Speaking of electric Praetorians...

Recently, one of the pope's unpaid Yankee spin doctors issued his first statement on the pope's destructive "You probably aren't married--but that couple shacking up might be!") blurtations on marriage.

I won't link to him, but if you're curious, he blogs at Patheos and has a cringe-inducing long sword logo at the top of his page. 

As I said, he didn't discuss the original statement, nor does he acknowledge the pope's assertion that cohabitation can be real marriage.

In any event, this particular electric Praetorian asserts that the real problem is not the actual statements themselves. No, of course not. 

No, rather the really damaging thing is that Catholics don't accept the fact that it was supposedly just a misstatement, and one (at best partially) "corrected" by a post-hoc Orwellian transcript scrubbing.

Never mind that the no-doubt increasingly-retirement-yearning Fr. Lombardi only discussed the Minitrue treatment because journalists brought the bowdlerized transcript to his attention.

Nope. The Blurts Heard 'Round The World are shruggable, since such were (partially) altered without comment or explanation.

Something tells me that if this writer were verbally referred to as a "Cincinnati-area Scientology official" he would not be, shall we say, entirely mollified if he were to be handed a "transcript" that said "Cincinnati-area resident." 

It should not be hard to explain that such damaging blockbuster statements cannot be "recalled" that way, much less repaired.

As a Michigan jurist said in another context: that which is "announced with flourishes and fanfare at noonday should not be revoked by a pennywhistle trill at midnight."

But that's what the Vatican tried to do.

Apparently, however, in the Age of Francis, we all have to learn that the problem is not Francis's words and actions, but rather our reaction to his words and actions. And those reactions must account for the memory-holing of the historical record.

In other words, tighten your cilice and shut up.