Some Earthly Thoughts on Pope Francis' Visit

It's amazing just to step back on the amazing fanfare of Pope Francis' visit to the US which is truly historic. Though the historic nature is that he will be meeting Congress at the pleasure of Boehner. 

First he politicized the US-Israel and now that of the Pope's visit.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122883/pope-franciss-speech-congress-will-backfire-republicans

I am not a Catholic-I am a lapsed Protestant-Seventh Day Adventist actually-who would call myself an atheist today.

Not an easy thing for my very devout mother to hear-which is why when she forces the issue I at least say I'm an agnostic-after all this leaves some hope I could go back to theism.

To be honest the SDA church's dogma is pretty hostile to Catholicism-which is not surprising when you recall that the SDA church is a homegrown American theology that came out of the 19th century.

Throughout US history until after WWII there was a good deal of anti Catholic bigotry. From my standpoint I believe in neither SDA theology or Catholic theology.

On the other hand I've always had a good deal of respect for the Catholic church as a social institution. There's the rub for me what is interesting about the Catholic Church is not its Heavenly message of a transcendent next world but its actual power and influence in the earthly realm.

In this I'm in Hume's tradition.

http://www.amazon.com/Dialogues-Concerning-Natural-Religion-Classics/dp/0872204022/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1443013982&sr=8-1&keywords=david+hume+on+religion

What I find today regarding religious faith is that most people I talk to seem to say they are atheist or agnostic but it turns out they aren't.

They will explain that they are Religious but not spiritual. They have no place ie, for organized religion but they are very much in support of the 'disorganized' kind.

Not me. I would say I'm religious but not spiritual or at least that religions impress me but not talk of spirituality.

At its basic level, I guess the appeal of belief in the Pope for so many is he seems to promise another world which is a boon for those unhappy with this one.

A just society of the future for those not happy with their place in this one.

I don't have a goal of convincing everyone to become an atheist like me. There are people for whom Cornell West's God Talk matters is those for whom it doesn't. I do resent Carly Fiorina's Theocratic imperialism however.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/carly-fiorinas-answer-on-muslim.html

But I do think religion as a human institution has done both lots of good and bad things for humanity. But it's made us who we are even those of us who no longer believe.

The Republicans are asking Pope Francis to do his job and let them do theirs-which is kind of funny as we all wish they would do their jobs and yet here we are facing yet another government shutdown.

But the dirty secret of the Catholic Church is it has always picked winners and losers so to speak. There is nothing novel about the Pope telling earthly politicians what the correct,d

The Church has always pushed Godly policies in the earthly kingdom. Most governments throughout human history of course have been theocractic. It's we who are the outliers.

So it's natural that both conservatives and liberals will try to make the Pope an advocate of their own policies. On some he sounds more liberal-like the very notion of the Social Gospel.

Conservatives enlist the Pope on gay marriage, abortion, and feminism.

Pope Francis seems to be in some ways more to a liberal's liking even on socially conservative positions around gays, abortion, Muslims, etc. He made a point of washing the feet of Muslims, etc.

So Boehner has the Pope making the unprecedented step of talking before Congress basically to buttress the GOP agenda to defund Planned Parenthood. However, this may well backfire:

"Republicans are chiefly alarmed at the likelihood that Francis will beseech Congress (and thus implicitly congressional Republicans) to address climate change with aggressive policy interventions."

“Media reports indicate His Holiness instead intends to focus the brunt of his speech on climate change,” wrote Arizona Representative Paul Gosar, who will boycott Francis’s speech, “a climate that has been changing since first created in Genesis. More troubling is the fact that this climate change talk has adopted all of the socialist talking points, wrapped false science and ideology into ‘climate justice’ and is being presented to guilt people into leftist policies. If the Pope stuck to standard Christian theology, I would be the first in line. If the Pope spoke out with moral authority against violent Islam, I would be there cheering him on. If the Pope urged the Western nations to rescue persecuted Christians in the Middle East, I would back him wholeheartedly. But when the Pope chooses to act and talk like a leftist politician, then he can expect to be treated like one.”

"With respect to every issue Gosar listed, Francis embodies the fact that Republican nostrums aren’t entirely coterminous with “Christian theology.” Francis comes to the U.S. from Cuba, months after concluding an instrumental role facilitating the normalization of relations between the two countries. He supports the anti-proliferation deal with Iran. At a time when Republicans are aggressively yanking their immigration consensus to the right, Francis preaches support for liberal immigration policy, and toleration of immigrant families."

"Republicans expect Francis’s visit to lend moral weight to their crusade to defund Planned Parenthood, which they renewed after anti-abortion advocates drew attention to the organization’s methods of providing biomedical researchers with aborted fetal tissue. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has come down clearly in opposition to government-supported aborted fetal tissue research, and the expectation is that Francis opposes it as well. But it’s unclear whether Francis sees anything redemptive in using tissue that has already been aborted in the service of curing disease, let alone whether he supports conditioning billions of dollars in annual anti-poverty appropriations on ending federal funding for Planned Parenthood. It’s likely that he differs from Republicans on that point as well, which means it’s possible that by the end of his visit, Francis will have complicated rather than augmented the GOP’s anti-abortion strategy."

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122883/pope-franciss-speech-congress-will-backfire-republicans

P.S. Reading Garry Wills with his fascnating political and social theory based in his own devout Catholicism only increases my respect for Catholic thinkers. 

http://www.amazon.com/Future-Catholic-Church-Pope-Francis-ebook/dp/B00LFZ8S3A/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1443014022&sr=1-1&keywords=garry+wills+catholicism