Pope Francis Might Not Be A Liberal Savior After All
BillDo, the founder and sole apparent member of the Catholic League, has decided to make himself useful by listing a number of things Pope Frankie Goes to Vatican has said that may not entirely square up with some people’s image of him as the liberalest theologian since Hippie Jesus.
A lot of these quotations are short, and thus I suspect that they’re as cherry-picked as anything, but some of them stood out to me (emphasis added by me, throughout):
“Those with alternative teachings and doctrines [have] a partial belonging to the church. [They] have one foot outside the church. They rent the church.”
which sounds like “make up your minds. Do you want to control your sex lives with contraception, or do you want communion?”
“The dominant thinking sometimes suggests a ‘false compassion,’ that which believes that it is: helpful to women to promote abortion; an act of dignity to obtain euthanasia; a scientific breakthrough to ‘produce’ a child and to consider it to be a right rather than a gift to welcome; or to use human lives as guinea pigs presumably to save others. Instead, the compassion of the Gospel is that which accompanies in times of need, that is, the compassion of the Good Samaritan, who ‘sees,’ ‘has compassion,’ approaches and provides concrete help.”
No, you don’t get to control when you have kids or how many, nor do you get any say in when you die. Sorry not sorry.
“If someone says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”
Not a big fan of the US First Amendment, or of article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I’m guessing.
“If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?”
Sure, we love gays! At least, as long as they repent and promise to stop acting gay in public.
“Gender ideology is demonic!”
On the issue of women priests:
“The Church has spoken and said: ‘No.’ John Paul II said it, but with a definitive formulation. That door is closed.”
As I said, this is BillDo we’re talking about, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he were spinning some or all of these quotations to fit his right-wing agenda. But I don’t think it’s all him. I’m pretty sure that while Francis may seem progressive in the Vatican, elsewhere that just makes him slightly less reactionary than other cardinals.