Pope met with Kim Davis, urged homophobic Kentucky clerk to “stay strong”

I mean, it’s not like the man is infalliable or anything!

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Are we sure it wasn’t just Jonathan Pryce trolling Davis?

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It is really weird how in recent years the Pope has been presented as a general Christian leader as opposed to solely a Roman Catholic one of no interest or authority to anyone not in his particular religious flavor. Unfortunately the shared grounds tend to be the shared social conservatism.

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Why the hate? I define myself as an atheist (though not an US-based one) and quite like Francis within the scope and constraints of his organisation. The catholic church (like the other religions) is shitty, but so far his public announcements are refreshing.

You really believed he tried to fundamentally change the church? I congratulate you for still believing in the goodness of mankind.

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Damn, she’ll probably be canonized in a couple hundred years.

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Well, she shit on her job duties, so why not the woods as well?

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The most charitable reading of this stunt is that Francis is trying to prop up his bonafides with the American religious conservatives so that they can’t dismiss him out of hand as a radical anomaly and will thus be more inclined to listen to his (arguably more consequential) message on global warming and economic equality.

That, however, is a pure speculation and might not at all be the case.

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You could, but this is sort of a poor understanding of how religion actually works in peoples’ lives. Catholic people rarely give two shits about what Rome is doing. The fact that they’re SUPPOSED to care a lot doesn’t really phase them. I find this to broadly be the case for whatever religious community you care to talk about. What religion you belong to is often more a concern of family, identity, and community than a concern of dogma.

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Bigot pope pops out of the closet.

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That’s what “Catholic” means. Universal-- the church before any schisms.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.

In this very thread, I wondered whether the “Apostolic church” had produced any antipapist writings (following in the footsteps of Martin Luther ), but was stymied by the notion of the “apostolic church” as expressed in the Nicene Creed

I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

“Stay Strong” is his Popey passive aggressive way of saying “You’ve not been strong enough to date, so buck up, shut up, and do your job.”

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Slight correction- “catholic” church. That small non-capitalization means a lot!

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Don’t presume to speak for all atheists, please. Declaring the pope “dead” because of what Kim Davis claimed he said, and ignoring everything else he’s said and done, is quite small minded.

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Oh, I’m fully aware of the massive hypocrisy of American Catholics on the left and right, and many of the most decent people I’ve known were not just Catholic but devoutly so (where decency implies rejecting or ignoring very large parts of Catholic dogma).

But when you belong and give money to an organization dedicated to breaking American law, you really should be called to some kind of account. And while Rome will never let go of the idea that it owns political hegemony over all kingdoms of Earth, if they thought that they might actually be causing friction with their most important money source, they’d take that little piece of nastiness and hide it in a vault so dark we wouldn’t hear about it again for a century.

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The pope’s surprisingly progressive position has been that people ought to stop being obsessed with homosexuality as if it were the only sin there was. He still thinks it’s a sin, he still represents homophobia. He called Ireland’s vote to allow gay marriage a defeat for humanity. In this case, though, it seems like he has gone and offered support to he obsession with homosexuality, as that is what Kim David represents.

But as for the comments about his handlers, I don’t think he is especially well handled. I think most of the stuff he says is stuff he thinks - from being matter-of-factly anti-gay to being matter-of-factly anti-capitalist. I am impressed with this pope because he strikes me a above the mean in his regard for other people, and a couple standard deviations up on his regard for the poor. Since my expectation was in this history’s-greatest-monster range, that seems pretty good. Still, if I had dinner with him I’d tell him he was a moron.

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Well, and also waiting until now, rather than after the other abominable things he’s said. Less abominable that Pope Fester Ratburger, of course! Hurrah!

And I think, importantly here, the anti-democratic impulse.

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"I was having terrible constipation, but then the image of Saint Kim appeared to me, and the stool was passed, as by a miracle!"

That’s enough now, right?

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I guess he’s the best pope in my lifetime, although that isn’t saying much. Not sure how JP1 might have been.

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Wanted to read the article but couldn’t get past the “on fleek” line. PLEASE, oh please, stop appropriating black slang. It doesn’t make you appear cooler, and it’s just kind of gross to keep appropriating black culture for negligible reasons.