= new reply since forum marked as read
--imm
To me, anyway. 
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"Is this truth too inconvenient for you?"
Your reply to that particular post makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
There is NO cardinal in the world who is good, or even Christian, on gay rights issues. And they almost never choose the pope from the non-cardinal bishops. Among them, too, there is NO bishop in the world who is even decent on this issue, that I've ever heard of. They can choose a pope from other ranks, even a non-priest, but it is almost unheard of.
So how do you expect this exclusive Old Boys' Club to pick anybody as Pope who has broken this musty old mold--who has openly expressed what Jesus' own view would be, which is to love everyone and not obsess on "sins" and power (and also to "render unto Caesar," that is, not get involved in a SECULAR matter, like who can be legally married and who cannot)?
It was simply not possible for this group of self-regarding, appointed "princes" to choose a pope who had exposed their sex obsession--unless the Vatican conclave really had been inspired by the "Holy Spirit." We are free to hope for miracles, I guess.
The official Church's egregious dishonesty and hypocrisy on sex is a given, perpetrated from one group of powermongers to the next, as each group of powermongers chooses the next, in a completely undemocratic manner as to the rest of the Church--the vast majority of its members. This has been going on for some 1,500 years, when the Church's "original sin" as to women was committed. (I'm dating from the murder of Hypatia.)
I think that what is possible, given all this--rather than what is ideal (what should have happened 1,500 years ago and since then, in an institution claiming to believe in "the Gospels"
, is the beginning of a dialogue, first on married priests, then on women priests--and, once there ARE married priests and women priests, the Church's sick obsession with sexual "sins" will die out. Sexual "sins" were never an obsession of Jesus, even in the Church-laundered gospels. It really doesn't have anything to do with being a Christian. It is solely about power--power over women, denial of the Mother God, and power over all sexual activity, partly to insure the production of paying churchgoers and partly for power in and of itself.
A SIN--a real genuine sin--was committed by the so-called "Church Fathers" in the 5th and early 6th centuries AD, which put the Church definitively onto this path of hatred of women and making chattels of women and controlling women, and also of hating all variety in religion (condemning this sect and that sect, and associating the Church with the power of the state). They became firmly committed mind-imprisoners at that point (murder of Hypatia). These "Old Boys" need to make recompense for this very grave sin. There is blood on their hands.
But I do think that there is an undercurrent of something better that runs through Church history, usually in the persons of renegades, like...ahem, guess who? St. Francis of Assissi, whom this new Pope is invoking!
That tells you something. You really can't know, with a monarch, what he or she will do, once anointed monarch, especially with a name change. It sometimes means a change of character, or a surprising new path. That is something else that the Church really REALLY needs to shed--its monarchical trappings. But while they exist, and are real (if delusional) to the people who claim religious power, they are sometimes useful in predicting what the monarch will do. I think the name Francis I is very significant to the man who chose it.
St. Francis was an unabashed lover of all creation. Truth be known, he was a Pagan, or perhaps more accurately a Pelagian (Christian-Pagan holy man, lived with the humble people, the poor, loved Nature, herbalist, wise man, mostly in Wales and Ireland, very early on--drummed out of the Church by the same bastards who murdered Hypatia). Francis (much later), a probable Pelagian, was held in suspicion, of course. (Francis' simple life and simple Franciscan robe were meant as criticisms of Rome and its luxury and debauchery.) But he finally merited "sainthood" in their view.
If THAT is the Francis that this Pope is invoking--and I'm pretty sure it is--then that may mean change for the better or at least less aggression in clinging to wrongful, sinful, self-worshiping (i.e., male worshiping) monarchical dictation and hypocrisy. Maybe he intends real humility and real openness. If he really is a holy man, and survives the vipers' nest of the Vatican, he may be able to inspire change or be open to change.
As for his homophobia--as expressed on the Argentine gay rights bill--I do think he would make a distinction between calling someone the "Devil" and saying that someone "is doing the work of the Devil." (He is a Jesuit after all!). This distinction was pounded into my head in Catholic grammar school and I've no doubt it's real to him. In any case, he's the one "doing the work of the Devil," meddling in secular business but worse, though he may never assault a gay, providing what thugs may look at as justification for bashing or killing gays. If he wants to do Jesus' work in the world, he will stop that sort of talk. And if he doesn't, I guess that will become evident pretty quickly and he will certainly have lost any moral right to use the name of St. Francis--the peaceful, the peacemaker, the lover of all Creation.
and the "plans" of the Heavenly Father are trumped by those of the Founding Fathers.
rocktivity
Can't wait for the first round of verbal diarrhoea to hit the airways with its stench.
I'm shocked.
