I’ll let you decide how to fill in the blank. It’s been a week of unstinting praise for the parasitic head of a criminal organization that promotes lies and superstition, and I have been disgusted every time a journalist swoons over the fact that Pope Francis smiled or patted some little boy on the head.
The Pope is not your friend. He’s the Kool-Aid with the cloying sweet taste to mask the poison.
He’s been defending Kim Davis’s bigotry.
Francis came under scrutiny on Monday when he responded to reporters who asked if he supported individuals who refuse to abide by laws, even if it included denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Francis replied that “conscientious objection must enter into every juridical structure because it is a right.” Following his comments, the reaction was split within the media and on social media. Defenders of Francis claim his words were taken out of context, while critics used his words as an example that the pontiff isn’t as liberal as many claim him to be.
And apparently, he met with her.
“I never thought I would meet the Pope,” Davis said via her legal team. “Who am I to have this rare opportunity? I am just a County Clerk who loves Jesus and desires with all my heart to serve him.”
The meeting is said to have occurred last Thursday, the same day Francis addressed Congress. Davis was in Washington for another purpose: She received a Cost of Discipleship award at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit on Friday night.
“Just knowing the pope is on track with what we’re doing, and agreeing, you know, kind of validates everything,” Davis tells ABC News Wednesday morning, speaking about her meeting with Pope Francis and the stand she has taken against same-sex marriage.
She adds, “I’ve weighed the cost, and I’m prepared to do whatever it takes.”
Davis says it was “very humbling” to meet Francis. Describing the session, she says, “I put my hand out, and he grabbed it, and I hugged him, and he hugged me.”
Isn’t it nice that 400 years after the Thirty Years War, Catholic Pope and Fundamentalist Protestant can finally reconcile in their mutual hatred of gay people?
Meeting confirmed by the Vatican.
Oh, did the Pope take some time to lecture her on her 4 marriages and her adultry?
Funny how that works.
BTW, apparently Shakira sang Lennon’s Imagine at the UN just after the Pope spoke there. Full original text. I love her.
He’s a walking, talking, publicity stunt, nothing more. It is the same rotten church behind all that faked pretense.
I despise this man…the dishonesty, the fake liberalism, the superduperhumble shit, the apropriation of everything that is good and the denial of everything that is disgustingly rotten whithin the church and the catholic dogma…fuck him…
Meanwhile, a friend of mine who shepherded the pope around the UN is an atheist who officiates weddings, including same-sex weddings, in his free time. He also got to speak with and touch the pope. Is that an endorsement?
Gah, these people and their holy relics.
I’ve been thinking about the sorts of things the Pope aught to do for me to accept him as a liberal. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
*Create a program to distribute birth control and contraception all over the world, but especially in areas like Africa with endemic AIDS. Use his influence to destigmatize contraception.
*In addition to the above, personally travel to Africa and distribute condoms.
*Declare that all Catholic hospitals will provide comprehensive abortion services. In countries where this is still legal. Bring the full might of the Catholic Church, lobbying governments to make Abortion services easy and accessible for anyone who needs or wants one, for any reason.
*Cooperate fully with law enforcement to investigate and prosecute child abuse. Create a culture from the top down that eliminates this. Be fully open about it, do not hide or shuffle abusers to marginalized populations that are outside the public awareness (i.e. don’t send abusive priests to indiginous people). Actively work every day to prevent sex abuse, admit it when it happens, cooperate with police, and do not stigmatize or blame victims. Not just lip service, have to create and enforce the culture at every level.
*Declare full humanhood for all LGBT people, push actively for LGBT rights in every nation, lobby as above for full and complete equality. Make this official Cathoillic doctrine. His Holiness should personally perform same sex marriages.
*Admit that his pro-life anti-woman and anti-lgbt stances are fundamentally incompatible with his “we care about the poor” policy, and actively harm poor people he claims to care about.
*Acknowledge that the Bible fully supports these discriminatory views, but is completely and totally wrong.
I’m not holding my breath.
