Category: pope francis

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#Insanity – Trump Guards Christianity Against The Attacks of The Pope

Donald Trump has basically offended every group on the planet, and Republicans love him for it. Now, Trump is engaging in a religious war with, of all people, the Pope.

Speaking at the US/Mexico border, Pope Francis was asked to comment on Donald Trump’s immigration plan to build a wall between the two countries. The Pope did not hesitate to point out the hypocrisy of the Republican leader who loves to call himself  “a Christian” every time he talks to Christian Republican voters.

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” he said. While Francis said he would “give the benefit of the doubt” because he had not heard Trump’s border plans independently, he added, “I say only that this man is not a Christian if he has said things like that.”

Trump, a Presbyterian and the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, responded within minutes.

“For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful,” he said at a campaign stop in South Carolina, which holds a key primary on Saturday. “I am proud to be a Christian, and as president I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened.”

So now Donald Trump, the man who is known for using the podium to spit his profanity, is now the gatekeeper for Christianity, and he is accusing the Pope of attacking and weakening said Christianity!

Who will win this holy war? Amazingly the profane laced, xenophobic has a good chance of winning this war against the Pope among today’s Republicans. What is wrong with these people?

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Politics pope francis

Republican Congressman is Fundraising From His Boycott of Pope Francis

UNITED STATES - NOVEMBER 14: Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., talks with reporters outside a meeting of House Republican Steering Committee meeting in Cannon Building, November 14, 2014. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)
Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

Yes, these are the same people who pride themselves on Religion and Religious freedom and all things Religion. Heck, they even have a branch of their party proudly brandishing the Christian name. You’ve probably heard of them, they call themselves, “Christian Conservatives.”

But it should also come as no surprise to learn this bit of news; one of the members of this Religious minded party is bragging and even trying to raise money off the fact that he boycotted the Pope’s congress speech.

The Republican congressman is Paul Gosar from Arizona and he represents the 4th District in the northwestern portion of the state. His email said that when the “Pope chooses to act and talk like a leftist politician, then he can expect to be treated like one.”

Gosar boycotted the event in protest of the pontiff’s expected focus on climate change in his speech.

Gosar is seeking a fourth term in office and sent the email to potential donors on Wednesday. He seeks contributions to help him raise an additional $25,000 by the end of the day.

Gosar was the only member of Congress who boycotted last week’s address by the pontiff for political reasons. He is a Roman Catholic.

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Climate Change Domestic Policies Donald Trump Healthcare Immigration Reform News Politics pope francis

Forget Iran: The GOP Goes Nuclear


Francis comes in, John Boehner bows out. There is a certain symmetry to some world events and this is one of those moments.

Here we have a Pope who is speaking forcefully and eloquently about how the issues of the day and all the right wing can do is reject his message as an ill-conceived interference into the political realm. Stay away from climate change and gay rights, they say, and for heaven’s sake, stop talking about immigration. Yet Francis has stayed on message in a way that would make House Speaker John Boehner proud.

Um.

Well, former House Speaker John Boehner, that is. Or at least he will be at the end of October. Poor John tried his best to reign in a fractious caucus of elected government officials who detest government and want it flushed down the sink, or at least shut down so it can’t do more damage to the country, damage like pay out Social Security benefits. Or Medicare. Medicaid. Or keep the national parks open. Get people passports. Inspect our food. Defend the country. Provide funds for the less fortunate. Health care. Investigate crimes. It’s terrible, this United States government we have today.

It’s funny how conservatives have been saying for years that we need to base our actions on religious values and that we have lost our way morally under the weight of godless liberal social policies over the past 70 years. Yet here comes an infallible Pope who can be ignored at will because he has the temerity to say that the United States needs to do more, not less. Take in more Syrian refugees. Care more for the poor. Stop demonizing Muslims. Care for the environment and the globe.

When you put the right wing’s agenda together with the rejection of Francis’s message and stir in the fact that the next Speaker of the House is likely to be an even more conservative than John Boehner, then you will get a party that simply doesn’t like anything. And how do you run and win on that?

