Anyone who has ever been in a serious relationship will probably identify with the old and by now cliché adage, “it’s not what you said, it’s how you said it” at the end of some form of disagreement.
Much the same sentiment can be applied to public figures trying to convey a message and make it stick – oftentimes, it’s not so much the content of a message that determines how an intended audience receives it, but how that message is packaged and delivered.
When it comes to the papacy, there is perhaps no larger platform for getting a message out – if a pope wants to say something, he’s got an audience of 1.4 billion Catholics globally, plus the attention of much of civil society and political echelons tuning in.
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