What to read, and not, church documents edition [Updated]

Of the making of many books there is no end, and that goes for official teaching documents of the Catholic Church as well. The church is replete with cardinals, bishops, dicasteries, pontifical commissions, bishops conferences, departments of bishops conferences, and so on and so on, and they all have staffs, and they all put out documents, many of which are lengthy, and all of which are densely written.  Consequently, I  am perpetually behind in my reading.

So I have to pick my spots.  I chose to spend some hours poring over a recent document from the Holy See on the 2007 financial crisis (see blog posts here and here) but so far have not delved into what seems to be a more important teaching document, Pope Francis's new apostolic exhortation,  Gaudete et exsultate, on the call to holiness in the modern world.  That's the kind of document I have a sort of professional obligation to read and digest.  And I'll get around to it.  I promise.  Sooner or later.  When I have the time.

The notion of picking one's spots implies that some spots don't ever get picked, and I'm sorry to confess that there are some Vatican documents I'm extremely unlikely to ever read.   If anyone were to ask me, "What's the church document you're least likely to read?", I'd have had a ready answer: in 2007, one of the Vatican departments issued a document - and it is by no means a short one - on driving etiquette.  Please understand that I am not one to dismiss out of hand the notion that every human action has a moral dimension; and anyone who has learned to drive understands that it can be an occasion of sin.  But really - do I need some priest who teaches at a pontifical university and works on the side ghost-writing for some archbishop in some pontifical department, to tell me how to behave behind the wheel?  Didn't Vatican II, somewhere or other, promote the idea that lay adults can have an adult faith, and it's possible we may know as much, or more, about driving than a guy who walks from his cramped Roman apartment to his cramped Vatican office every day?   I guess that, technically, I'm not a layperson, but on this particular life skill, I really kind of am.

And so, the Holy See announcement last week that it has released a document on sports didn't elicit an enthusiastic response from me.  I didn't do the wave, or waggle a foam finger, or even low-five anyone.  My appetite was further un-whetted when I discovered that it's every bit as long as I feared it would be - 27 single-spaced pages of type in a small font.  My reaction was similar to my reaction to the driving essay: shouldn't folks like us be writing rather than reading those things?

This is the part of the post where I'm supposed to write, "But despite my misgivings, I plowed through the document, and you know what?  It's actually pretty good."  I'm not foreclosing the possibility that I may write that sentence in earnest some day.  Or maybe I am - cf above on the necessity of spot-picking.  I haven't read it, and there's at least a fair chance I won't read it.

As regards sports: I went to Catholic school for something like eight of my thirteen years of primary schooling.  Sports are big in Catholic schools.  They're big in the American Catholic culture.  I know sports and culture.  I've lived through it.  I've been the worst athlete on several teams.  I've been bullied by jocks.  I've seen them get preferential treatment from teachers and school administrators.

I've worked for companies that hire former professional athletes to play golf with their customers.  I've seen them get paid absurd salaries for hanging around the office and doing nothing except groping and harassing the female employees.

Sports aren't all bad. I've been a youth coach (probably a better coach than player).  From time to time I spend a lot of money attending sporting events.  I was a season ticket holder for Northwestern football for a time.  I watch a fair amount of sports on television - I watched a hockey game this evening.

So I admit that sports offers items of interest for discussion.  I just need to be convinced, I guess, that the Holy See has anything important, or even credible, to say about it.  Maybe I'll have to read the damn thing, just to find out what's in it.

Update 6/8/2018: Above, I had heaped scorn on the 2007 document from driving - scoffing at something I haven't actually read, which I guess isn't very admirable, but the point of the post is that some documents are on topics that seem so non-urgent that it's hard to find the motivation to commit to reading them through.  Anyway, I was closing some open tabs on my browser this morning, and discovered that I still had the driving document pulled up (I had opened it to provide the URL in the original post).  Shaking my head again at its intimidating length, and wondering somewhat idly how even a Vatican department can go on and on about something as trivial as driving, I scrolled through the table of contents and discovered it's about much more than driving.  There is a major section on prostitution, a major section on street children, and a major section on homelessness - the last of which is a primary focus of my pastoral ministry these days.  So now I'm actually pretty motivated to read it.  Maybe I'll need to take it all back.