I read yesterday that Pope Francis’ approval rating among US Catholics is 88%.
88% is an extraordinary number. I grew up in a household where the breadwinner ran a marketing research firm – I learned at the dinner table that polls almost never go above 67%, or below 33%.
Extraordinary.
Francis has earned this approval by preaching that we’re all in this together, and we must all work together to make our lives better. He has excoriated “trickle-down” economics, the overarching Republican/Third-Way article of faith, calling it what it is – a total pantload of crap that simply steals from the poor to enricherer the rich (yes, that’s a paraphrase).
88%.
Friends, the way forward is clear. Most Americans have been fooled most of the time over the past few decades, but we’ve woken up and now we want change. Real change. We want help in the streets, not in the boardrooms. We want love for one another, not responsible adult cuts to the social safety net so the wealthiest can pay hyperlow taxes.
We want fairness and justice.
88%
Republicans cannot provide fairness and justice – their philosophy, bankrupt for the last 50 years or so, is no longer even a philosophy, having become merely the yammerings of petulant feral children.
For decades, Democrats were the force of enabling fairness and justice in our country, and we had many good years. And then our party lost its way.
Pope Francis’ popularity is a clarion call to our party to get back on track, a call to return to our core principle of helping all Americans to get a fair deal: economic security, dignity, and a place at the table. Americans don’t want catfood commissions and $200k-a-pop speaking tours of Wall Street – we want politicians that will work for all of us, who’ll work to rebuild a fair America that’s prosperous for all.
If we want to win elections – to really win, to own the Presidency and both houses of Congress, to move America forward again – we’ll learn the lesson of the 88%.
Manny, are you referring to Hillary Clinton in this comment? I said a similar comment in my last diary how she made two speeches paid for by Goldman Sachs at $200K a crack. The diary was pro-Mike Huckabee, whom many here I am sure loathe and would not vote for, even if Hillary was the alternative.
Bernie Sanders would be an alternative choice to Hillary in the Dem Primary.
I was referring to Hillary and her ilk.
Hillary vs. Huckabee? Bernie runs as an independent, espousing Pope-Francis-esque ideas about economic justice with an added bonus of equality for all, and takes the prize.
But I don’t think either Hill or Huck will be nominees.
Just clicked back and ate my comment …
Long story short, it’s really hard to judge this. The least popular Pope (the boring one, I forget his name) probably had an approval rating of 65-72%. Catholics like their leader — he’s generally distant and doesn’t ask much.
But yes, we want fairness and justice.
A Gallup poll of Benedict XVI’s approval ratings in 2010 found that they stood at around 61% among Catholics. A Gallup poll that appears to have been taken early in 2008 showed an approval among Catholics at around 81% up from 67% in early 2005.
Among Americans, Benedict XVI’s most positive favorability was 63%-15% and the 2010 figure stood at 40%-35%.
His approval appears to have improved by 2013.
—
Note to those attending my remedial course on graph reading.
The graphs on the Gallup site show data points that are dark green or light green on a graph and lines connecting those data points. The only real numbers we can read from that graph are the dots. The straight lines that connect them are no more than suggestive; they serve to distinguish the dark green from the light green data series. For example, it is unlikely that the peak of Pope Benedict’s approval occurred precisely when Gallup decided to run its poll. The peak is likely to have occurred before or after the polling. Likewise, we cannot conclude that the decline in approval from 2008 to 2010 was a steady decline as represented by a straight line on the graph. Why? Because no polling on this question was done by Gallup between those two points. For example, there might have been a sudden drop at some point. To draw conclusions from that straight line is pretend that more data have been offered than are present.
Francis… something else.
Became him like the leaving it.
Benedict did try to correct some of John Paul II’s more egregious mistakes. He took Maciel Marcial, a known pedophile, off the path to sainthood. John Paul tolerated the pedophile scandal and loaded the hierarchy with conservatives and half-wits, often with substantial overlap.
Francis is actually embracing the Church’s entire mission, not just the abortion fetish and homosexuality, which are two of Catholicism’s fundamentalisms.
There are a lot of adults holding responsible positions who donate a lot to charity and contribute to their communities and who also vote Republican. Yes, yes, I can and have written my share of rants about how wrong conservatives and the GOP are on any number of things, but I think one doesn’t understand the appeal of the GOP or conservatism if one believes it is due to immaturity or ungenerous spirits.
The Democratic Party, with some notable exceptions-has done a pretty terrible job reaching out to working class voters and addressing them on pocketbook issues.
Out here in the midwest, particularly in the working class neighborhoods and suburbs you’ll see bungalows with lawn placards that say PROUD UNION HOME. That should be our base.
The GOP doesn’t beat us on culture-they argue tax cuts will help the pocket book of the worker. We have to do a better job showing why our revenue plans put money in those pockets instead of playing defense.
