Category: Pope Francis

The over­all gist of the pope’s response seems to be: Abor­tion is always and every­where evil, but there are lic­it means to avoid preg­nan­cy. I would like to think that by “avoid­ing preg­nan­cy” in the case of Zika, the pope means absti­nence dur­ing fer­tile peri­ods. But the dif­fi­cul­ty here is that the only spe­cif­ic method of avoid­ing preg­nan­cy any­one brings up dur­ing the exchange is con­tra­cep­tion — and it is Pope Fran­cis who intro­duces it into the dis­cus­sion, not the reporter. Anoth­er dif­fi­cul­ty: Paul VI nev­er allowed nuns in dan­ger of rape to use con­tra­cep­tion.

Ahead of the papal vis­it lat­er this month, Mark Binel­li is back with anoth­er effu­sive col­umn in Rolling Stoned. I have picked apart his errors thrice before, but the poor man keeps on rolling. Like a stone! Give him cred­it for it; now he has sought answers from such an one as Austin Ruse! Mr. Binel­li will insist on his por­tray­al of Pope Fran­cis as a “dis­rup­tor” of some sort. I don’t mind that; I even agree with it; but it is the kind of dis­rup­tion that he sees lurk­ing in the pope that wor­ries me: not about Mr. Binelli’s san­i­ty, for that can’t be helped, but his per­spicu­ity.

When a post begins in this wild and froth­ing way: “Papal lack­ey Scott Eric Alt is once again try­ing to save the pope’s ran­cid bacon” — you know you are read­ing one frus­trat­ed guy. Poor soul. That’s okay. I’m patient here. I get it. The lights are slow to go on at Fail­ablogue. Frus­tra­tion leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suf­fer­ing! So let us, with patience, help poor Pur­ple Haze out of his, well, pur­ple haze. Mr. Haze first goes amiss in his reply to a point I made about the argu­ment from author­i­ty.

Steve “Pur­ple” Hays has replied to my post from Fri­day. If your gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­er has affirmed that you are safe­ly free from stom­ach acid and there’s no dan­ger that it will blow up on you from expo­sure to bilge, you can read his response. But since the man is in a deep mud­dle, I’m going to fisk his post with some length and patience. I’m always here to help him. It’s a ser­vice I offer Calvin­ists at my blog. Mr. Hays begins his post by refer­ring to me as “one of this pope’s many self-appoint­ed han­dlers” and “a lay blog­ger.” Now, I know why he does this: It is to poi­son the well.

The pope does not say that Catholics “should not breed like rab­bits.” What he says is that Catholics should not feel that they must “be like rab­bits” with no sense of “respon­si­ble par­ent­hood.” The pope gives the full Catholic teach­ing. He does not just say that life is good and that cou­ples should bring life into the world, and life more abun­dant­ly; he also says that cou­ples have an oblig­a­tion to be respon­si­ble with their par­ent­hood. The Church says both. In fair­ness, Mr. San­to­rum is not the only one get­ting the pope’s words wrong. Every­one else is too.

Of Mr. Binelli’s claim— that the pope’s cri­tique of “unchecked free-mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism” in Evan­gelii Gaudi­um is the “most aston­ish­ing” aspect of his papa­cy thus far — not much need be said in this post. I had at first thought to write a review of the bulk of Catholic social teach­ing to help out Mr. Binel­li. I blithe­ly thought I could do that in two thou­sand words or less, but it soon began to grow like the blog (I mean blob). So I leave all that for a dif­fer­ent day and a dif­fer­ent series. It is enough, for now, to make just these few notes.

Of Pope Fran­cis, Mr. Binel­li says: “His rec­og­niz­able human­i­ty comes off as pos­i­tive­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary.” Though it may be a dis­putable point, that is quite pos­si­bly the dumb­est sen­tence writ by man. No pope before Fran­cis was rec­og­niz­ably human? What about that dour old crab Bene­dict? Is dour­ness the exclu­sive prop­er­ty of owls? Or what about the gre­gar­i­ous John Paul II? Has Mr. Binel­li for­got­ten him? What does he mean, Fran­cis is rev­o­lu­tion­ary because he is human? What were all those 265 popes before Fran­cis? Frogs? Rep­tiles? Mon­sters of the deep?

By now, dear read­er, you have prob­a­bly heard that Pope Fran­cis made the cov­er of still anoth­er pop cul­ture mag­a­zine. The arti­cle, which is long and boor­ish and blind, is bent to advance a stan­dard theme: that the new pope is a fuzzy and pro­gres­sive-lean­ing mav­er­ick and will stand Church teach­ing on its head; where­as, the old pope, the evil Bene­dict, was a sour old man who beat us all over the pate with the ham­mer of dog­ma. That is a car­i­ca­ture, and it belies the facts. But Mr. Binel­li will insist upon this blue­bird land over the lib­er­al rain­bow.