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| Pope Benedict XVI |
In his book
The Spaniard and the seven deadly sins,
Fernando Diaz Plaja criticizes what he considers an example of the sin of pride rather common among Spaniards: criticizing a book without having read it. He
offers the following example:
Literary judgment is easiest in
Spain. I once listened to a radio broadcast where a few writers commented Dr.
Zhivago, by Pasternak. The opinions were so hard, sharp and negative, that a
lady of the group, with a probably Russian accent, was astonished and asked
humbly:
“But how can you say..., where
did you read that?” “I have not read the book,” was the astonishing reply. It
turned out that, of the four writers who had gathered to discuss the novel, she was
the only one who had read it.
November 21st
2012, near the beginning of the Christmas season, was the date of the
publication of the book about the infancy of Jesus,
third in the trilogy that Pope Benedict XVI dedicated to Jesus of Nazareth (he also signed them in his own name, Josef Ratzinger).
Let’s look
at a
review issued in a major daily journal in Spain on the same day of the
publication of the book:
