Dictators: Kim Davis and The Pope

Photo Credit - Salon — Photo Credit – Salon

I can’t understand why so many people are surprised that Pope Francis met with Kim Davis. Why wouldn’t he? She has become a media sensation because she claims to be standing up for religious freedom while one of the main themes of the Pope’s visit has been religious freedom.

Look, I get that a lot of people Catholics and non-Catholics alike think that this Pope is some sort of awesome liberal, but he just isn’t. He does not have a record of being liberal and he has not changed a single Church policy in that direction. He has however focused on aspects of Catholic teachings that are somewhat liberal, but he continues to hold to the conservative values too.

Wealth inequality, poverty issues, the environment, and opposition to war are all liberal issues that the Pope has been quite vocal about. However, he still believes that homosexuality is a sin, that birth control is a sin, that women are man’s “helpers” and shouldn’t be in positions of leadership or authority, and that priests who have fucked little children should not be prosecuted by local laws. Despite his vocal support for a few liberal issues that the Church has always supported, he is still the Pope. He is still the dictator of the Vatican, The Holy See, and God’s appointed man on Earth.

Unlike an elected president, the Pope answers to no one. So when people tell me that the Pope supports gay people, but that he has to work within the system to change things that is just not true. He is the system! If he went out on his balcony tomorrow and said that homosexuality was no longer a sin, then according to Catholic doctrine, it would no longer be a sin among Catholics. He doesn’t have to have a lawyer write up a bill. No bill needs to go through a Vatican congress. The Pope doesn’t have to worry about getting re-elected or making sure that others in his political party gets elected. There is no Vatican congress or political parties in the Vatican. He’s a dictator who has been appointed for life and who claims to have the authority of God behind every decision he makes.

His view is that Catholics have the monopoly on God and that they are the one true religion. Every other religion is false and that other Christian sects have gone astray from the “one true Church.” He believes that Catholics should be able to force their views on everyone and that Catholics should be free to practice their beliefs at the expense of everyone else. Here comes Kim Davis. She is not a Catholic, but she shares the Catholic belief that homosexuality is a sin. So of course the Pope is going to support her “freedom” to push that view on everyone else… as long as that view doesn’t contradict his own beliefs. If her belief was that Catholics are real Christians and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to get married, the Pope would of course oppose her, but if her belief is that gays are an abomination and shouldn’t be allowed to get married, that’s perfectly okay. It’s just her religious belief and it needs to be protected from evil secularists.

What the Pope didn’t count on is that all the liberal PR he did concerning those other issues would be completely undone by his support for Kim Davis. He didn’t realize that most Americans not only support gay rights and gay people, but also think that Kim Davis legally and morally wrong using her religious beliefs as an excuse for not doing her job at the cost of the happiness of others. It reminds me of the time in 2009 when the Catholic Charities of DC threatened to stop all services if the city approved gay marriage. Well, our nation’s capital called their bluff and was one of the first places in the nation where gays were allowed to marry.

Now, it will be interesting to see if the Vatican attempts to distance themselves from Davis or whether they will double down and embrace her. So far at the time of this writing, they have just acknowledged that a meeting took place, but have not yet disclosed the details of the meeting nor have they confirmed the statements that Davis claimed about the Pope’s support. The Vatican still has a little wiggle room. They could claim that the Pope did not express his support for Davis (which might just be lie). Or, they might claim that the Pope was not properly briefed on Davis’s actions and therefore his support was ill-informed (which would also probably be a lie).

Maybe the Vatican will come to her defense and say that he 100% supports her right to dictate her religious values to others. The Pope after all is a dictator. I know Catholics don’t like to hear that, but it is true. When we think of dictators, we usually think of horrible people who torture and imprison those who oppose them. The Pope doesn’t do that. He just claims that those who disagree with him will be tortured for all eternity in an imaginary afterlife. As a point of fact however, a dictator is just someone who has total power over a country. In this case the Pope not only has total power over a country (the Vatican), but also has total power over the largest sects of the largest religion on the planet. Like it or not, the Pope is a dictator and so it is only natural that he would get along with Kim Davis who believes her religious rights are being violated if she is not allowed to dictate the life of others.