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Pope Francis is doing that thing again where he halfway sounds like a liberal socialist weenie and then turns around and throws a bone to the patriarchal jerkface constituency. For instance, on his way back from the Philippines, he said today that Catholics don't have to "be like rabbits" and bring forth a litter of young every few months, but he also emphasized that he was not condoning contraception, but rather "natural family planning," aka the rhythm method, aka the get pregnant and thank the Virgin for another damn mouth to feed blessed little angel method:

On the trip, he gave his strongest defense yet of the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which enshrined the church's opposition to artificial birth control. He warned against "insidious attacks" against the family — a reference to gay marriage proposals — echoing language often used by overwhelmingly conservative U.S. bishops. And he insisted that "openness to life is a condition of the sacrament of matrimony."

At the same time, however, he said it's not true that to be a good Catholic "you have to be like rabbits." On the contrary, he said "responsible parenthood" requires that couples regulate the births of their children, as church teaching allows. He cited the case of a woman he met who was pregnant with her eighth child after seven Cesarean sections.

"That is an irresponsibility!" he said. The woman might argue that she should trust in God. "But God gives you methods to be responsible," he said.

Francis also sympathized with African bishops frustrated by aid organizations and international lending arrangements that made financial aid contingent on adopting Western practices of birth control or not-sentencing-gays-to-death:

"When imposed conditions come from imperial colonizers, they search to make people lose their own identity and make a sameness," he said. "This is ideological colonization."

So, half a cheer for at least not encouraging people to have boatloads of children; otherwise, it's beginning to look as if that horse's head that the Curia left in Francis's bed may have gotten the message across. We never had any illusions that Pope Frank was going to advocate that people rut like lust-crazed bonobos, but this latest turn toward the conservative bishops that he'd been thumbing his nose at is a real disappointment. Frank, we thought you were cooler than this.