re: #31 Lidane

He’s very shrewdly rebranding the Catholic church, too.

By shifting his public focus away from abortion, gays, and women to more universal issues of poverty, income inequality and the problems of unfettered capitalism he’s getting a whole lot of attention. People shouldn’t forget, however, that he’s still the Pope, which means that theologically, he’s just as conservative as Benedict and JPII were. He’s not going to change any of the church doctrine or do anything drastic. He’s just emphasizing social justice over social conservative policy.

It’s hilarious watching my conservative friends calling the Pope an economic illiterate that will consign billions to abject poverty. You know, because there’s no poverty now.

I have no problem with his being a religious conservative. Sullivan highlights another statement of Pope Francis’ when he said that the greatest sign of humility was to love your enemies. The way I saw it was the Kingdom of God won’t collapse if gay people got married and it won’t be any greater if they couldn’t. I can respect the theological position of God’s gift of sexuality, but that doesn’t mean I would necessarily obey it to the letter. I’m only human.