Friday, March 29, AD 2024 10:05am

Obama Hearts the Pope

Pope Francis

 

 

Why am I not surprised?

 

President Obama said in an interview on Wednesday that he had been “hugely impressed” with Pope Francis, “not because of any particular issue” but because he seemed to be “thinking about how to embrace people as opposed to push them away.”

“He seems somebody who lives out the teachings of Christ. Incredible humility, incredible sense of empathy to the least of these, to the poor,” the president said in an interview on CNBC. “He’s also somebody who’s, I think, first and foremost, thinking about how to embrace people as opposed to push them away. How to find what’s good in them as opposed to condemn them.”

Pope Francis has given two interviews that were published in the last two weeks in which he has indicated that he wants to see a truce in the culture wars and that the church should put love and mercy above doctrine and judgment. On the issues of abortion, gay marriage and contraception, Pope Francis said, “It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time,” adding, “We have to find a new balance.”

These words may offer a ray of hope to Mr. Obama, who has been locked in a standoff with Roman Catholic bishops in the United States. The bishops are suing the Obama administration over a mandate in the president’s health care law that requires Catholic colleges and hospitals to allow their employees access to free birth control, including morning-after pills that the bishops say are abortifacients. Declaring that President Obama is a threat to the church’s religious freedom, the bishops have mounted a major campaign to rally Catholics across the country to oppose the contraception mandate.

Go here to The New York Times to read the rest.  Memo to the Pope:  With all respect your Holiness, when someone like Obama, who manifestly despises what the Catholic Church teaches,  is hugely impressed by you, that is probably a sign that something is going very, very wrong.

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Jacob
Jacob
Thursday, October 3, AD 2013 7:13am

Baby murderers always love him.

Brian English
Brian English
Thursday, October 3, AD 2013 9:02am

Oh brother, we are in trouble. But this Church has survived for 2,000 years, and it will survive Francis. I am just going to hate seeing the good work of JPII and B16 undermined.

Jeanne Rohl
Jeanne Rohl
Thursday, October 3, AD 2013 9:28am

Does that mean the rest of us “token” Catholics who live in our narrow minded, Beatitude, 10 Commandment, Corporal Works of Mercy, seven Sacraments following fantasy lifestyle have no worth? I am going to write to that Pope!

J.A.C.
J.A.C.
Thursday, October 3, AD 2013 9:43am

Herod lives in Obama….what a jerk…he twists the words of Pope Francis just as bad as the press….

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, October 3, AD 2013 10:18am

I imagine the Pope returns the hearts.

Even as the wicked refuse to join in the blessed endeavor, they are to be loved as enemies are loved in Christian charity. Because as long as they live, there is the possibility that they may come to a better mind.

That possibility is really slim when the Church hearts the wicked.

Guess from whom I got all that.

Paul D.
Paul D.
Thursday, October 3, AD 2013 10:20am

The secularists love this guy. Now being secularists they love him because they project on him their own graven images. What I haven’t been able to figure out is to what extent he is in fact giving them aid and comfort knowingly.

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Thursday, October 3, AD 2013 10:24am

To a large extent we’ve had good Popes for the past several centuries. But we have rebelled against God by thinking in our hubris and arrogance that we can create the Kingdom of God on Earth through our own good works, and then we have the unmitigated gall to call that social justice. Now we have Pope Francis. God gives us the leaders we deserve. It’s 1st Samuel chapter 8 all over again.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Thursday, October 3, AD 2013 11:23am

T Shaw – tell – I can’t guess

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, October 3, AD 2013 11:48am

Anzalyne: That would be St. Augustine.

philip
philip
Thursday, October 3, AD 2013 12:03pm

Encyclical? No! Papal Bull? No.
Interviews given. Pope Francis is being….well himself. He might be stirring it up to say the least…but let’s not forget these are interviews in Italian and then translated with a possible twist.

Interviews are not Encyclicals.

Scottlieb
Scottlieb
Thursday, October 3, AD 2013 12:52pm

Guilt by association is a lazy and irrational form of criticism, whether it comes from the left or the right. It’s interesting how some conservative Catholics are at pains to deny that Pope Francis is saying anything new, while others seem to fear that Nancy Pelosi has taken over the Papacy. I think philip has the right attitude. A couple of lines in a personal interview does not spell crisis in the Church.

old girl
old girl
Thursday, October 3, AD 2013 7:36pm

…let’s not forget these are interviews in Italian and then translated with a possible twist.

Sure. Well then. Let’s check in with an Italian atheist to see what he thinks the Pope said (per Sandro Magister):

One passage of the article of August 7 in which Scalfari posed questions to him was already indicative of the positive idea that the founder of “la Repubblica” had formed of the current pope:

“His mission contains two scandalous innovations: the poor Church of Francis, the horizontal Church of Martini. And a third: a God who does not judge, but forgives. There is no damnation, there is no hell.”

Scalfari is pretty clear on what he understood the Pope to say.

No hell. No heaven. Just people, striving to love, or to conquer, each other on earth.

philip
philip
Thursday, October 3, AD 2013 9:41pm

Let’s pray for truth to prevail and that the guidance of the Holy Spirit will lead our Holy Father to Sheppard Gods people, self-rightious and humble alike.
Room for atheists…..always welcomed home in Gods timing.

tom murphy
tom murphy
Monday, October 7, AD 2013 9:51pm

The man first was a Catholic, then a Jesuit. Does that say anything?

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