Swing and a miss

bounce

He was THAT close.

I watched Pope Francis’s speech to both Houses of Congress, listened to his speech to the United, Nations (I was in my car), and tuned in and out of the other appearances for the rest of the time.

Although some of his critics found his speech in D.C a little dull in the delivery category, I just figured he had his speech translated into English, perhaps some of it phonetically so he could pronounce some of the words right, and that could excuse some of the lack luster delivery. After all, when he spoke to the United Nations in his native tongue, he sounded more alive.

As I wrote a few days ago, I was hoping that there might be something in what he said that would give me some idea that I would be allowed to get my church club membership card back.

But, he fell a bit short.

Although he told he UN,
“Economic and social exclusion is a complete denial of human fraternity and a grave offense against human rights and the environment” ,

and,

“To enable these real men and women to escape from extreme poverty, we must allow them to be dignified agents of their own destiny. Integral human development and the full exercise of human dignity cannot be imposed. They must be built up and allowed to unfold for each individual, for every family, in communion with others, and in a right relationship with all those areas in which human social life develops – friends, communities, towns and cities, schools, businesses and unions, provinces, nations, etc”,

As well as,

” to cite the classic definition of justice, means that no human individual or group can consider itself absolute, permitted to bypass the dignity and the rights of other individuals or their social groupings”,

he went immediately against it when in a less than veiled reference to Transgender people he said,
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“Without the recognition of certain incontestable natural ethical limits and without the immediate implementation of those pillars of integral human development, the ideal of ‘saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war’, and ‘promoting social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom’, risks becoming an unattainable illusion, or, even worse, idle chatter which serves as a cover for all kinds of abuse and corruption, or for carrying out an ideological colonization by the imposition of anomalous models and lifestyles which are alien to people’s identity and, in the end, irresponsible”.

So much for, “we must allow them to be dignified agents of their own destiny “.

Then he spoke Sunday morning to bishops gathered at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, bishops who have spoken against the Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality, telling them that there were “unprecedented changes” having “social, cultural and, unfortunately, now juridical effects on family bonds”.

As he flew home, the pope told reporters that government workers have a “human right” to refuse to carry out a duty if they have a “conscientious objection”, a statement that would seem to support Kim Davis.

He had been asked.

“Do you … support those individuals, including government officials, who say they cannot in good conscience, their own personal conscience, abide by some laws or discharge their duties as government officials, for example when issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples?”

He replied,

“I can’t have in mind all the cases that can exist about conscientious objection … but yes, I can say that conscientious objection is a right that is a part of every human right. It is a right. And if a person does not allow others to be a conscientious objector, he denies a right. Conscientious objection must enter into every juridical structure because it is a right, a human right. Otherwise we would end up in a situation where we select what is a right, saying, ‘this right that has merit, this one does not.'”

Asked if this principle applied to government officials carrying out their duties, he replied:

“It is a human right and if a government official is a human person, he has that right. It is a human right.”

So I find I am still in the category of God’s creatures who are “anomalous models and lifestyles which are alien to people’s identity and, in the end, irresponsible” ,not equal to others and not permitted “the dignity and the rights of other individuals or their social groupings”, and whose rights with which we have been endowed by our Creator are subject to the right of someone who is paid to do a taxpayer funded job equally to all citizens to deprive me of those rights.

Maybe the next guy.

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