Oh, that wacky Pope

By Richard Barry

And I'm just getting started.

Hey, how often do you get to write a headline like that?

The point, though, is that Pope Francis is making some conservatives very unhappy.

Catholic Republicans are developing a pope problem. Earlier this month, Francis recognized Palestinian statehood. This summer, he’s going to issue an encyclical condemning environmental degradation. And in September, just as the GOP primary race heats up, Francis will travel to Washington to address Congress on climate change.

You gotta laugh. One problem with JFK's candidacy was the fear that, as a Catholic, he would be compelled to take direction from Rome. If only Catholic Republicans would do that now, they would be a much more interesting party.

Also funny, as Politico notes, Republicans who have concerns about the Pope's progressivism are flipping a"familiar script in which Democrats like John Kerry and Joe Biden were labeled 'cafeteria Catholics' when their stances on social issues like abortion and gay marriage differed from those of the church."

Morality is complicated. Who knew?

Paul Ryan loves the poor so much he wants to put them out of their misery

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Paul Ryan claims he cares about the poor. He claims he wants to deal with poverty in a serious and meaningful way. But of course he's a combination of Ayn Rand devotee and Christianist ideologue, an anti-government extremist who departs from Rand in adding a cover of religious moralizing, and so what he really wants to give the poor, as he pursues his far-right "free"-market agenda benefitting the rich before all others, is more Jesus and less everything they actually need.

And so it's hardly surprising that in fact he's really not all that interested in tackling poverty beyond rhetoric designed to put a compassionate spin on what is essentially an agenda of brutality, and that's reflected in his "budget":

Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin on Tuesday will lay out a tough, election-year budget that he says will come into balance by 2024, in large part through steep cuts to Medicaid and food stamps and the full repeal of President Obama’s health care law, just as millions begin to see its benefits.

But even with those cuts, Mr. Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, is counting on a boost of economic growth to balance the budget, a boost he says will be gained by reducing the deficit. Many economists believe such dramatic spending cuts — especially those affecting the poor — would have the opposite effect, slowing the economy and lowering tax receipts.

Not that Ryan, who speaks for the bulk of his party on fiscal matters, has ever let something like the obviousness of reality get in the way of his ideological pursuits. As Jon Chait explains: 

The disintegration of Ryan's promise [to tackle poverty] reveals something very deep. It's not that he needs a little more time and a few all-nighters, or some more help getting fellow Republicans in line. His policy vision is fundamentally impossible.

Ryan and his party are committed to the following beliefs:

1. America faces an impending debt crisis, somewhere, which requires a balanced budget within the next decade;
2. Social Security and Medicare benefits for current and near-retirees amount to a sacred pact that cannot be violated;
3. Barack Obama has hollowed out the military, requiring defense spending to rise (as Ryan proposes), or at minimum not to drop;
4. Taxes can never, ever, ever rise at all, even as part of a trade for other desirable policy changes.

The only possible way to reconcile this combination of policy commitments is to impose staggering cuts to programs for the poor, which Ryan's most recent budget proposal does. Every previous version of the Ryan budget is, basically, a plan to cut benefits for the poor. At least two thirds of the cuts in last year's Ryan plan come from programs for poor people.

Paul Ryan is a Catholic, but essentially, beyond the basic trappings of their faith, he's the opposite of Pope Francis. His God is the "free" market (which is really just the Hobbesian state of nature, a state in which life is nasty, brutish, and short except for those who are strong enough (that is, rich enough) to survive by constructing their own Leviathan of the 1%), his savior is Ayn Rand (along with other fundamentalists like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman), and the disciples he places alongside her include Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp (who was just a bit more serious about helping the poor than he is). 

And here, as always, he intends to crush the poor, and pretty much the entirety of the 99%, as well as to stop the American economy in its tracks (however much his ideology might tell him otherwise), in order to enrich the already rich, empower the already powerful, and create the right-wing dystopia of his crazed imaginings.

Pope Francis needs to go kick some New Jersey ass

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Consider:

John J. Myers, the archbishop of the Newark Archdiocese, comes to this vacation home on many weekends. The 4,500-square-foot home has a handsome amoeba-shaped swimming pool out back. And as he's 72, and retirement beckons in two years, he has renovations in mind. A small army of workers are framing a 3,000-square-foot addition. 

