The Right Doesn’t Like The Pope
They don’t like Pope Francis’s anti-capitalist thoughts about helping the poor, income inequality, etc. They apparently haven’t read the New Testament which is important to the leader of one of the largest Christian sects. Had they read the Gospels they would have known better than to expect a Christian to support what passes for capitalism today.
They also don’t like his views on climate change, but as a former chemist he shouldn’t have been expected to ignore the evidence and findings.
I’m fairly certain that they didn’t like the Pope pointing out that if you aren’t a Native American, you or your ancestors were immigrants, so you should show a little compassion today’s immigrants.
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How dare this Pope dude, like, actually expect so-called “Christians” to follow the teachings of Christ! The nerve!
A slight caveat: According to Snopes, Pope Francis isn’t a former chemistry professor. A college education was not something someone from his lower class background could aspire to in the Argentina of his time. What he has is essentially a 2 year community college certificate qualifying him to be a chemistry lab technician. Still, that’s considerably more than the Republicans criticizing him have.
That said, I am enjoying the right wing meltdown. Us lefties have our own problem with the Pope’s views on birth control and the place of women in the church, but we’re smart enough to not get into a pissing match with a man who has 1.2 billion *actual* followers (as versus Twitter followers or Facebook followers). This is like watching moths slamming against the windshield of the Papal popemobile. It doesn’t hurt the Pope, and turns them into road kill.
I especially like the part where the Pope tells orange Julius to “go and sin no more” whereupon the speaker announced his retirement.
I tracked down the chemistry thing and understand what happened. He didn’t attend the national university, he attended a technical college. It is a European/non-US system difference in names and years of study. Inmost of the world you graduate from high school at sixteen after 10 years. Then you take a test if you want to go on and based on the testing you go to technical colleges or the university. He has the equivalent of a BS except the US version would require extra non-science courses. He did work as a chemist before he went to seminary. The fact that he is a Jesuit is probably why it was assumed that he was a teacher/professor.
Naomi Klein said they view the Pope as “Bernie Sanders in a white dress”. They are terrified of someone who actually ‘walks the walk’ .
Given that Boehner is Catholic and must have worked with other Catholics to have the Pope address Congress, the reaction of the wingnuts probably did have a great deal to do with Boehner’s decision.