Micahel Brendan Dougherty, "Why the media lost its mind over Kim Davis meeting Pope Francis"(The Week, October 1, 2015):
There's very little evidence that Pope Francis knows the details about Kim Davis. It's unclear if he has much to say about her stand against issuing licenses for same-sex marriages in Kentucky's Rowan County, her subsequent jail time, or even her Evangelical faith. Before the now infamous secret meeting between Francis and Davis — which the Vatican won't confirm or deny — the pope all but acknowledged his ignorance to a reporter: "I can't have in mind all cases that can exist about conscientious objection." And the reported details of their encounter suggest that it was routine and quick: an embrace, words of encouragement, and a gift of blessed rosaries.[Hat tip to JM]
But the whole world is mad. Why? Because the pope is a prop. In the hands of our nation's true clerical class — journalists — this particular pope's function is to demoralize and shame the bad Catholics, i.e., the conservative ones. The previous pope's function was to symbolize their wicked intransigence.
Pope Francis is supposed to be the cool pope. He humiliates traditionalist cardinals. He embraces transexuals. If he occasionally says stuff against gay marriage, well, so what? Like Barack Obama in the 2008 election, sometimes you say what you have to say. But we know where his heart is. He embraces the marginalized and despised.
The pope gets used. That tear-jerking moment when the pope embraced that 5-year-old girl who is trying to keep her parents in the country? That was planned out in advance.
But this prop accomplished what no upstanding playwright would script. He met someone the scribes really do despise. He embraced that hick. [emphasis added]
4 comments:
The more I contemplate it, the more I laugh and thank God for his encouraging gift to me. The pope probably WAS a bit clueless on Kim Davis, as it appears he is on many things. Who cares? His visit implodes a whole lot of preconceptions, and is a comically perfect atom bomb on all the liberal jackholes wishing to smugly appropriate the Church. Which remains, PTL, the Catholic Church. Alexandra Petri's WAPO column on the thing is written from the perspective of no friend of the Church, obviously, but it is spot on. And Kim Davis... wow, the Pope might as well have pow-wowed with Sarah Palin. Lord, for this unexpected pick-me-up -- a hoot -- I have to say, "Thanks, I need that!" Really, I can tolerate global warming, a welfare state, and Precious Moments tweeting if the Pope can send a few signals he is actually still Catholic in both the good and the bad sense of the word (from The White House's perspective). A secret rendezvous with *Kim Davis*! Perfect and beautiful! The only thing better would have been .... no, I can't imagine anything better. LOL.
Now let's pray for clarity to emerge from the coming Synod.
Less encouraging is this...
Rod Dreher points to a John Rao column in a 2014 edition of The Remnant, the traditionalist Catholic newspaper. Excerpt:
In the Fall of 2013 a well-known Catholic intellectual from South America, a highly recognized university professor, Lucrecia Rego de Planas, who knows Bergoglio well and who worked with him, among other things, gave a portrait of the man.
“Bergoglio wants to be loved by everyone and please everyone. In this sense one day he will talk on TV against abortion and the next day he will bless the pro abortionist in the Plaza de Mayo; he could give a marvelous talk against the Masons (Masonic Order) and, an hour later, eat and drink with them at the Rotary Club…….this is the Cardinal Bergoglio whom I know close up. One day busy in a lively chat with Bishop Aguer about the defense of life and the liturgy and the same day, at dinner, having a lively talk with Mons. Ysern and Mons. Rosa Chavez about base communities and the terrible obstacles that are presented by the Church’s dogmatic teachings. One day a friend of Cardinal Cipriani and Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga speaking about business ethics and against the New Age ideology and little latter a friend of Casaldaliga and Boff speaking about the class struggle and the “richness” of Eastern techniques which could contribute to the Church.”
And this....
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-chaotic-pope-francis/#post-comments
With this comment in the followup:
"Two competing thoughts;
the election of a pope we believe involves the Holy Spirit,
and God does work in mysterious ways.
Perhaps they aren’t competing at all.
We get a reflection of ourselves and perhaps it’s scarier than we ever thought."
JM,
Then, of course, we also have Cardinal Ratzinger's statement when he was asked on Bavarian television in 1997 if the Holy Spirit is responsible for who gets elected pope:
"I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope. ... I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit's role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined."
Then the clincher: "There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!"
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