Media Loses Its Mind Over Pope's Secret Visit with Kim Davis; So Vatican Expresses a "Sense of Regret"

Before getting to that last ugly bit, do read this funny and true piece by M. B. Dougherty explaining the media's endless butthurt about the Pope-Kim Davis conclave.

[T]the whole world is mad. Why? Because the pope is a prop. In the hands of our nation's true clerical class -- journalists -- this particular pope's function is to demoralize and shame the bad Catholics, i.e., the conservative ones. The previous pope's function was to symbolize their wicked intransigence.

Pope Francis is supposed to be the cool pope. He humiliates traditionalist cardinals. He embraces transexuals. If he occasionally says stuff against gay marriage, well, so what? Like Barack Obama in the 2008 election, sometimes you say what you have to say. But we know where his heart is. He embraces the marginalized and despised.

...

But this prop accomplished what no upstanding playwright would script. He met someone the scribes really do despise. He embraced that hick.

Horrors. Apparently all the good people who were about to believe again in the bodily Resurrection were stopped in their tracks by this one off-key gesture. As for politics, who could have thunk it? The pope only called for the abolition of the death penalty in a speech to Congress. He asked the state of Georgia for a reprieve in a death sentence case. He congratulated the president for his efforts to bring about international agreements on climate change. Apparently for some scribes, these views exist in a moral exosphere above and beyond petty politics. As Emma Green writes:

Davis has been one of the most polarizing figures in American politics in recent months, seen by some on the right as the foremost fighter against violations of religious liberty. When Pope Francis came to the U.S., his message was exactly the opposite -- one of unity and reconciliation, not combativeness.

Translation: Cool pope unites us against bad religious people. Only a bad pope would try to unify or reconcile with that woman. She's polarizing, unlike the other issues Francis highlighted.

Alas, the gesture was even emptier than a secret meeting usually is. Because now the Vatican -- presumably on Francis' behalf -- is trying to appease the "nation's true clerical class," as Dougherty calls them, by apologizing to the True Keepers of the Light.

First, the official Vatican spokesman said, essentially, that the Pope barely even knew who he was meeting with so don't bother reading anything into it.

The brief meeting between Mrs. Kim Davis and Pope Francis at the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, DC has continued to provoke comments and discussion. In order to contribute to an objective understanding of what transpired I am able to clarify the following points:

Pope Francis met with several dozen persons who had been invited by the Nunciature to greet him as he prepared to leave Washington for New York City. Such brief greetings occur on all papal visits and are due to the Pope’s characteristic kindness and availability. The only real audience granted by the Pope at the Nunciature was with one of his former students and his family.

The Pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects.

And then it gets worse. A "Vatican official" quoted by Reuters, not necessarily delivering the official word on the Kim Davis matter, but then again, maybe doing just that, let out this stinky little fart:

One Vatican official said there was "a sense of regret" that the pope had ever seen Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk who went to jail in September for refusing to honor a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and issue same-sex marriage licenses.

See AllahPundit for a sarcastic little exit question.

posted by Ace at 02:27 PM

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