Over at Where Peter Is, the redoubtable Mike Lewis looks at the latest made-up sin created by Reactionaries to rationalize their burning hatred of Pope Francis: the bogeyman called “hyperpapalism”:
“Additionally, I have never heard an even moderately educated person suggest that Pope Francis (or any pope) has some kind of direct channel to God. I certainly don’t believe that. Revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle. What the Church has are the promises of Jesus to Peter and his successors. Likewise, the pope does not experience private revelations that assist him in his teaching. And we must remember, the pope is not impeccable, he is a sinner, he can make terrible decisions at the prudential level.
But the Church does say that Peter and his successors have the keys of the kingdom, and the power of binding and loosing. We remember Christ’s prayer that Peter’s faith will not fail, and the promise that the gates of hell will not prevail. How exactly these scriptural teachings “work” — metaphysically speaking — is something impossible for us to know on this side of heaven. But just as we believe in the Trinity and Mary’s Immaculate Conception, there are some doctrines that we are obligated to accept despite our imperfect understanding.”
“Hyperpapalism”, like “wokism”, “Cultural Marxism”, the “the stolen election” and “Biden’s weaponization of the Justice Department” are all samples of the same thing: Big Lies repeated over and over and over so that fools will believe them, not on the basis of evidence, but in the teeth of the evidence. Of existence, they have none. They are invented problems created so that liars can tell their suckers the thing that authoritarians always love to say: namely, “Our hated enemies are tunneling under our houses and present a desperate threat to all we know and love” coupled with the cognitively dissonant lie, “We are triumphantly marching toward sure and certain victory over our hated enemies because Gott Mit Uns!”
The lie that there exists within the Church some fanatical faction who imagine the Pope incapable of any error on any question coupled with flawless moral impeccability is as stupid and unbelievable as the lie that Donald Trump is not a fraud, a rapist, and a felon. And by no coincidence at all, the two demographics who tend to espouse these lies would, if converted into a Venn Diagram, be a single circle.
Live not by lies, O Trump-adoring, Francis-hating sect.
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5 Responses
It’s curious to see right wing Catholics who have a higher opinion of Donald Trump than Pope Francis. I have heard people refer to Trump as “God’s annointed,” like he was some sort of junior varsity messiah. I can’t wait for him to feed the crowd at his next rally with a few loaves and fishes.
I’ve heard the messianic hope about Trump, for sure. I heard similar things about Obama back in ’08, but with less Christian religiosity attached to it.
I tend to think it’s our need to be religious, whether that’s worshipping the true God, or the idols of self and governmental power. I think the latter holds sway over most of us these days.
au contraire.
I was once roundly criticized by one of the Greatest Christians of All Time for daring to question something said by one of “God’s holy priests,” as if all priests were endowed with total infallibility. The man has moved on to other places so I have no idea whether he’s drunk the red Kool-Aid or signed on with Burke and Vigano.
Curiously, they only tend to do that if they agree with what the “God’s holy priest” says. As soon as the priest “steps out of line” and promotes anything they disagree with (particularly if/when it’s backed by another priest), it’s automatic fall from grace.
So they like “bold” presidents, but placid popes… Got it. Okay, ubermensch. *eyeroll*