If Pope Francis keeps this up, I'm in mortal peril of getting religion next year … or, well, maybe sometime:
"Inequality is the root of social evil," Francis tweeted in March, after months earlier slamming "trickle-down" economics as a "crude and naïve" theory….
Francis will [also] issue an edict urging the world's 1.2 billion Catholics to do what they can to fight climate change.
Francis' exhortations are both humane and perfectly reasonable, so naturally American conservatives are both outraged and indignant.
"He's modeling the church as a place for open disagreement," said Vincent J. Miller, who chairs the University of Dayton's Catholic theology program. "In that sense, one of the most important changes he's making is that conservative politicians are now openly disagreeing with him."
Openly and harshly disagreeing with him. Sen. Rubio has framed the pope's Cuba policy as anti-democratic, Rep. Diaz-Balart has pretty much pegged Francis as a Castro-chumming "oppressor," and the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC's director is running his mouth about papal influence on U.S. policy like a 1960 Southern Baptist. One can just imagine what they'll say when the pope reveals that God's atmosphere is out of his His hands, and in ours.
It's (almost) enough to make me want to attend mass, and perhaps say a prayer for the pope. Not only do American conservatives not see "the church as a place for open disagreement," for 30 years they've swaggered and bullied as though the political arena is no place for disagreement, either.
Odd, is it not, that conservatives have become absolutists, while the vicar of the Ultimate Absolute prefers to open the floor for debate.