New Pope Elected

[tussin]

Whiskey --- I received Bill Donohue's response in an email earlier this week.

Bill Donohue comments on some appalling invitations to the pope's White House visit:

It is so fitting that the least friendly administration to religion in history would invite a collection of pro-abortion nuns, Catholic gay activists, assorted dissidents and religious rebels to attend Pope Francis' visit to the White House September 23.

These include gay Catholic blogger Aaron Ledesma; Catholic gay activist and Church critic Nicholas Coppola; and Sister Jeannine Gramick, co-founder of the Catholic dissident group New Ways Ministry, who in 1999 was barred by the Vatican from working in ministry to homosexuals. Coppola and Gramick were both invited by GLAAD, which says the White House invited it and LGBT leaders to attend.

Vivien Taylor, who identifies as transgender, not only scored an invite, but was told to bring some friends. He is—including members of Dignity, a Catholic dissident group, and other "transgender and intersex people."

Also attending is Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, who left his wife of 14 years for his male partner, then last year "divorced" that partner.

Also on hand will be Sister Simone Campbell. She is the leader of the "Nuns on the Bus" who actively campaigned for Obamacare with its blatant pro-abortion provisions. We doubt an invitation is on the way to the Little Sisters of the Poor, the nuns being targeted by the administration for remaining true to their Catholic faith and refusing to comply with the pro-abortion mandate. We don't expect to see them there.

Catholic-baiting is nothing new in Washington. Back in 1994, the Clinton administration's own Ambassador to the Vatican, Ray Flynn, wrote that he was "embarrassed" by the "ugly anti-Catholic bias that is shown by prominent members of Congress and the administration."

President Obama, however, has taken it to a new level. From inviting an aggressively anti-religious atheist organization to the White House; to trying to force Catholics, like the Little Sisters, to violate Catholic moral teaching; and now, to this attempt to exploit a papal visit to promote an agenda that is offensive to faithful Catholics, he has shown a religious intolerance that is mind-boggling.

 

[Veritate Duce Progredi]

Paul Gosar sounds like a petulant child. "If you deign to say things I don't like, then I won't listen."

Lawmaker boycotts pope for acting a like a leftist

Whiskey, isn't this in your neighborhood? Talk to this man.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Paul Gosar sounds like a petulant child. If you deign to say things I don't like, then I won't listen.

Lawmaker boycotts pope for acting a like a leftist

Whiskey, isn't this in your neighborhood? Talk to this man.

He's not my rep; AZ's 4th district covers mostly the western part of the state.

It's ironic, because Gosar is vehemently pro-life, and Francis explicitly tied his view on climate change to the sanctity of life. Whatever, though. He won't be the last politician Francis makes uncomfortable. There are lots of nominally Catholic "theocons" on the American right who think there's no daylight between the GOP and Rome. They're finally learning otherwise.

If they'd rather worship in the Cult of Individual Autonomy, they're welcome to follow their Progressive "enemies" out the door. The Church of Liberalism is always open.

 

[IrishinSyria]

Page 4 of Inside the Pope's Fight With U.S. Conservatives | Rolling Stone

Really interesting article that gets at what Whiskey references above (distance between GOP and Rome).

For his part, the pope has maintained a relentless focus on his own obsessions — the poor and the dispossessed of the world, and how their lives are ravaged by unbridled capitalism, a grotesque and insatiable consumer culture, climate change, globalization — in powerful, plain-spoken language that is the opposite of anodyne and that at times places him, rhetorically at least, far to the left not only of the Republican Party but of most Democrats, certainly President Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Funnily enough, the pejorative "cafeteria Catholic" is generally only applied to American Catholics who feel free to ignore teachings about sexual morality — prohibitions on, say, birth control or premarital sex. But the term is rarely thrown at Catholics who are pious when it comes to bedroom issues but take a pass on the church's clear social-justice message. "The oppressed workers, above all, ought to be liberated from the savagery of greedy men, who inordinately use human beings as things for gain," Pope Leo XIII wrote in his encyclical "Rerum Novarum" ("On the Condition of Workers") all the way back in 1891. "The core of the Gospels, as Francis reminds us, is mercy, kindness, caring for the poor, 'judge not lest ye be judged,' " Winters says. "There's nothing explicit about gays in the Gospels, but this stuff is very explicit!"

 

[wizards8507]

Page 4 of Inside the Pope's Fight With U.S. Conservatives | Rolling Stone

Really interesting article that gets at what Whiskey references above (distance between GOP and Rome).