This new wing will have an indoor exercise pool, three fireplaces and an elevator. The Star-Ledger of Newark has noted that the half-million-dollar tab for this wing does not include architects' fees or furnishings.

There's no need to fear for the archbishop's bank account. The Newark Archdiocese is picking up the bill.

And it's not just the upscale living while so many struggle and suffer:

He is known to insist on being addressed as "Your Grace." And his self-regard is matched by his refusal to apologize for more or less anything.

It was revealed last year that a priest seemed to have broken his legally binding agreement with Bergen County prosecutors to never again work unsupervised with children or to minister to them so long as he remained a priest. When next found, he was involved with a youth ministry in the Newark Archdiocese.

Parishioners in Oradell, N.J., also discovered that the archdiocese had allowed a priest accused of sexual abuse to live in their parish's rectory. A furor arose, and last summer the archbishop sat down and wrote an open letter to his flock. He conceded not a stumble. Those who claim, he wrote, that he and the church had not protected children were "simply evil, wrong, immoral and seemingly focused on their own self-aggrandizement."

Evil, wrong, immoral, focused on self-aggrandizement? Huh. It really does seem that Pope Francis should have a chat with this prick. And while he's in the beautiful Garden State, maybe he can also teach its bullying blowhard of a corrupt, power-hungry governor a thing or two about humility and true public service.

What should Pope Francis do about Paul Ryan?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Not the pope.

Honestly, just who the fuck does Paul Ryan think he is?

Oh right, an Ayn Rand devotee, trickle-down ideologue, and Republican leader of all things fiscal, as he towers over the ignoramuses of his party and holds court like some wizard in the land of Oz. But, really, he's a sham, his expertise a mirage, his concern for the poor utter bullshit, his Catholicism a self-aggrandizing joke. As Salon's Joan Walsh writes:

When 1.3 million Americans lose their unemployment benefits on Saturday, they can thank Rep. Paul Ryan. He took the lead in negotiating a bipartisan budget deal with Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, and on behalf of his party, held the line against continuing extended unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless.

Sure, a lot of Republicans share blame with Ryan. But he deserves extra-special (negative) credit for the deal, because he has lately had the audacity to depict himself as the new face of "compassionate conservatism," insisting Republicans must pay attention to the problems of the poor. Friends say the man who once worshipped Ayn Rand now takes Pope Francis as his moral role model. Except he can't help treating his new role model with arrogance and contempt.

It's true that while knuckle-draggers like Rush Limbaugh attack the pope as a Marxist, Ryan has praised him, which I guess takes a tiny bit of courage since normally Republicans don't like to buck the leader of their party. "What I love about the pope is he is triggering the exact kind of dialogue we ought to be having," Ryan told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. "People need to get involved in their communities to make a difference, to fix problems soul to soul."

But he couldn't suppress either his right-wing politics or his supreme capacity for condescension for very long. "The guy is from Argentina, they haven't had real capitalism in Argentina," Ryan said (referring to the pope as "the guy" is a nice folksy touch.) "They have crony capitalism in Argentina. They don't have a true free enterprise system."

Pope Francis isn't just triggering dialogue and isn't just promoting good-hearted communitarianism, he's taking a stand against the very sort of capitalist brutality that Ryan espouses. And I suspect he has seen more than enough shit both in Argentina over the decades and throughout his long pastoral and ecclesiastical career to give him a certain credibility when discussing capitalism and its horrors. (Besides, how exactly does America have a "true free enterprise system" -- what with its corporate welfare and plutocratic politics? It's also cronyism, of a sort, and if Ryan really thinks America has real capitalism, he's as much of an ignoramus as his blind followers in the House.)

Sure, Ryan isn't quite as odious as Dear Leader Rush, but the two aren't all that far apart, and where they differ it's more in style than substance. The media blowhard is just more forthcoming with his extremism, whereas the politician tries to pass himself off as a caring individual, wrapping his, and his party's, extremism in a neat little package that he hopes a gullible electorate will lap up with glee.

Pope Francis has many more important things to concern himself with than Paul Ryan's political games, but is excommunication out of the question? Seems to me it might send the appropriate message.

Angels wanna wear my red shoes

By Carl

Well, well, well... this is a refreshing change of heart:

ABOARD THE PAPAL AIRCRAFT — Pope Francis reached out to gays on Monday, saying he wouldn’t judge priests for their sexual orientation in a remarkably open and wide-ranging news conference as he returned from his first foreign trip.

