I think it is a safe bet that if Pope Francis I lives more than a few years that Catholics will soon be kicked out of the Republican Party and resume their previous status as the semi-black race. The reason is simple. Pope Francis I is on the opposite side of the political divide from Pope John Paul II. The Polish pope was a Cold Warrior who basically took the Reagan-Thatcher line on left-leaning political movements in the Third World, including in Latin America. The Argentinian Jesuit pope isn’t a communist, but he advocates for the poor without any apology.
For now, conservative American Catholics are trying to parse the distinction, but it isn’t going to work. They are not going to be able to embrace The Slum Pope who wants to “make a mess” of the established order within the Church by encouraging young people to shake up the dioceses and force them to embrace the convicts, drug addicts, and the truly impoverished.
Our country is uniquely unable to appreciate this change specifically because our right wing succeeded in categorizing the left in the Third World (and, to an extent, even in Europe) as communist in sympathy. The right assumes that the Vatican is an ally in all things, but that is no longer even close to being the case. On so-called family values, the papacy is still reliably conservative, even if it can’t be counted on anymore to demonize homosexuality. But on economic issues, the papacy is now a dedicated enemy of the Republican Party.
Before long, the right will have no choice but to break from the pope, and then their opposition will grow to a point that the alliance between Catholics and evangelicals will not hold.
Any questions?
You cannot long endure as a hero of the right if you are dedicating yourself to drug addicts in the world’s worst barrios.
Remember what happened to Jesus of Nazareth? It could happen to a Pope too.
A lot of people think it happened to John Paul I.
A link.
the 30 day Pope?
yeah…I always thought something happened to him that wasn’t ‘ natural causes’.
The powers-that-be made John Paul IInd Pope to take the Catholic Church back to before the DFH’s had their 2nd Vatican Council, and liberalized the church.
In this, he was like Thatcher and Reagan, who were backed by the wealthy, to take their countries back to before the DFH’s liberalize England and American.
The Conservative backlash around the world, can be traced to the 1960’s, when the more advanced countries became more Liberal.
And they became more liberal, because strong middle classes allowed people to look beyond their next drink of potable water, their next meal, whether they’ll still have a roof over their heads or a job the next day, and worrying about their children’s educations and futures.
Not having to worry about those things on a daily basis, meant that people could look beyond just their own narrow self-interest, see rampant injustices around them, and question and protest those in authority, for allowing the social and economic injustices they noticed.
And so, since the late 60’s, I think the real focus of the powers-that-be, was the elimination of the middle class.
If people have to worry about clean water, having enough food, a roof, a job, and their children’s educations and futures, they’re no longer worried about the rights of other people.
And they have done a great job of destroying the middle class in this country.
And you don’t notice that, then what are you doing reading BooMan in the first place?
Notice how now nobody cares that their civil rights and privacy are routinely violated? That everyone accepts that they must do off the books work for long hours to keep their jobs? Accepts that politicians are lying sleazy perverted scumbags intent on only lining their own pockets?
It goes hand in hand with what you are saying. I think it will take another generation, if ever, before ordinary Americans care about right and wrong again.
All of a kind.
And all part of the plan.
Sometimes, you’re NOT just paranoid, if you think there are forces against you – sometimes, there really are.
From your mouth to God’s ear…
I’d be a bit careful. A few off-the-cuff remarks, which I doubt will be repeated, are not an encyclical. He may believe this stuff he said on the plane, but it is going to be a long time before he can get the entrenched J-P II bureaucracy to hold those same beliefs. If we see something official in a few months, I will agree with you. Until then, this should most likely be regarded as a one-time aberration.
While I briefly alluded to his remarks on the plane, this post really has nothing to do with gay issues at all.
He talked about a lot of things.
“a long time before he can get the entrenched J-P II bureaucracy to hold those same beliefs.”
But there is more going on that just a few off the cuff remarks. And one of Pope Francis’s first steps is a radical overhaul of the Curia.
People are responding to this Pope’a remarks. And the reason is that unlike K Lo whose primary concern is how the influence of the US Catholic Bishops will influence politics, sincere Christians like a religious leader who gently reminds them of the primacy of loving one’s neighbor as oneself.
.
His eminence has more than surprised me as I was very sceptical after his election. We should have been forewarned, same goes for the Vatican council, electing a black pope would bring trouble to the Holy See.
There is no alliance between Catholics and Evangelicals. A majority of Catholics vote Democrat. Catholics are about 30 points more Democratic than Evangelicals. For instance, in 2008, Obama won Catholics 54-45. while McCain won Evangelicals by 73-26.
