The Pope is living in the early 1970s, which were clearly his glory days, ideologically speaking. Rachel Carson’s faux science book, Silent Spring, had managed to stop DDT use and let millions of Third World people die from malaria, Paul Erlich was in his prime, and hysteria was breaking out on every side.
He boasts that he hasn’t watched anything on television since 1960 and he has never been on the Internet and he only reads La Repubblica...for 10 minutes a day. So where exactly is he getting the information in his bubble? From his cronies and sycophants, who are busy feeding his ignorant ideological biases.
Well if those boasts are true he really has set himself up to be a sucker.
If he was content to be a theological maven then fine. The news of what happened in the world does not matter. But he is taking it on himself to address the world as if he knew it.
Why did Benedict yield his seat to this? Why did the college of cardinals give it a nod? Good grief. We just assume that people today are well read, especially if they have managed to get to a high position.