Well, yes, “conscientious objection” is a right, as is freedom of speech and assembly and petitioning the government, etc. But someone can exercise these rights for really bad things — even as a so-called matter of conscience. Sincerity and good intentions do not magically bestow nobility. They can make people more dangerous because now they’re more sure of themselves.
There’s a popular meme I’ve been seeing on facebook and elsewhere which quotes the pope saying “It is not necessary to believe in God to be a good person. In a way, the traditional notion of God is outdated. One can be spiritual but not religious …” and so forth. No, he never said that, it’s a hoax. Instead, he just usually whinges on about how atheists might be saved if they renounce atheism and/or aren’t really atheists because they behave well which is the same old same old. “Secularism is the enemy, have faith.”
Happy blasphemy day. Fuck the pope. And the Holy Ghost isn’t real either.
Fuck the Pope, & here’s a poem for Blasphemy Day:
EUDEMONIA (human flourishing, for the religious)
Jehovah, the Christian’s Almighty Lord God,
lords it over Heaven, though he’s an amoral clod.
A minor god, called Satan, calls the shots in Hell:
he tortures sinners, for eternity, and atheists as well!
Confused by Christian dogma, no god-fearing fogey,
can fathom the nature of The Bible Bogey.
He’s his own father, and son, and a god-darn ghost,
that a priest can conjure up out of wine and toast!
Christians boast that their god, in his Empyrean lair,
is omniscient, omnipotent, beneficent and fair.
But with the problem of theodicy still unresolved,
their god, from his moral turpitude, can’t be absolved.
Yahweh. the Jew’s god, is a meshuggeneh and jerk;
he set Jews strict rules on when to work,
and how to dress, and what to sup or sip,
and giving baby boys the snip.
Yahweh’s a nudnik; so, what else is new?
Is pork now kosher, or is the Pope a Jew?
Religious rules, bequeathed by Bronze Age nomads,
have got observant Jews by the gonads.
Allah, Islam’s god, is a fierce great djinn;
he demands under ‘Islam’, literally, ‘Submission’.
Apostasy is treated just like a crime;
they’ll threaten to kill you, to keep you in line.
And if you dare draw Mohammad in a comic cartoon,
there’ll be chaos and killings from here to Khartoum.
So, face Mecca at prayer, five times a day at least,
and stick your ass up in the air, for the Religion of Peace.
Hindu, Sikh, Jain, and Buddhist,
Zoroastrian, Baha’i, Mormon, and Scientologist,
Spiritualist, Wiccan, the New Ager into woo,
Confucianist, Shintoist, and Taoist too.
The least religious lands are the most egalitarian,
whereas the most religious are the most barbarian.
Yea, verily, those of each and every religion,
are mired in the miasma of superstition.
So, why should yours be the “One True Faith”,
in a magical, phantasmagorical, astral wraith?
The varieties of religious experience reveal
a sense of a god’s immanence can feel quite real,
but feelings of the numinous are clearly psychological,
so belief in a god is really quite illogical.
The gods from the Bronze Age up to modern times,
and from the Arctic down to tropical climes,
have begotten theology that’s unsubstantiated twaddle,
on what an invisible and silent god’ll
devise as its inscrutable, eschatological plan,
but all the gods were made in the image of man.
It’s evident we have just this one life,
with all its pleasures, challenges, toil, and strife.
As social beings we evolved our moral sensibility,
combating selfishness, lust, and venality.
Human evolution’s due to Natural Selection,
so life derives no purpose at any god’s direction.
Religion should have no say in the politics of a nation,
its revelations and dogmata lack a rational foundation.
Aristotle’s eudemonia, (human flourishing), conflicts
with the social engineering that religion inflicts
on societies that could democratically endorse
rationality-based ethics, mores, and laws.
Religion validates discrimination and oppression,
faith stifles logic, research and education.
Materialistic monism makes for scientific understanding,
and evidence of a spirit realm’s utterly lacking.
Now a new era beckons, where humanity could be,
as reason infers, one great family.
But there’s no need for you to blame your genes;
your faith’s the fault of socio-religious memes.
They corrupted your mind with a contagious infection
of superstitious ideas that can’t stand close inspection.