Curiously, you’ve ducked the point. You’ve argued that Democrats have done a poor job of convincing people not to vote GOP.
Question is: why do they need convincing in the first place? If there were nothing attractive about the other side, convincing would be almost superfluous.
Vs. for the (perceived) lesser of two evils?
At least WRT the Presidential elections, I almost never get to vote for my preferred candidates, even in the primaries, because Iowa, NH, and the corporate media make sure those candidates are out of the race before I get to vote. See, for instance, Howard Dean.
I think the point of this discussion is not that Democrats aren’t offering reasons to vote against Republicans, it’s that they aren’t offering any alternative vision. They’ve been acting like the way to appeal to working people is to offer policies that are like Republican ones, just less extreme. That gets them elected some of the time, but the office holders and policies that result are not making any progress in bettering our lot, they’re just not making thing worse quite as fast as the Rs would. It’s not acceptable.
I think you put it better than I did. We need a five phrase platform you could fit on an index card. GOP has cornered family values, low taxes, strong defense. That’s the basic three pillars of conservatism. We are the party of fairness, individual freedom, and fighting for working families. Period. And that should be the agenda. At Christmas in a swing part of Illinois a lot of the moderate or independents I ate dinner with we’re mad about Obamacare since it seemed like a tax and a way to force people to buy a product they didn’t want. Lot of people said “wish it was like Canada” or “wish it was like social security-you’re covered and you don’t think about it”.
I think there is a very powerful silent majority that wanted single payer. I think there is a powerful silent majority sick of government for the corporations and not for us. And I think the arguments to win it permanently have been totally avoided by this President and our party with some notable exceptions. Republican extremism isn’t a sufficient boogeyman to lead to lasting victories-we need a compelling alternative and our own vision.
In repeated polls.
Two-thirds.
Yet it’s “so unpopular”, so “radioactive” that our “responsible adult” Democrats can’t even try to enact it. Yep. Uh huh. Sure.
This is why Elizabeth Warren is gaining so much traction, so quickly: she’s just pointing out what everyone can see with our own two eyes, that our government is utterly rigged. Not only is the emperor unclothed, he’s enslaved our children and stolen our pensions.
and Hillary dissatisfaction. Watch Kirsten Gillibrand gain traction next.
He is definitely looking like he is running. And I have always liked what he has had to say. Hillary could bury him on guns and the environment though-two big weaknesses he has with the base. But he has always struck me as a man with a big heart and an even bigger backbone, and he could give faux populists like Huckabee or Christie a run for their money. And he could outflank Hillary on the right and left within the Democratic party.
I think Thomas Frank in his Harper’s column and his most recent book does a great job showing how the language of economic populism has been totally hijacked to serve corporate interests and the far right. The men FDR once decried as ‘economic royalists’ are now called ‘job creators’. The tax cuts once called by Harry Truman as a ‘yoke of debt on the collar of the common man’ are now called ‘tax relief’ and are expected of both parties. The other side simplifies it so that there are just individuals and the ‘govment’ and that’s it. The wealthy are just other individuals ‘fighting with you against Big Government’-which is a phrase that has clear Orwellian undertones. How can a country govern itself if it’s made government a bad word?
Our joe six pack problem is quite real, and we have misdiagnosed it and used DLC triangulation as a remedy, when in reality we have to move left of where the party is now and maybe even where it was historically on economics. Stay in the pragmatic center on foreign policy and defense (as Obama has for the most part), and cloud our commitment to social equality and equal justice in libertarian language ‘freedom to marry’ over ‘marriage equality’. And I want to hear a lot more ‘fighting’ and ‘fairness’ injected in our speeches. Obama needs to go Truman 48′ in these midterms if he wants to replace this do-nothing Congress and save his agenda.
The first Google search results for DLC are
* downloadable content,
* Dalian Zhoushuizi International Airport,
* some animated characters, and
* the DesignLights Consortium.
The Ideas and News links on the DLC’s website all send you to material from 2010.
Those guys, they’re gone. No one hears from them anymore. Not even their mothers.
I’m not sure, but they seem to have turned into the Third Way after the DLC brand went in the loo.
Now that Sen. Warren handed the Third Way their butts on a platter, they may need new new branding.
The DLC, the Third Way, and ghost of David Broder will always be around somehow if only because they express the view of a small but wealthy slice of America. A handful of liberal economists (not just Krugman) have pointed out that the debt obsession aligns very well with the business interests of some actors. Those guys aren’t going anywhere.
One thing seems really different. During the Bush II Administration, in the era before Republicans became so radical as to be revolutionary (think debt ceiling), it was much easier to imagine a centrist view that lay somewhere between liberal and conservative. Now that Republicans have taken up the war on science and arithmetic (in their budgets), it’s more difficult to imagine wisdom existing anywhere within shouting distance of Michele Bachmann and Paul Ryan. In short, they’re freaking crazy.
