I bet many of you have noticed your Facebook feeds filling up these past two weeks with fake news stories saying that Pope Francis has declared that “all religions are true,” has said that Adam and Eve did not exist, that Hell is not real, and so forth — basically, a liberal theological wish list. I notice that I’ve gotten them from non-Catholics; even liberal Catholics seem to understand enough about their religion to grasp that these stories can’t possibly be true. It is interesting, though, how eager many are to believe them — and how believable they seem, given the things this new pope has said, or at least the way he has said them.

Here’s one that’s not fake, but that’s caused a minor stir among my Catholic FB friends: Pope Francis, the Loaves & Fishes, and the Miracle Of Sharing. The Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin notes that the pope’s statements appear to endorse a liberal Catholic chestnut: that the real miracle in the Gospel’s Miracle of Loaves & Fishes was the “miracle of sharing.” Akin quotes the pope to this effect, but jumps impressively through a number of hoops to explain why Francis didn’t really say what it sounds like he said. Akin writes:

It’s understandable, the way Pope Francis phrased himself, that people would be perplexed. But we know Pope Francis often phrases himself in a way that can require further clarification.

That’s just part of who he is, so we should expect things like that.

We also know that, despite the way he phrases himself, particularly when speaking off the cuff (as he often does), that he’s a fundamentally orthodox man—a “son of the Church” as he puts it.

Knowing these two things, we should do the following:

First, ask how his statements might be understood in harmony with tradition (the “hermeneutic of continuity” that Pope Benedict stressed).

Second, read his statements in context to see what light that sheds.

Third, see what else he has said on the subject, to see if that sheds light on it.

Conservative Catholics in my FB feed are complaining that it’s a big problem when the pope’s defenders have to explain all the time that what the Pope said is really orthodox Catholicism, despite appearances.