Amy Wellborn is right. Popes should not give press conferences.

As a veteran Catholic journalist, who for years looked for a catchy headline, I say this with some reluctance. But the results of papal press conferences— especially informal exchanges with reporters, and especially those disastrous airplane Q&A sessions of the last papacy— have been uniformly negative.

Amy is dead on when she writes that “even the clearest words and most careful phrasings can be interpreted in infinite ways and, most importantly – will be.We know this.” A Roman Pontiff simply cannot make offhand remarks— at least not for the record. Everything he says will be taken as authoritative. It shouldn’t be, of course; a quick answer to a reporter’s question is not an exercise of the teaching magisterium. Yet the secular media— which neither understand nor respect the magisterium— will take it as such anyway. “We know this.” We’ve seen it happen, too often.

See, in the latest case, how Senator Durbin has pronounced himself “overwhelmed” by what NBC inaccurately classified as the Pope’s “support” for him? Pope Leo’s actual statement did not “support” Durbin— or Cupich or Paprocki or anyone else for that matter. (That’s precisely the problem.) But is anyone the least bit surprised that media reports took it that way?

Everything that a Pope says is newsworthy. Every word he drops casually will be taken seriously, reported and analyzed, with results that often predictable and rarely good.

Pope Benedict XVI recognized this problem. Before his election to the papacy he was among the most prolific of writers, churning out books and essays and reviews. Then when he became Pontiff his pen dried up. He wrote only three encyclicals in eight years, and a handful of other major teaching documents— an output nowhere near his previous pace. In the only book produced during those years, the 3-part Jesus of Nazareth, he took great pains to emphasize that he was not invoking his Petrine authority— because he knew that if he did not say that clearly and repeatedly, some readers would think otherwise.

Pope Leo has been very generous and friendly with reporters, particularly as he comes and goes during his Tuesday visits to Castel Gandolfo. But maybe he could confine himself, in those conversations, to neutral subjects: the weather, the food, the condition of the tennis courts. Or speak off the record. Otherwise whatever he says will be treated as an expression of papal authority. And— the point— it is not.