Between Work and Vacation, Not Dialectics but Reality: A Story
In defense of the ‘staycation’ of Pope Francis Austen Ivereigh, August 18, 2016 John Allen recently laid out three good reasons why Pope Francis should take a break during the burning Roman weeks of ferragosto: for the sake of the wider Church, for the sake of his subordinates, and for his own health. Although it seemed a little unlikely that it should be, of all people, Allen — the Stakhanovite of the vaticanisti — giving such advice to the pope, the reasoning was unarguable. But I want to question the assumption that Francis cannot be taking a rest because he has not taken a vacation. We tend to assume that a change is as good as a rest, that getting away to hotels in mountains or by the sea breaks with our routines and obligations and therefore revivifies us. And that can be true. But there’s another part of the story: not just the stress of travel (the delayed flights, the clogged roads, the mediocre hotel that doesn’t look anything like it did online), ...