"If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" Francis asked.

What? No "Burn in Hell!"? No "God hates fags!"?

Whatever is religion coming to?

God is what?

Yes, there are plenty of things from yesterday's papal press conference (!) that we can criticize, such as the "investigation" into a monsignor on his staff on pedophilia charges, but this position, seemingly unqualified and unconditional, leaps off the page.

People of all colors, creeds and orientations struggle to find meaning in life. Even atheists have been known to try and answer what is essentially a spiritual dilemma: What's the point?

For me, for this Christian, the pope strikes the right tone about religion. It's a voyage of self-discovery. It's about finding a place for one's higher power in one's life, because let's face facts, there are times you need one, and wish you had one. Maybe it doesn’t answer your questions or solve your problems, but a god or goddess or enlightened plane or what have you help you get ready to get through and then past a crisis.

Many of my friends, scientists and realists, are atheist (or at least agnostic), and I respect them for that, but a lack of a system of faith is, well, still a system of faith, since none of us can ever really know the answer to the ultimate questions we all have.

Even Francis has tacitly endorsed atheism. It's not about holding a book or hands folded in prayer, it's about how we all behave towards one another.

On that point, I believe we can all find common ground.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Pope Francis takes on "radical feminist" American nuns

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The new pope has been a breath of fresh air, at least with respect to poverty and social justice, but let's not forget that he's a dogmatic conservative who is solidly orthodox on most matters (how else could he have been chosen by a group of cardinals appointed by John Paul II and Benedict XVI?). And he's now going after those dangerous heretics, U.S. nuns:

Pope Francis has backed the Vatican's doctrinal crackdown on a major group of American nuns, reasserting the Roman Catholic Church's conservative approach to various social issues in a move that could cool the warm reception he has received from some liberal Catholics since taking office last month.

The Vatican said in a statement Monday that Francis had reaffirmed the doctrinal evaluation and criticism of U.S. nuns made last year by the Holy See under his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. The assessment accused the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an organization that represents most U.S. female Catholic orders, of promoting "radical feminist themes" and ignoring the Vatican's hard line on same-sex marriage and abortion.

Oh sure, the symbolism is admirable, and it's nice that he'll wash the feet of women and prisoners, and that he'll buck stale tradition now and then, and that he's got a softness to him, and what appears to be genuine humility, but really, what did you expect?

Boehner has good reasons for snubbing Obama

By Frank Moraes 

This is a follow-up to my post "Death Throes of the GOP." In that post, I discussed how Republicans have gone out of their way to snub President Obama and what that said about them being a revolutionary group. Well, we had another example of Republicans snubbing the president for no good reason.

Obama offered John Boehner the opportunity to go to Rome with Biden to be part of the official U.S. delegation to the installation of Pope Francis. Boehner is a Catholic. But he had to turn down the president. He had good reasons, though. He has to be around to deal with the budget.

Oh yes! What would Congress do without his leadership? After all, he has to be around to not negotiate with the president. He has to be around to not compromise on new revenue. He has to be around to not prevent a government shutdown. Yes: all of Washington would be completely lost if John Boehner left for a couple of days.

Please someone: make all this stop!

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

HABEMUS PAPAM FRANCISCUM: Popetastic conclavular 2013 ends with a surprise win for Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A surprise pick: Jorge Mario Bergoglio becomes Pope Francis

Okay, so I was wrong.

Wrong about Marc Ouellet winning the big prize, then, having doubts earlier today, about Angelo Scola taking it. But I was right about the white smoke coming today -- even though a conclave with no clear frontrunner could have been expected to go longer -- and when it did, after just five ballots, I really did think it was Scola, whose election, as experts like John Allen were saying, would have been a vote for continuity, as he's an orthodox thinker in the mold of Ratzinger/Benedict (if more personable), and so a fairly safe pick at a time of crisis and uncertainty throughout the Church.

But if not Ouellet or Scola, then maybe one of other leading non-Europeans like Peter Turkson or Odilo Scherer, or maybe even an American, Sean O'Malley.

And so when Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the senior cardinal deacon, appeared on the balcony at St. Peter's to say (in Latin) those famous two words -- habemus papam -- and announce the name of the new pope, and I heard the name Bergoglio, I was surprised, to say the least. Who? What? Bergoglio? That guy? Really?

Yes, that guy.

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