So, cast them out, then, you’ll be free,
to revel in your HUMANITY!
Well said, PZ. Every time I see one of those papal events on TV, I’m reminded of Matthew 23:27.
I’m starting to develop a blood pressure spike every time I see this lousy excuse.
No, dear
idiotpope, it is not. CO has status in military conscription and military organizations. That doesn’t work when one does even more than volunteer for a position, but intentionally applies for said position. That sort of thing is called a job, and generally speaking, if you find you are unable to do your job anymore, well, you have to find a new one, because most employers aren’t thrilled by paying people who won’t do their job.Wait, what? The Pope’s agreement “validates” what she’s doing? I thought Davis was a Protestant. Am I wrong about that, or is she very confused about her own religious beliefs?
The meeting of Pope with Kim Davis was reported by her LAWYER (insert lawyer joke here).
I saw a report trying to match up the Pope’s schedule for the day, to when exactly he may have met her.
No gaps in his schedule, that might have filled by meeting with Davis.
What is so common in those lawyer jokes about updates from lawyers concerning their client? (“How do you know when a lawyer is lying? When his lips are moving.” ha ha ha)
@10 The article cites a vatican source that acknowledges the meeting happened.
You can also take a look at the Ethical Directives of the Catholics Bishops and how they affect women. Nothing has changed.
Stephanie had a discussion about what American Atheists are doing about it
https://proxy.freethought.online/almostdiamonds/2015/09/29/protecting-a-patients-right-to-know/
@10
The article said it wasn’t a public meeting and they chose to keep it secret until after the pope left the US. They wouldn’t put it in a public schedule.
Anybody who’s ever owned a dog knows this trick. Say anything you want–as insulting and hateful as you want–but put it in a happy voice and the dog will lose its mind in joy. All it hears is how nice you sound. How fun!
Oh, how we laugh! Dogs are so dumb. They only grasp how it’s being said, not what the actual meaning is.
And then along comes Pope Smiley. Oo’s a good sinner? Oo’s going to hell to burn for all eternity for loving another person? Is it oo? Is it? Es it is!
And, lo, we piss on the floor in joy.
A man who claims that people like me are like nuclear weapons gives support to an active bigot. I did not see that coming, all I here from too many people is how much he loves people.
Funny how I do not hear about plans to change policies for RCC owned hospitals.
Yet another person raining down affection on Kim Davis, new hero of the homophobes. Not sure whether the person being Smiley Pope makes it worse or whether it is just to be expected.
This right on the heels of the Poop’s fast-tracking to sainthood a man who committed genocide.
One TV report said the Pope gave her Rosary beads. Why in God’s name would a Protestant fundamentalist accept Rosary beads from a Pope? Apostasy!
Georgia Sam, this would not be the first time that Protestants and Catholics teamed up to defeat a common foe, just ask the Anabaptists.
Sooooo, if I was a priest, lost my faith and became a strident atheist, Da Pope would be totally cool with me not doing mass, not taking confessions, not praying, not doing anything priests are supposed to be doing BUT still getting paid (in whatever form they get paid. Food, housing, etc. I don’t actually know off hand)?
Being a CO has its place; however, you will pay a price and you will be judged both at the time and in the future.
The government officials who failed to abide by the Fugitive Slave Act which required them to help recover escape slaves were COs when they refused. We judge them favorably now, and, we can point to them helping people escape slavery, a system that is cruel and dehumanizing. So who is Kim Davis helping? She is a CO but a CO for cruelty (or her capricious God).
She is not a conscientious objector, she is impossing her bigotry and preventing others from acting based on their own conscience.
@20 YOB
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that i suspect he might not.
But then again consistence and honesty have never been catholic values…
It doesn’t sound like she got much out of him, and his defense of her wasn’t very responsive, almost as if he’s got a special talent for giving everyone very little but leaving them feeling like they got quite a bit.
I suppose we also just have to let pass that Kim Davis is an Apostolic Christian, a kind of protestant anabaptist, and that her faith basically held the Pope to be the devil on Earth, until about 1975-1980, when it became useful for conservative Protestants to make a play for conservative Catholic votes. (Conservative Protestants suddenly discovered abortion was murder around this time as well.)