Mark this week down as the one that will eventually define the presidential election for the GOP. They have been saying no for far too long and the no backbenchers are about to get a more sympathetic ear for them to yell into. The elites are fighting to rid the field of Donald Trump, and he’ll go eventually, but he won’t go quietly or without tearing down enough of the other contenders to make their jobs more difficult. And the new House leadership is likely to allow some of the less savory bills that Boehner was able to squash to get out of the caucus room and onto the floor.

Pope Francis is actually leading the way for conservatives to re-engage in a balanced conversation. He’s no liberal by any stretch of the imagination. But he is a humanist and he understands that if we don’t take care of everyone, than we really don’t take care of anyone.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Politics pope francis

Speaker John Boehner Resigns – Singing Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah – Video

Maybe he’s had enough with the crazies in his party. Or maybe, just maybe, he had a change of heart after meeting with the Pope yesterday.

Pope Francis addressed Congress yesterday and the Republican House Speaker John Boehner, was seen crying and crying as the Pope called for the members of Congress to work for the poor and the least among them. Being the head of a party that catered only to the rich and not the middle class or poor is in direct contrast to the Pope’s message, so maybe this decision by John Boehner is a direct result of the Pope tugging at his heartstrings!

Video

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Politics pope francis

Watch It Again – The Pope’s Address to Congress – Video

A very important stop for Pope Francis was his stop in Washington, his address to the elected leaders of this country, his address to Congress.

Video

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Politics pope francis

Pope Francis Calls for Equal Pay for Women

Once again,  those in the Republican party are on the wrong side of the issue. Especially those who call themselves “Christian Conservatives.” It is no news to anyone that today’s Republicans strongly reject equal pay for women. They have actually gone on record crying foul at the president for his support of equal pay. And now,  even the Pope is siding with the President, and calling for equal pay for equal work for women.

Pope Francis on Wednesday made an impassioned plea for an end to the salary gap between men and women, calling it “a scandal” that Christians should decisively reject.

“Why is it taken for granted that women must earn less than men? No! They have the same rights. The discrepancy is a pure scandal,” he told tens of thousands of people at his general audience in St. Peter’s Square.

Raising his voice for emphasis as he made some of his most forceful remarks on the subject to date, he said Christians should “decisively support the right to equal pay for equal work.”

Women in the European Union were paid 16.4 percent less than men on average in 2013, according to statistics agency Eurostat. United States Census Bureau data indicate women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns, based on annual median salaries.

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Rick Santorum on Pope Francis: “Sometimes very difficult to listen to the pope”

Rick Santorum, a proud Republican, a failed Republican presidential candidate and a devout Catholic, is apparently not too fund of the Pope, especially when the Pope is talking… in interviews!

In an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday, Santorum appeared baffled by recent remarks by the Pope suggesting that faithful Catholics need not procreate “like rabbits.”

“Sometimes very difficult to listen to the Pope and some of the things he says off the cuff, and this is one of them,” Santorum, a professed Catholic, said.

“When he speaks as the leader of the Catholic Church, I’ll certainly pay attention,” the former senator continued. “But when he speaks in interviews, he’s giving his own opinions, which I certainly will listen to, but from my perspective, that doesn’t reflect the idea that people shouldn’t be fruitful and multiply, and that people should be open to life as something that is a core value of the faith and of the Catholic Church.”

Santorum went on to repeat several times, “I don’t know what the Pope was referring to here.”

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Charlie Hebdo Politics pope francis

Pope Francis on Charlie Hebdo – Freedom of Speech Does Not Apply to Religion

Christ was betrayed, mocked, made fun of, even crucified. But never once did he criticize the people for doing thise things to him, and he certainly did not grab the closest NRA approved semi-automatic weapon to seek vengeance in his own name.

So yes, I was more than a little shocked and confused when the Pope apparently sided with the Islamic extremist terrorists who murdered 12 people at Charlie Hebdo for expressing their freedom of speech. It is the Pope’s opinion that freedom of speech does not apply to religion.

Francis spoke about the Paris terror attacks while en route to the Philippines, defending free speech as not only a fundamental human right but a duty to speak one’s mind for the sake of the common good.

But he said there were limits.

