[Ads-l] Pope Francis Quote

[Shapiro, Fred]

Just to be super-clear, this was a July 2013 quote, not a December 2013 quote too late to make last year's list.

Fred Shapiro



________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Shapiro, Fred [fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2014 7:30 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Pope Francis Quote

I apologize for my coyness concerning why Pope Francis's "who am I to judge" quote is not eligible for my 2014 list of notable quotations of the year, and I hope this did not come across as obnoxiousness toward the people on this list who have been so helpful to me this year and in the past.  But I thought it was very obvious, from the 2013 date in Beth's original link and the words accompanying that link ("With those five words, spoken in late July in reply to a reporter's question about the status of gay priests in the Church ..."), that this was a 2013 quote.

Indeed, we discussed this quote, as a QOTY candidate, on this list in August 2013.  I reproduce my posting below, in order to indicate that I had another reason for not using this quote, namely that I was skeptical that Francis's words signalled any kind of major change in Church policy toward homosexuals.  It is still not clear that there has been any major substantive change; it may be that Francis is merely putting a humane face on the same old doctrines and policies.  I hope that is not the case.

Fred Shapiro



On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 5:27 PM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:

>>"Se una persona è gay e cerca il Signore e ha buona volontà, ma chi
>>sono io per giudicarla?" ("If someone is gay and is searching for the
>>Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?") -- Pope Francis,
>>July 28, 2013

> Others have suggested this quotation to me as a candidate for one of the most notable quotations of the year.  I would consider it as such if I believed it signaled some major change in the Church's attitudes toward homosexuality, but I have not regarded it as a serious candidate because I don't expect that it will signal any major change by the Church.


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