Fixed that for you, Kim.
I agree with Dreaming of an Atheistic Newtopia @ 22; Davis is hiding behind a label of being a conscientious objector that she is not entitled to. She is not a member of military, but an ordinary citizen who is refusing to do the job she is paid to do – with no danger to herself or any third party caused by that job – and then complaining when her employer grows tired of paying her for non-performance of contractual obligations.
Furthermore, she is, by her refusal to do her job, actively preventing other persons from acting in accordance with their conscience by means of having a same sex marriage, thus imposing her beliefs upon others in defiance of a Supreme Court judgement. To continue the military analogy, this is the equivalent not of refusing to fight, but of actually sabotaging military equipment and supplies to prevent others from fighting as part of the military if they so chose. In the military setting that would go far beyond the definition of being a conscientious objector (in time of war it would be classed as treason).
Davis is not exercising her own rights here so much as trying to unilaterally take rights away from other citizens, and she (and her various fellow travelers and supporters) is deluded enough to believe that she has the right to do so because of her imaginary god. That is as far outside the definition of conscientious objection as it is possible to get. Of course, a crypto-theorcrat like the current, nauseatingly disingenuous Pope would be all in favour of that.
Priests are sorta at-will employed, but a better example might be the Western Schism, where a Pope the cardinals elected in 1378, Urban VI. His problem wasn’t that he lost his faith, but that he was TOO faithful, he tried to clean house and throw out a bunch church administration that he thought was corrupt, and there was no procedure for removing him. So the cardinals just moved down the road to a small town, elected a new Pope, eventually moved him back to Avignon, and there were two or three popes for the following 40 years. It was a huge mess, and the states of Europe basically supported one guy or other depending on their political attitude toward France, the patron of Clement VII, the Avignon Pope.
CO status is usually applied to people who are pressed into service involuntarily — people are drafted. I’m not sure Kim Davis’s employment status is “involuntary” in this sense, though I’m not sure that was what the Pope meant by conscientious objection. Though I’m pretty sure he was nebulous on this point on purpose.
The New York Times took a refusal to confirm or deny it as a confirmation. The Vatican will not confirm it. But, oddly, they won’t deny it, either.
Think Progress did a report on the meeting.
I find this whole thing extremely weird. The Vatican not willing to say “yes” or “no” is extremely strange. Do they not want to admit they don’t know? Do they not want the wider Catholic world to get angry at the Pope for “blessing” a Protestant? Did the Pope meet with Kim Davis against the Vatican’s wishes (they’ve already contradicted him a number of times)?
What is with all the refusal to confirm or deny it?
I bet what happened is she was in an audience of like 50 people and he maybe said hello to her, and no nobody can actually remember if the two of them specifically met or exchanged words, and now that Davis’s people are being unclassy in the extreme, decking themselves in borrowed plumes and dragging the Pope into the domestic political dispute, the Vatican doesn’t want to have anything to do with it.
Reuters is saying the Vatican has confirmed it
I seem to remember reading some where that she is an elected official who is serving in the same position as one of her parents maybe her mother who had held the same position before her as if it was almost an hereditary position. I can’t find that now. one thing she is not is a simple county employee hired as a counter clerk.
We must remember who this pope is and where he comes from. He survived his priestly career and advanced to cardinal in Argentina for gods sake not a place of enlightened liberalism nor orderly transitions of power, Plenty of death squads of all kinds. He has learned how to speak the words of compassion for the poor without antagonizing those in power. walking a tightrope over a shark pit would be easier
he did not change the church nor will he
he will just try to live the christ as he sees it while still maintaining the conservative religious order of the church which still is an incomprehensible mash up of superstition, mythology and despotism and will remain so
uncle frogy
Saad… if Reuters is referring to the same statement Think Progress is referring to, the Vatican neither confirmed nor denied it. The NYTimes made the same error, too; taking a refusal to say either way as a confirmation.