By way of example, he referred to Alberto Gasparri, who organizes papal trips and was standing by his side aboard the papal plane.

“If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch,” Francis said, throwing a pretend punch his way. “It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”

Many people around the world have defended the right of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to publish inflammatory cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed in the wake of the massacre by Islamic extremists at its Paris offices and subsequent attack on a kosher supermarket in which three gunmen killed 17 people.

But recently the Vatican and four prominent French imams issued a joint declaration that denounced the attacks but also urged the media to treat religions with respect.

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ISIS pope francis

Pope Francis – ISIS Violence is a “profoundly grave sin against God”

ISIS in the other hand would say that they are doing all this killing for whatever god they serve.

Pope Francis said Islamic militants were carrying out a “profoundly grave sin against God” in Syria and Iraq, calling on Sunday for inter-religious dialogue and action against poverty to help end conflicts there. The pope spoke on the last day of his weekend trip to Turkey, which is sheltering nearly 2 million refugees from Syria, thousands of Christians among them.

At a joint service with Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual head of the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians, Francis said people of all faiths could not remain indifferent to the cries of the victims of the “inhumane and brutal” war next door. “Taking away the peace of a people, committing every act of violence — or consenting to such acts — especially when directed against the weakest and defenseless, is a profoundly grave sin against God,” he said during the service.

It was the third time in as many days that the pope referred to ISIS militants, who have killed or driven Shi’ite Muslims, Christians and others who do not share their ultra-radical brand of Sunni Islam out of swathes of Syria and Iraq.

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Climate change Politics pope francis

Pope Francis Wants Us To Address Climate Change and Be “Custodians of Creation”

Once again Pope Francis is making conservatives and Republicans angry, with his calls for redistributing wealth, helping the poor, and helping the sick and needy. You know, the things Republicans hate to do.

And now this: Pope Francis wants us to take care of the World and environment, to be good stewards of the place we call home. What is wrong with this dude?

Republicans would be catch a fit when they hear about this!

Pope Francis made the religious case for tackling climate change on Wednesday, calling on his fellow Christians to become “Custodians of Creation” and issuing a dire warning about the potentially catastrophic effects of global climate change.

Speaking to a massive crowd in Rome, the first Argentinian pope delivered a short address in which he argued that respect for the “beauty of nature and the grandeur of the cosmos” is a Christian value, noting that failure to care for the planet risks apocalyptic consequences.

“Safeguard Creation,” he said. “Because if we destroy Creation, Creation will destroy us! Never forget this!”

The pope centered his environmentalist theology around the biblical creation story in the book of Genesis, where God is said to have created the world, declared it “good,” and charged humanity with its care. Francis also made reference to his namesake, Saint Francis of Assisi, who was a famous lover of animals, and appeared to tie the ongoing environmental crisis to economic concerns — namely, instances where a wealthy minority exploits the planet at the expense of the poor.

Get ready for some more Pope Bashing, from your loving Republican Party.

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Politics pope francis

Pope Francis calls for The Redistribution of Wealth

Well he’s already hated on the right, and has been called all sorts of names like Marxist to socialist by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, and the rest of the cast over at Fox News.

But that is not stopping Pope Francis from continuing to preach about poverty. And in a message today, the Pope’s message was one of redistribution of wealth from the rich and greedy to the poor and needy.

Francis made the appeal during a speech to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the heads of major U.N. agencies who are meeting in Rome this week.

Latin America’s first pope has frequently lashed out at the injustices of capitalism and the global economic system that excludes so much of humanity.

On Friday, Francis called for the United Nations to promote a “worldwide ethical mobilization” of solidarity with the poor in a new spirit of generosity.

He said a more equal form of economic progress can be had through “the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the state, as well as indispensable cooperation between the private sector and civil society.”

Francis had a similar message to the World Economic Forum in January and in his apostolic exhortation “The Joy of the Gospel.” That document, which denounced trickle-down economic theories as unproven and naive, provoked criticism in the U.S. that he was Marxist.

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Politics pope francis

A Republican Nightmare – President and Pope TagTeam – PIC

So if President Obama teams up with Pope Francis, who are Republicans tag teaming with?

I shudder at the thought.

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