used to be normal, suddenly the line-calls become strict, procedural, and policed: posture, rails, kneelers, “normative,” “visible contradiction.” The net cord always seems to break in the same direction.
And this week’s stories line up like a neat little set.
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