* He is nowhere near even willing to discuss the idea of female priests.
As the LA Times wrote in its devastating takedown of his misogynistic views about women, he buys into the debunked notion that biology is what keeps women from holding leadership positions in society and business. He wants women to return to the roles that he is most comfortable with seeing them perform–housekeepers and mothers. And when they are too old to be mothers and too weak to perform housekeeping duties, he wants them to shut up and go away. Even though most Catholics in the civilized world disagree with the ban on female priests, Francis is still hidebound here. He is no friend to women, any more than he is truly a friend to children.
* When Muslim terrorists recently attacked the city of Paris and murdered people, his reaction was puzzling and disturbing.
Pope Francis’ remarks were beyond bizarre. While decrying the violence, he stated that he’d certainly commit acts of violence if provoked: if someone “says a swear word against my mother, then a punch awaits him.” He tried to walk that comment back later, but only drilled down on the idea that blasphemy was a provocation that totally deserved violence and tried to make the case that religion was a sacred cow that could not ever be questioned or challenged, let alone mocked, lest violence erupt–and that this violence was not only understandable but maybe morally obligated in the same way that many “tough guys” consider an insult to their mothers all the justification they need to hit someone. Francis might wear a pretty frock and a funny hat, he might look like someone’s weird great-uncle, but he is just a big bully, nothing more, and Rosa Rubicondior’s skewering of his hypocritical advocacy of justified violence really does say it all:
. . . human society in general may be enormously affected by a careless and confused attempt to implement what looks like a new, less tolerant and more violent Catholic dogma which can only be expected to result in retaliation and an escalation in communal and inter-faith violence.
* He’s certainly not revising the Catholic Church’s pseudoscientific and misogynistic rules about contraception.
Indeed, he tends to speak very favorably of countries that try to exert total control over women’s bodies in this manner, and to criticize countries that start trying to shake off his church’s control. He might not want to talk about those issues, but that doesn’t mean he’s withdrawing from the arena or that he’s admitting that women own their own bodies and have the right to decide how those bodies will be used and enjoyed and that those choices are none of his goddamned business. Like the Republican Party of the United States, he just doesn’t want to talk about it, is all. As that link emphasizes and quotes him as saying, he’s as clueless about how very real people’s lives operate as he is about why women tend to have inferior roles in society and business. And it is women in his religion that pay the price, since most of them use contraception that would give him the vapors. Worse, though, is that women totally outside his religion also pay the price, since the rules his church advocates and try to push into law affect everybody, not just women unfortunate enough to be in his power. Hell, he doesn’t even want women to be educated about their own bodies in school.
* And whoa nelly he’s definitely not going anywhere on civil rights for LGBTQ people.
As reported in that New Civil Rights Movement link just above, Francis also gives his unabashed, unequivocal support to various bigoted anti-gay laws, including laws banning equal marriage rights for same-sex couples and laws stopping LGBTQ couples from adopting children who need families–and he even managed to work in some shaming of single-parent households headed by women by parroting that debunked line that “every family needs a father,” which I’m sure makes legions of women who don’t have that option (if they even want it!) feel just awesome, and makes legions of same-sex male couples wonder what his damage is then since their families have two fathers. Francis’ dedication to his business’ party-line hate-speech is so powerful that despite his oh-so-sanctimonious posturing about “da chidwen,” he doesn’t love them enough to let loving families take in children in need unless those families fit his preconceptions about what families should look like. WWJD? Let kids remain without parents to make a hateful, bigoted point, and deny millions of people the right to happiness because of his own personal prejudices. How loving.
This guy talks a big game and constantly alarms his handlers doing so, but I’m not impressed. The words don’t translate into action and often betray that he’s just as bad as his predecessors. About the only places I could see that he’s doing anything decent at all is that he’s not quite as mean to atheists as some of his peers promptly demonstrated they were, and he wants to let divorced Catholics take communion again. Though I know the first part’s going to raise the most eyebrows, the second is an even bigger deal; my own mother was excommunicated after dumping her philandering, dishonest, neglectful, money-grubbing first husband, and when she attended church services I could see the tears sparking to her eyes every time everybody else got to stand up and go up front to take communion while she had to remain seated for her great and unforgivable sin of cutting herself loose from a man she believed might hurt her children so she could marry a man who was willing to step up to the plate and be a father to us. Maybe Francis is just starting to realize that pushing divorced Catholics away doesn’t make a lot of financial sense; his sudden willingness to reconsider his church’s mindless cruelty to divorced people smacks of an abusive ex promising to make some small, superficial change to get a victim back into the net.
But Francis hates the same people that fundagelical Christians hate and wants to control the same people that fundagelical Christians want to control, so they’re glad to join him in the party van for now. It’ll be kinda funny to hear the popping noise that fundagelicals’ mouths make as they snap open for the holy crook and his curved stick’s tip.
Not. Impressed. And, in conclusion, this:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BajeBFEn5Q]
Next week we’re going to head back to the Handbook–wow, some of the messages I’ve been getting about that series have been really mind-blowing and encouraging. I’m glad to keep talking about this subject if it’s of use. See y’all next week!
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