This is a complete caricature of the criticisms of Francis' message. I've never once heard an American conservative say that helping the poor is a bad thing. The problem with Francis' message is that he wants to empower GOVERNMENTS to help the poor according to their vision rather than empowering individuals to help the poor according to God's vision. The powers that Francis wants in the hands of secular authorities would mean a world where abortion is free and on demand, where Catholic schools and charities are required by law to fund them, and where economic stagnation ensures that the very poor who were supposed to be helped by the whole mess have no hope of escaping their poverty.

His message is sound, but the policies for which he advocates would have disastrous consequences. Benedict XVI went so far as to call liberation theology a "singular heresy," and that's exactly what this pope is advocating. Whiskey would do well to see what the Jesuits are doing to the Catholic character at places like Boston College and Georgetown. Spoiler alert: they're destroying it.

 

[IrishinSyria]

This is a complete caricature of the criticisms of Francis' message. I've never once heard an American conservative say that helping the poor is a bad thing. The problem with Francis' message is that he wants to empower GOVERNMENTS to help the poor according to their vision rather than empowering individuals to help the poor according to God's vision. The powers that Francis wants in the hands of secular authorities would mean a world where abortion is free and on demand, where Catholic schools and charities are required by law to fund them, and where economic stagnation ensures that the very poor who were supposed to be helped by the whole mess have no hope of escaping their poverty.

His message is sound, but the policies for which he advocates would have disastrous consequences.

Uh-huh. In other words, he's not deliberately evil, he's just stupid?

 

[wizards8507]

Huh-huh. In other words, he's not deliberately evil, he's just stupid?

I wouldn't quite phrase it that way, but more or less, yes. He's a product of his life's journey. He saw a corrupt, perverted form of capitalism in his native Argentina so that's what he thinks capitalism is and that's what he's speaking out against. Ironically, many of Argentina's economic problems are caused by governmental intrusion into markets, exactly what he's prescribing to FIX problems today. It's not a fix, it's a cause.

To add, it's just not his area of expertise. If you want to know about neurosurgery, you talk to Ben Carson, not Bernie Sanders. If you want to know how to conduct a presidential campaign, you talk to Barack Obama, not Rick Santorum. If you want to know how to play quarterback in the NFL, you talk to Tom Brady, not my friend Nick from high school.

 

[ND NYC]

This is a complete caricature of the criticisms of Francis' message. I've never once heard an American conservative say that helping the poor is a bad thing. The problem with Francis' message is that he wants to empower GOVERNMENTS to help the poor according to their vision rather than empowering individuals to help the poor according to God's vision. The powers that Francis wants in the hands of secular authorities would mean a world where abortion is free and on demand, where Catholic schools and charities are required by law to fund them, and where economic stagnation ensures that the very poor who were supposed to be helped by the whole mess have no hope of escaping their poverty.

His message is sound, but the policies for which he advocates would have disastrous consequences. Benedict XVI went so far as to call liberation theology a "singular heresy," and that's exactly what this pope is advocating. Whiskey would do well to see what the Jesuits are doing to the Catholic character at places like Boston College and Georgetown. Spoiler alert: they're destroying it.

I must have missed the part on his visit when he advocated for empowering governments; or when he asked for more power for secular authorities so they could fund more abortions.

 

[wizards8507]

I must have missed the part on his visit when he advocated for empowering governments

It's in Laudato si.

Given this situation, it is essential to devise stronger and more efficiently organized international institutions, with functionaries who are appointed fairly by agreement among national governments, and empowered to impose sanctions. As Benedict XVI has affirmed in continuity with the social teaching of the Church: “To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago”.
---
Political institutions and various other social groups are also entrusted with helping to raise people’s awareness. So too is the Church. All Christian communities have an important role to play in ecological education. It is my hope that our seminaries and houses of formation will provide an education in responsible simplicity of life, in grateful contemplation of God’s world, and in concern for the needs of the poor and the protection of the environment. Because the stakes are so high, we need institutions empowered to impose penalties for damage inflicted on the environment. But we also need the personal qualities of self-control and willingness to learn from one another.

or when he asked for more power for secular authorities so they could fund more abortions.

Obviously that's not what he advocates. But it would be an unintended consequence of those things for which he does advocate.

 

[ND NYC]

my take was he wants his messages to impact the INDIVIDUALS who are in "governments" in order to affect positive changes for the disenfranchised.
more of a "changing hearts and minds" message...