THE PROBLEM IS VAGUENESS AND AMBIGUITY EXCEPT WHEN THERE ISN'T AND EVEN THAT IS A PROBLEM

For all or for many? Pick one but don't say Pope Francis laid down the law for the Germans or any other progressive!

The only thing Pope Francis has made crystal clear is that the rich Germans get their way.

Thus Crux's John Allen expresses some hopeful sentiments but that's all it is:

On Friday, Francis basically took Benedict’s side in arguably the single most contentious liturgical debate of them all over the last twenty years, insisting that “for many” is the right way to express those for whom Christ died, rather than the alternative “for all.”

“The ‘many’ who will rise for eternal life are to be understood as the ‘many’ for whom the blood of Christ was shed,” Francis said, during a Mass for cardinals who had died during the past year.

He argued that “for many” better captures the idea that human beings find themselves before a “crossroads,” leading either toward or away from God, and while the former will reap eternal life, the latter will find “eternal shame.”

RELATED: Pope Francis sides with Benedict, says Christ shed his blood ‘for many’

It’s not clear what those statements may mean from a policy point of view - whether Francis will insist that bishops’ conferences translate the phrase that way across the board or allow them to make the decision for themselves, which appears to be the spirit of his recent edict.

It may not be utterly coincidental that Francis made his statements not long after Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Germany, having expressed “huge relief” that Liturgiam Authenticam is now a “dead end,” suggested the German bishops may take advantage of Francis’s new rules to maintain “for all” in their translation of the Mass.

Perhaps, this was an indirect way for Francis to say, “Not so fast.”  At a minimum, it suggests that on at least one front in the notorious “liturgy wars,” the two pontiffs are in sync.