New Pope Already Pissing Off The Santorum Wing Of The Catholic Church

How is New Pope being different from Old Pope today? Well, a) he is neither a vampire nor a nazi. B) He's refusing to live in the papal palace or wear the ruby slippers or have his chair above anybody else's chair or even refer to himself as "pope." And c) he is already pissing off the "traditionalists" in the Church who are stroking out because when he went to a youth prison on Holy Thursday to wash the feet of the poor (instead of washing priests ' feet in the basilica, like a normal pope), he washed  girl feet.  (And Muslim feet.)

NEW POPE!!!!

So, for many of our commenters, we are going to have to explain this again : Not all Catholics are fucking assholes.

Oh, that did not explain it enough? Ok. There is a wing of the Church that is filled with lefties who actually serve the poor instead of determining that gay-bashing was Jesus's No. 1 bestness most funtimes favorite thing to do while he is seated at the right hand of the father. We call this the "Catholic Worker" wing of the Church, or the "Dorothy Day" wing of the Church, or "pretty much most nuns," which is why Ratzinger was always yelling at them. 

(Because he is a dick.) (Also a Nazi.)

Now, is New Pope great on gay stuff? NOT REALLY. He called gay marriage the path of Satan or something. (Sorry, gays, that probably does not feel nice!) But, when his native Argentina was facing gay marriage, he was pragmatic enough to embrace civil unions as an alternative. This put him a couple years ahead of Colorado , and still ahead of more than half of our United States.

What about the Dirty War in Argentina? WE DON'T KNOW! According to his own account, he was working behind the scenes to get priests released from the junta's torture chambers. Maybe as a young man he was not saintly enough to risk himself! According to the Nobel Prize winner who exposed the junta to the world, he was cool. But according to this other investigative reporter, he was not!

Wish we could be more helpful on that.

But there are more than a billion people who belong to the Church. Simply saying it's evil, or a crime syndicate, or glowering about whatever it is you Terrible Ones have been glowering about, doesn't take into account how many people want to fix it -- how many people in the Church want the Church to ordain women, to stop with the birth control nonsense, to stop with the anti-gay cruelty, to stop shuffling priests around because priestly prerogatives are more important than children. Remember going to Europe during the reign of Bush fils? Did people yell at you? Were you like, wait a minute, WASN'T ME! Even the Dixie Chicks were like wait a minute wasn't me. And now they are dead. But guess what? Now you can go to Europe again, and people will just tell you America's so great hip hip hooray Obama fuck yeah!

So. The Church is a gigantic institution filled with many asshole old men and Rick Santorum. Change comes slow to it. It took them like 500 years to apologize to Galileo . But that change can be worse (anointing Pope Nazi), or it can be better (liberalizing and modernizing the Church, like Best Pope John XXIII, and -- we think and hope! -- New Pope).

Sniffing that there's no difference between New Pope and Nazi Pope is like sniffing that there's no difference between Bush and Gore, because Al Gore isn't Ralph Nader.

Honestly, when some of you talk about the Catholic Church, you sound like Pam Gellar talking about Muslins.

You sound like bigots.

And it makes us sad.

Anyway, some traditionalists are really mad because New Pope washed stinky icky girl feet, when the Holy Thursday tradition is to wash priest feet, because "apostles" and "the apostles were men."

Maybe that is not a sign that New Pope wants to ordain women tomorrow -- a couple of years ago, he said Jesus was a man, so priests men arglebargle.

But we sure like seeing them all verklempt.

[ TPM ]