Tag Archives: pope francis

And God Said, ‘I Get It’

Pope Francis speaks at the Basilica of Santa Maria in Aracoeli during an inter-religious ceremony for peace in Rome's Capitoline Hill on Tuesday.

It was easy to miss amid all of the political braying that is October in an election year, but the Catholic Church did something seismic today.

It acknowledged reality.

Forgive the misquote, but I’m pretty sure this is on the scale of the loaves and fishes. Because it was a hard reality for the religious: Gay people exist. And God’s cool with it.

Pope Francis, who is becoming Catholics’ Rebel Without a Pause, broke the news Wednesday to those whose faith mandates bigotry.

“Homosexuals have a right to be part of the family,” the pontiff said in Francesco, a documentary about his life. “They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it.

“What we have to create is a civil union law,” he added. “That way, they are legally covered.”

First off: Hell yeah! The pope granted an interview? To a documentary film crew?? All Fran needs now are a pack of smokes, some Chuck Taylors and a skateboard, and I’m converting.

Chuck Taylors | Boys converse, Chuck taylors, Sneakers

The comment also underscored an inescapable truth that’s perhaps just as uncomfortable for the religious and conservative: History always drifts to the political left. It can’t help it.

Take any U.S. political or societal issue over the decades: women’s rights, minority rights, gay rights, animal rights, guns, weed, porn, language, ad nauseum; we are more liberal on that issue than we were a generation ago. I cannot find an exception.

You can’t unlearn enlightenment. You can only choose to ignore it.

Which is what The Catholic Times has apparently done. After learning of Pope Kickass’ comments, I checked out the popular publication, dedicated to Roman Catholics worldwide, to see their take it all.

I discovered that the CT is a weekly newspaper, so I could forgive it not having a piece on Francis’ bombshell. But I found something more disturbing. This picture and promotion:

Surely, I thought, this was simply click bait. The headline “Is it sinful to vote for Joe Biden?” had to be an editorial ruse.

But no: this from Paprocki’s column, which pointedly cites the Biden-Harris pro-choice stance: “In order to justify voting for a proponent of abortion, one would need a proportionately grave reason that outweighs the killing of 860,000 babies per year.”

He continued: “Note also that I am not saying that you must vote to re-elect President Donald Trump.”

Uh, yeah you are. This is the sort of semantic soft shoe that allows religion to skirt modern-age questions with Iron Age answers. Instead of telling readers to come up with a reason “proportionately grave” to the killing of 860,000 babies, how about just being honest with people? Your religion mandates that abortion is an atrocity, and your political interests must align with Republicans, even if it means Trump. We can at least be honest on that level, can’t we?

Interesting, too, that he did not bother to ask what seems a basic Catholic question — or implore his readers to ask it themselves: Which candidate is the better Christian?

But I’m not a theist, so what do I know? So we’ll turn it over to someone who is. Bruce Morrill, the Chair in Roman Catholic Studies at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University, said Wednesday’s papal wokeness is “not surprising coming from Pope Francis because of the trail of individual statements he has made here and there over his papacy.”

Morrill, a Jesuit priest, added that one of Francis’ characteristics was “that he likes to speak and act on the principle of mercy.”

Amen.

History’s Inexorable Drift Left

 

 

It’s easy to feel we’re moving backward.

With rogue Keebler Elf Jeff Session at the legal wheel as Attorney General, it’s tempting to fret a liberal future: Our president does not believe in science and the Supreme Court is shaded red by a robe. Evangelical citizens have have the right to deny business services to those they deem sinners. White nationalism is on the rise, both in number and volume (and tiki torch sales).

It’s enough to send progressives into apoplectic shock.

But fear not, liberals: History has always been on your side. It was true 5,000 years ago, and it’s true now.

Consider the latest shift off the political port bow, the federal legalization of gambling. Earlier this month, The U.S. Supreme Court — Donald Trump’s Supreme Court — legalized sports betting in every state. The ruling came after New Jersey, seeing the tax money Nevada raked in annually, filed a legal appeal insisting on a piece of the action. And they won it.

Had, say, Hillary Clinton been in office when gambling was legalized, the religious right would surely be spastic with anger. But with a president and Congress dominated by a dunce confederacy, what could they say?

The real failure lays at the feet of CNN and MSNBC, which woefully underplayed the ruling. Perhaps they didn’t see it as coverage-worthy in a storm of news currents. Maybe they’re not sports fans. What’s more likely, however, is that because the ruling benefits business — and earned nary a peep of ire from the right — left-leaning opponents did not see it as a victory.

But it is. A big one.

Consider what the U.S. Supreme Court, following states’ leads, have legalized in just the past three years:

  1. Gambling No longer will you have to go to Las Vegas to lose money on the Super Bowl. You can go broke from the comfort of your own home!
  2. Drugs  In March 2016, the Supreme Court threw out a state’s challenge to legal marijuana, giving citizens nationwide the right to toke up. Sessions has said he considers weed as dangerous as heroin, but he also said on the record that “Good people don’t use marijuana.” His loyalty-over-logic reasoning has left him as reputable as Michael Cohen.
  3. Gay Marriage In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that it is legal for all Americans, no matter their gender or sexual orientation, to wed (crazy Christian bakers notwithstanding).

And that doesn’t include ancient liberal victories, including the defeat of prohibition, the Civil Rights Voting Act and the suffragette movement. There are 21 brothels in Nevada, where prostitution was legalized in 1971. If you  told a Democrat in 2015 that the country would legalize gambling, drugs and gay marriage, you’d get an embossed invitation to the loony bin. And certainly, Trump’s disdain for America and its poorer denizens sometimes make the victories feel Pyrrhic at best.

But in truth, history has always arced left, thanks to the surge in technology and reason. Consider what used to be legal:

  1. Owning People
  2. Raping or Beating Wives
  3. Hunting Suspected Witches
  4. Color-Coding Beaches, Counters or Water Fountain

The list is endless, but irrefutable. We have reduced the major religions in the world to three. We no longer attribute epilepsy to demonic possession. Voter suppression remains alive and well, but not publicly tolerable. Remember: Jim Crow laws were once written directly into state constitutions. Here was Louisiana’s former test to vote (you had to prove at least a 5th grade education for access to the ballot box): 

And it’s hardly just an American boat that’s listing left: Global warming is recognized by the U.N.; Saudi Arabia approved female drivers;  Afghanistan has the internet.

Even religious front lines are softening. Erlier this month Pope Francis told an Italian newspaper that “the souls of those who are unrepentant, and thus cannot be forgiven, disappear” upon death and that “hell does not exist; the disappearance of sinful souls exists.” A week later, he followed that with this bombshell  attributed to a homosexual Chilean man: “That you are gay does not matter. God made you like this and loves you like this and I don’t care. The pope loves you like this. You have to be happy with who you are.” Catholics nearly declared a fatwa on the man for that one.

This shouldn’t suggest we’re anywhere near where we should be on the sociological map. And it doesn’t help having a president who doesn’t know how to work one.

But you need not be a history major to see the larger trajectory. Simply a recollection of value shifts within your lifetime likely reveal the direction we’re moving.

Up.