God damn it.
You are absolutely and entirely correct in that sentiment–you were a waste of his time.
EDIT: I’m ticked that he (his handlers?) decided that this was a good move. The Pope is most certainly capable of seeing that religious liberty is not the issue in that particular equation.
How does “stay strong” translate into “it’s okay to break the law”? I’d really like to hear his side of the meeting, not just hers. Heck, he’s more open-minded than she is; is she even Catholic?
“Well, I told her to use those strong arms to open her Bible and read over Matthew 22:21 or Mark 12:17 and then I just left the room with a quiet ‘Bam!’” reported the Pontiff.
I think the Pope has been fed Kim Davis’ lawyer’s side of this story and only sees her as a simple conscientious objector upholding her spirituality, which of course he’d be into, given that that’s his job. Unfortunately he likely doesn’t realize the shitstorm of idiocy she represents, preventing other people from doing the job she supervises and breaking the law to force her beliefs on others.
He’s a hard guy not to like. But these kinds of things bring it back around to reality. The Catholic church represents a longstanding tradition of homophobia, inequality and world conquest.
Is the Pope Catholic? Breaking news: yes.
The best description of the Pope I’ve heard is that he’s still teaching a deeply conservative, homophobic, male-centric creed, but that he presents that doctrine in such a warm, human, matter-of-fact way while emphasizing helping the poor and hungry that it’s hard not to appreciate the guy.
This should be utterly unsurprising. The vatican has (since the middle ages, really, though with less success of late) cherished the idea that it, and its agents, are outside the scope of the temporal power of kings and states. Sometimes this is interpreted to mean effective impunity. In other cases the church is at least sometimes interested in cleaning house; but not at all interested in turning housecleaning functions over to the state. They insist that doing it in house, with canon lawyers and internally assigned penalties/reassignments should be the beginning and the end of the matter.
We’ve seen this in the pedopriest cases, where they’ve stalled like crazy, quietly pulled guilty parties into retirement within their small nation state; and generally resisted tooth and nail the idea that the people and the state had a legitimate interest in prosecuting child molesters; and that in-church penalties are no more a substitute for justice than getting fired by Burger King is.
Aside from being catnip for the real-true-marriage!!! types, Davis is a fairly obvious poster child for the notion that religion actively negates state authority where the two conflict, and that even uniformly applied laws with valid secular objectives are an unacceptable burden on religious exercise. (How people manage to keep a straight face while describing someone who refuses to quit as a ‘conscientious objector’, the term usually reserved for people refusing to be pressed into a job, is unknown at this time).
Even if Team Pope actually thought that Gay is A-OK! he’d have some incentive to fight this one purely as part of the state/church snit that the vatican has been playing more or less one-sidedly for the better part of a millenium. And let’s be honest here, that isn’t his position; though he has been more willing than some to…shock…horror…suggest that perhaps Jesus mentioned the plight of the poor and powerless a lot, and the dreadful horrors of sodomite homosex not that often, because that actually reflected his relative level of concern about these issues.
Gotta protect the sanctity of traditional bigotry. Even if for Grimace, “conscience objection” means using her government position to force her religion on others.
Francis is also a supporter of mystical flimflam and conversion by force, as well as (obliquely) the Charlie Hebdo murderers. It’s instructive that he can be orders of magnitude better than his predecessors and yet still be an anti-freedom, anti-democracy delusional loonball.
Kim Davis is absolutely abhorrent by every standard, and this definitively condemns the Pope.
(More close watchers of the Pope may have already been more informed. I generally have ignored him, but had heard of some of his pseudo-positive statements. Was waiting for more information.)
That is exactly the issue with the Catholic Church pedophilia issue, and it infuriates me that no one in the media will ever talk about it. It’s just “Are all Papist priests predatory queers? News at Eleven!”. I’ve heard that, statistically, priests are less likely to be abusers than people in other disciplines that involve close contact with children (certainly orders of magnitude lower than parents). The point is not the individual crimes, the point is a massive religion that insists that it is above American law. And as long as they intend to hold that position, it’s the sort of thing that should cause serious debates about whether or not we should elect a catholic as president, or to any political office, unless they are willing to rebuke what is apparently a foundational political principle of the church.
Her lawyers are so unbelievably incompetent in all other respects it’s hard to imagine they could convince the Pope’s handlers without an incredible amount of confirmation bias on the Vatican side.
This smacks of the Pope trying to gain favor with those conservatives who are uncomfortable with his talk about climate change and helping the poor. It’s the papal equivalent of Donald Trump bringing out his Bible and shouting, “I’m one of you!”
Heck, he’s more open-minded than she is; is she even Catholic?
God no. I think she’s a member of the Apostolic Church
All the atheists in America, like myself, who thought good things about the Pope has completely changed their minds in one fell swoop. Fuck the Pope, fuck Kim Davis. You are both dead to me (us) now.
Kounty Klerk Kim has shown to my satisfaction that she has her own interpretation of things.
I’ll believe he said those things when the Pope confirms that he did actually say those things.
As a cafeteria Catholic myself, I am enjoying watching the rest of the world work through being cafeteria non-Catholics.
Is the Pope Catholic?
Does Kim Davis shit in the woods?