Sorry for the double post. Yes, Reuters is referring to the same statement. It’s not a denial, but it’s not a confirmation, either.
Oh, you’re right since both articles refer to the statement from this morning.
@29
That’s reminiscent of “he is a product of his time”. I don’t care what the context is…it doesn’t make it ok. No context could.
Not all were complimentary. Maureen Dowd wrote a piece for the NY Times last Sunday in which she said the current Pope hasn’t done a thing for women in his church. She stated that despite all the current hoopla over this pope; he hasn’t done anything to change the current rules of the church.
That’s kind of an odd thing to say. For the most part, he’s a just figurehead, sort of like Queen Elizabeth. I despise monarchies, but at least she doesn’t have a lot of real power to do anything. A whole lot of Catholics do not strictly obey or follow the “laws” of the church or believe every piece of dogma. That’s probably never been the case. Many don’t know what those are, nor do they even need to care. The point is, he’s not the one driving this thing off the cliff. They are. He’s going for a ride with them. His job is to be a good mascot. If enough of them (or a powerful group of Catholics) change or solidify their positions on some issue, he will be chosen as pope for that reason and/or follow their lead. Maybe he’ll even say something “infallible” on rare occasions, which is to say the view has become so deeply entrenched in the population that the church doesn’t plan on backing down from it any time soon. And if they do eventually need to do that, they’ll have no problem weaseling out of it somehow, because they only have to convince themselves that it makes some kind of sense.
The rest of it, any authority he or the institution supposedly has over its members, is all just a lot of smoke and mirrors.
That’s why the Pope supports the US federal government’s abortion laws and policies, right? We ban federal funding for it, no one is forced to participate in it. But a law against might as well not exist since each and every person who conscientiously objects to a ban on abortion can get or provide one and the supreme court makes it clear that they cannot be punished for that.
Good to know the Pope supports Roe v Wade.
I was not attempting to defend the pope but point out that he is the product of his history and has learned how to not sound threatening to those in power and sound supporting of those out of power (always the poor) without doing very much to actually challenge anyone about anything. He just sticks to the established order he is not a follower or supporter of the liberation theology.
cause
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlzyQSIm8AU
uncle frogy
I’m imagining their initial greetinsg:
Pope: Ah, welcome and well met, heretical spawn of Satan!
Davis: Delighted to meet you, Whore of Babylon!
@37 Basically, he’s a master of If by Whisky.
Pope Frank is a more amiable, charismatic person than Pope Palpatine. However the two do not differ on Catholic dogma, being anti-abortion, anti-contraception, anti-LGBT, and generally anti-humanist. Frank recognizes that climate change is real and that massive income inequality is an actual problem affecting both the poor and the middle classes throughout the world. However those two items (and opposition to the capital punishment) are about the only ways he can be described as a humanist.
As I said elsewhere: Gee, I wonder if the Dope would support “conscientious objection” if the objectors were abortion doctors performing illegal abortions in places like Ireland or Chile?
I do enjoy pointing out whenever someone praises the current pope that he still has only spoken out about this he cannot change, and has done nothing about the things he could change. He could relax or eliminate the prohibitions against contraception. He could eliminate the precepts villainizing LGBT. He could stop his organization from preventing women from receiving reproductive health care. He could stop protecting priests accused of pedophillia. He has done none of these things.
He might be less overtly malicious than his predecessor, but 99% evil is still evil.
https://youtu.be/BytJKFn0oXw
I am the very model of a modern fundamentalist. Kim Davis parody that I find quite amusing.
It’s amusing how people keep forgetting that Pope Friendly is still a Pope.
Considering her particular brand of Christian bigotry view the Catholic Church and the Pope as the incarnation of Satan the meeting was entirely appropriate.
Al Dante @40: Darth Vader is more amiable and charismatic than Emperor Palpatine…
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”.
ck, the Irate Lump @ 42:
Very good point.
slithey tove @10: You win the award for farthest stretch to make a hackneyed lawyer joke. Congratulations!
