Good pope, bad pope

Good pope, bad pope

by digby

Pope Francis is quite a politician. This article says that he's angering conservatives with talk about curbing climate change, which for reasons that still elude me is really upsetting to those people. One hopes that he can at least persuade some of his flock to follow his lead on this. It's vital.

But never fear, he gave the wingnuts something really tasty too:

Pope Francis, after a visit to the largest Catholic nation in Asia, says Catholics may have a moral responsibility to limit the number of their children and need not reproduce "like rabbits.''

But the pope also reaffirmed the church's ban on artificial means of birth control and said Catholics should practice "responsible parenting."

For those of you who don't speak wingnut, that means no hanky-panky except for procreation purposes. Here, I'll let Rick Santorum explain it to you:

One of the things I will talk about that no President has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea. Many in the Christian faith have said, “Well, that’s okay. Contraception’s okay.”

It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be within marriage, they are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal, but also [inaudible], but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that’s not for purposes of procreation, that’s not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can’t you take other parts of that out? And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it’s simply pleasure. And that’s certainly a part of it—and it’s an important part of it, don’t get me wrong—but there’s a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this is special, and it needs to be seen as special.

Again, I know most Presidents don’t talk about those things, and maybe people don’t want us to talk about those things, but I think it’s important that you are who you are. I’m not running for preacher. I’m not running for pastor, but these are important public policy issues. These how profound impact on the health of our society.

And if that bad, bad woman tempts her man into doing it for her selfish pleasure and she gets pregnant, well, that's the way it goes.

The one thing you cannot have is sex "deconstructed to the point where it's simply pleasure." So no birth control for you.

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