Remember the "Vatican condemns everything" document on sexuality and marriage, announced by Cardinal Trujillo of the Pontifical Council for the Family a couple of weeks ago?

People (including me) have been wondering what happened to it, for it has become a phantom document – unpublished in any language on the Vatican website, and I’ve not read a single report by anyone who’s actually read it.

John Thavis has a story on that very question in CNS, although the set-up is irritating: placing Benedict’s "God is Love" theme up and against the Trujillo "NO!"

What many noticed was the pope’s positive approach — his recognition that young people, in particular, feel an "urgent call to love" and his insistence that the church’s goal was not to place barriers in their path.

He said the church’s teaching should not be seen as one "no" after another, and urged church leaders to implement a pastoral "strategy of intelligence" that takes seriously people’s questions and doubts.

The following day, the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family published — without warning — a 60-page catalog of modern sins against the family and responsible sexuality.

Without warning! How dare they! Have you recovered yet? I just did  – a few minutes ago.

There are innumerable ways to say the same thing, to get to the same point, and every moral question is like that. Every moral question involves a good to embrace as well as an evil to be avoided. It’s okay. Most of us realize this. It doesn’t bother us. But, apparently..

The document shocked many readers when it said couples who limit their family size to one or two children are, in effect, living in a "marriage willingly made sterile." As for abortion, it said the act itself was an "abominable crime" that should not remain unpunished by civil authorities.

The difference in tone between the pope and one of his top aides did not go unnoticed. The pope was solidifying his reputation as a gentle teacher; Cardinal Lopez Trujillo came off as an ecclesial "Terminator."

This kind of "reporting" is not reporting. It’s not even analysis, for even analysis needs to be based on something other than anonymous "many readers" and the unnamed people who couldn’t help but notice the difference in tone. Either name those people or just admit, "Hey, this is what I think. Me. The writer."

Oh, but there is someone with a reaction quoted in the piece. Let’s see:

"What this document is missing is love," said the Rev. Maria Bonafede of Cardinal Lopez Trujillo’s text. The Italian Waldensian’s remark deliberately alluded to the theme of Pope Benedict’s very popular first encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est" ("God Is Love").

A Waldensian? (In fact she is Moderator of the Waldensian Church…but still…a Waldensian?)

I’ve been reading John Thavis’ reporting with interest over the past two years or so, but this is just odd and not up to snuff.  If Thavis has a crew of sources who are putting the two in opposition, let’s hear from them. If there’s scuttlebut that the document hasn’t been published because (as is almost implied in the piece) the Pope wasn’t happy with it, let that be said directly. Or if Thavis himself is struck by some purported opposition, let him write an editorial.

But you know…where’s that document, anyway?