I think the Pope is confusing conscientious objection with civil disobedience. What Davis is doing could be argued to come under civil disobedience in that she is disobeying a law because she believes that the law is so wrong that she can not follow it in good conscience. So far so good, but one of the points of civil disobedience is that the person performing the act is knowingly breaking the law and accepts, as part of their effort to get the law changed, the consequences. Saying she should be allowed to break the law consequence free is contrary to the nature of civil disobedience.
If those are his actual words i was initially inclined to say, oh well, english is not a language he is good at, poor choice of words, that’s it, but the fact is that the implications are identical in spanish….and the term conscientious objection simply does not apply…period…
It’s an attempt to award her actions a legimitacy that they absolutely don’t have…but what can you expect from people that are united by their visceral, irrational, extreme, hateful bigotry.
I love Minchin’s the Pope Song. Now if he would write a similar one about the women the Catholic Church kills every day…..
I say that as a survivor of attempted murder. I was young enough to survive very nearly bleeding out when they sent me out of the hospital with an ectopic pregnancy that was about to pop–and no it wasn’t just a bad diagnosis. I know enough now to know that they must have known it was a strong probability. They didn’t even give me a pregnancy test–which were not over the counter in those days. They told me I had stomach flu and sent me home.
Depraved indifference to human life is murder.
Take your Pope and…
fold along the dotted lines. It should be obvious at each stage which fold to m ake next. Finally, insert tab “a” into slot “b”, and twist to the “anointed” position. You should now be able to inflate your Pope by gently blowing up his cassock, while firmly grasping the triple crown. In the inflated condition, your Pope is infallible.
Nick Gotts, #52
Hah, that’s hilarious!
While we’re on the subject of homophobic Catholics, I’ll just leave this one here…
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/comedian-explodes-on-self-loathing-gay-conservative-who-wants-to-be-straight-face-it-you-are-gay-as-fck/
eye-watering religious arrogance, misuse of biology, right-wing arseholery, anti-feminism and an old friend… chuck in a comment from the Discovery Institute and something about squid and we’ve got the whole Pharyngula bingo card checked in one go!
I see an article (Gawker), that reports the Vatican backpedaling a little more. The Pope’s “visit” with homophobe-Kim, was not. He might have greeted her and said a pity, “sorry for your troubles, …good fight… etc.” yet he only had a true visit with a former student. Anyone else HE met that day, was a brief greeting with maybe a few words of sympathy thrown in. If Kim was there, he may have expressed sympathy, motivated by pity; nothing more.
Every detail about the meeting comes only from Kim’s lawyer, while Vatican is denying it without explicitly saying so.
pffft
looking at the story and accepting the account as actual: mind still boggles at the concepts:
(1) Pope meeting a Evangelical Protestant, with no hesitation and blatant support for her criminal activities.
(2) Evangelical Protestant publishing a Papal blessing as justification for her criminal actions.
The two religions seem to have only a single common word (the J person’s name, only).
Any interaction would be welcomed and sought after; —-> boggles.
The Pope met with same-sex couple the day before he was with Kim Davis
re: backpedaling about Kim Davis
Because when politicians visit foreign countries, people they meet with are not carefully chosen for one reason or another.
Suuuure, pull the other one.
Are you seriously suggesting giving the Pope a blow job?
Beatrice @57:
Yeah, but who’s doing the choosing?
Well, I was had. I didn’t expect davis’ lawyer to quite out and lie so. Still hate the pope.
@59
Ok, so let’s see. What that says is that the catholic church is still a cesspool of corrupted and politically motivated vipers like when in Borgia times. That this pope is indeed a publicity stunt aimed at trying to change the image of the church so that people stop fleeing it in droves and that despite some nice words here and there, the odd gesture and a less hateful attitude from some of its members, the church is still filled with bigots and social regressives…
Yeah, i already knew all that…
Beatrice @57:
Precisely.
slither tove @55:
Well, the J-dude plus a shared culture of sex negativity, rigid expectations regarding gender norms, adherence to hierarchical structures, opposition to women’s bodily autonomy, and, oh yeah, problems with Teh Gays. But other than that, sure, no common ground at all!
Bah, auto-corrected from “slithey” to “slither.”