What you’re talking about has some validity on the level of elites – the Catholic hierarchy in this country is much more conservative and pro-Republican than ordinary Catholics – but it’s a mistake to discuss this point in terms of mass politics.
The point I took away from BooMan’s article is that the GOP will no longer see the Catholic church as their ally. I don’t think it has to do with votes so much as the ultra conservative policy of the Catholic bishops in US. Example, contraceptives and ObamaCare. They raised hell about it and Fox News and the MSN took it up. Policy was changed because of it. I don’t have a link but I remember reading that Catholic hospitals had no problem with it with insurance policies that required it in some states. There was quite a stink and much offense on the part of GOP because Obama was being a tyrant.
Boehner and Ryan are Catholics. In the VP debates Joe said he was Catholic but didn’t believe in pushing his beliefs on others while Ryan said he did. Ryan put forth a strict, stinking abortion bill.
Paul Ryan Once Again Sponsors the Bill That Would Make It Possible for Women’s Rapists to Sue Them
http://jezebel.com/5975076/paul-ryan-once-again-sponsors-the-bill-that-would-make-it-possible-for-wo
mens-rapists-to-sue-them
it may seem I’m talking apples and oranges, but I’m not saying the Pope would support abortion or contraceptives. Just that there were Catholic bishops who wrote letters to Boehner and Ryan about their policies hurting the poor and it got little attention in the press. But to have a Pope who is actually supporting the policies of Jesus for the poor or seeing everyone as equal. That’s a whole nuther ball game.
And that point is absolutely right.
His language in the post, though, is a bit imprecise, and doesn’t make clear whether he’s talking about mass politics (“Catholics”) as opposed to elites (“the Vatican/the bishops/the Catholic Church.”)
The Right to Life movement began as an almost exclusively Catholic movement. At the time, many evangelicals didn’t vote and were not politically engaged. Then they formed a political alliance and got behind Reagan. I’m not discussing percentages here, but the very heart of the conservative movement.
The very heart of the conservative movement is lower top marginal rates of income tax, preferential, or no, tax treatment of non-wage income. Fewer, or no, obstacles to the ability of firms to generate profits, and either retain them, or distribute them in any non-wage form.
Period.
They’ll trade everything else in the store to get those outcomes.
The only question is how to sell it to the rubes who think in their folly and ignorance that it’s all about the coloreds, or the gays, or a strong America, or having every knee bend at Jesus’ name
Yes, Davis X, your points about the BIG money and power behind the conservative movement are largely right. The Big Money Boys don’t have enough votes to win elections purely on the Plutocrat agenda, though. That’s why they are constantly in hard pursuit of the God/Guns/Bigot crowds- they need their votes.
Wonder why ALEC has worked hard to pass radical gun and anti-choice laws? They need to attach those one-issue voters to the politicians willing to do everything the plutocrats desire on economic issues. This alliance has opened up, for example, xenophobes to Objectivist claptrap, and made them more receptive to it. If a elected member of my religious tribe is hating on the gays or helping me carry a gun on a playground, his POV on economic issues must also be valid, right?
The very heart of the movement being a handful of elites, unrepresentative of the larger group.
Yeah, I can buy that.
The Pope’s openness to the ‘back of the plane media’ for 1 hr 20 minutes where he used no notes, just simply answered each question posed to him; leaving the Church’s staid platforms quiet as he sided with humanity opened a historical door. This Pope is a leader for a church that has long needed that sight.
Catholics don’t vote en bloc.
They vote more or less like their compeers do, at least for President.
Noisy, high-profile public, God-bothering Catholics have a political alliance with the evangelical churches.
I, for one, look forward to Nino Scalia being excommunicated.
Not least because such an event would probably cause him to pop a gasket, which is very much deserved.
Nah. He’d just say, “I didn’t leave the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church left me.”
I don’t know…
TE pope is a cool dude and I am grateful for the spiritual leadership he will bring.
Many Catholics will follow his lead. But many are the disenfranchised steel, auto, mine, etc. workers who Obama talked about in 08 as clutching their guns. Some have a long history of hating blacks who came from the south to take their jobs in Detroit, etc. My BIL is one of them and while politics isn’t something he discusses openly he is clear about the feel good he has about having a president who doesn’t look like him.
But the KKK not too long ago was hoping to rid the nation of Catholics or at least keep them from office.
So who knows?