“inclusive, immigrationist, eco-sustainable, and gay-friendly.”
Sustainability is definitely the thing I’d hate most. I mean, why save the planet and thus ourselves?
This week, he shared an X post from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in which the MAGA congresswoman asserted: “The Covid vaccines are killing people.”
It’s well-established that everyone who got the vax is dead, including me, so this tracks.
He’s also won the praise of Donald Trump. In 2020, Vigano wrote a letter to the then-president in which he linked COVID restrictions and Black Lives Matter protests as the work of “the children of darkness.”
The fun part is all the people who are gonna come out with hot takes like “what does this ’pope’ guy know about being a good Christian? He could learn a thing or two from Trump.”
Expelling the cardinal is likely to increase tensions between Francis and conservative American Catholics, a group he as described as having “a very, strong, organized, reactionary attitude,” and whom he accused in 2023 of replacing faith with “ideologies.”
That's how attributions work. They're in quotes so we can distinguish what he actually said from the general summary of events that the article is providing.
A bit torn on this, tbh. 'Cause on the one hand, good - fuck that guy. He's trash and he deserves to be thrown out for being trash. But on the other hand, as far as I'm aware, none of those priests that fucked children were excommunicated. So according to the head of the catholic church, slagging off the pope is worse than fucking children? Seems like a weird set of priorities.
The first priest that the PR Pope excommunicated, in 2013, earned it by speaking out for women to be ordained (he also supported marriage equality, but the ordaining women thing seems to be the main issue).
In Melbourne. The same city where George Pell molested children and protected other molesters. George Pell, a child who the Pope appointed to the Council of Cardinal Advisers.
Child molestation isn't a lesser sin to the church. It's a non-sin.
I mean, where in the Bible does it say you can't rape children? The bible doesn't condemn rape of adults or children. It's not a sin to rape anyone at all.
So according to the head of the catholic church, slagging off the pope is worse than fucking children?
One is just cause for excommunication according to the rules. Excommunication is a very specific punishment for very specific religious things.
Stealing communion wine could technically earn you an excommunication depending on how it was done and what was done with the wine.
The rules behind excommunication are practically ancient at this point but they weren't there to prevent all sins, just be punishment for specific things that were threatening to the absolute shitshow that the organization itself was a long ass time ago.
The fact that it's still a shitshow as an organization, albeit a slightly different KIND of shitshow has no bearing on this situation in particular.
Let's be fair, though. All kiddy diddlers are in the depths of iniquity and should have long since been addressed under what's said in scripture and held to account on that regardless of any talk of excommunication.
Clergy should have been removed for choosing to actively live in sin and then punished according to the law.
The important part is to be loyal. Same as when Elizabeth I broke with Rome the people punished for being chatolic was not charged with heresy, but treason
Not to defend the pope and his lack of prosecution of these pedophiles, but you have to remember that the rule of a leader is never absolute. A leader still has to answer to either the lay people, the nobles/elites, or both. Or else a leader will have to face a rebellion in some form or another. That being said, the problem is that Pope Francis has to go against a significant number of pedophiles and other ultraconservative priests. The Vatican is a hotbed of political intrigue as much as in the royal courts, congress or parliaments. There has been a talk of conservative discontent on Pope Francis for many years now; many of whom adore the pope's more conservative predecessor, Benedict XVI. I mean, how else would a pope get elected by its own elites other than to also engage with politics? It's not different to your everyday office politics or government.
Vigano thereafter made increasingly baroque attacks on Francis while also drifting into conspiracy theories, backing bogus claims about COVID vaccines and making proclamations about the evils of the “deep state.” This week, he shared an X post from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in which the MAGA congresswoman asserted: “The Covid vaccines are killing people.”
Homey dropped off the deep end and never came back, lol. Didn't his parents ever tell him, "Don't believe everything that you see on the internet."?
Expelling the cardinal is likely to increase tensions between Francis and conservative American Catholics, a group he as described as having “a very, strong, organized, reactionary attitude,” and whom he accused in 2023 of replacing faith with “ideologies.”
That’s a great summation of the problem with the religious right in this country.