Thus does the market for Liebermans collapse.
“[T]heir philosophy, bankrupt for the last 50 years or so, is no longer even a philosophy, having become merely the yammerings of petulant feral children.”
Those lunatics are now the vanguard of their party.
I was a Republican for a brief while when I was younger, as was Sen. Warren for a longer stretch. In both cases, Republican *theories* made sense to us. But both of us found that reality and theory are 180 degrees apart. I’m a Liberal because Liberal policies work better, and there’s all kinds of evidence that this is the case. They’re better for business, for workers, for children, for the sick, and for the old. They’re probably even better for the plutocrats; being evil makes bigger money, but has to take its toll on a person’s soul.
How about Chicago with its $19 billion in under-funded pension liabilities, who do we blame for that? How about Stockton and San Bernardino, Ted Cruz responsible for their bankruptcy? Central Falls, RI, who do we blame for that?
Stupid me, blame Bush
I do consulting work for a living which helps local governments in California balance their budgets. Our clients include post-bankrupty Vallejo, which recently emerged from bankruptcy, and Stockton, which just passed a small local sales tax increase which will allow it to do the same.
I can assure you that both Stockton and San Bernardino have been ticking time bombs ever since 1978 when California voters passed the ridiculous Proposition 13, which basically freezes property taxes at a property’s purchase value. The real estate crash post-2007 and resulting revenue loss pushed these cities over the brink.
So yes, Goldstein in correct, irresponsible right-wing tax and fiscal policymaking are what caused these bankruptcies- NOT public employees, their health benefits, their pensions or their unions.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
For a city with a population under 300,000, is this normal? Its former police chief, Tom Morris retired at age 52 (after 8 months in the job) is receiving $200K a year on a retirement pension, did not contribute to the bankruptcy? R U serious?
If you are consulting these cities, I would suggest they eliminate pensions and health retirement benefit packages and merge their police and fire operations into one unit. Otherwise you are not solving the problem.
Worse than pointless: the wars got a lot of people killed or injured, and the tax cuts are now creating an excuse for cutting help to those who need it most.
Who was responsible for that? Republicans, as we know.
No political party or philosophy has a monopoly on stupidity or corruption. However, the evidence is overwhelming that Liberal policies produce the best outcomes. Look at which states have the highest standards of living. Which countries. The incredible shared prosperity we had in the US from FDR through Carter, when Liberal policies held sway.
1. War in Iraq was a waste. I would add Obama’s surge in Aghanistan is a waste of money and lives too.
2. Did not Obama raise the tax brackets on high wage earners already? Are you suggesting he eliminate all the Bush tax cuts?
3. Yes, no party has a monopoly on stupidity or corruption but it dismays me why people just vote strictly party lines.
4. The shared prosperity from FDR-Carter was simply due to the US having a strong manufacturing base, good paying blue-collar jobs, many were union too. If you recall, that industry was being put to sleep in the late 79’s but Reagan woke up our industrial giant. NAFTA and GATT gutted our mfg base and the good jobs that went with it, thank you Bill Clinton for signing those trade bills.
Not only did the economy continue to suck after they went into effect, they have created trillions of debt. Trickle down economics at work, yet again.
A year ago, we cancelled one-third of them. The rest should go, and then we should think about returning to the tax structure we had under that Socialist, Eisenhower, where the median American paid half of today’s rate and the wealthiest paid at three times todays rate. It worked. It worked very well.
How would you compare the middle class standard of living in the late 1970s vs. today? We only needed a single median wage earner per family to live the American dream. Under Reagan, the floodgates of stimulus spending were opened up which worked nicely, but the stage was also set for trouble down the line – both because of the failure to adjust tax policy to cover the cost of Reagan’s stimulus, and because of the rise of the peculiar philosophy of trickle-down economics which has brought the 99% to where we are today.
Bush I, then Clinton, Bush II and Obama all fought mightily for job-obliterating “free” trade agreements. Obama has pushed through three so far, and the TPP looms but I don’t think it will pass.
I disagree with the assertion the Bush tax cuts caused the deficit, b/c revenues increased to the Treasury during that span. And to hit the middle class with higher taxes at a time when we are taking it in the chin with Obamacare taxes(see my latest diary) while billionaire universities pay nothing to the Federal Treasury, is unfair.
I know under Gen. Ike, the top tax rate was 91%. But I believe the social security tax was just 1%. So I would be open to going back to all the tax rates of the 1950’s, including Social Security. And perhaps scale back the responsibility of the government as well. My God, now we have like for every 11 workers, there is someone “claiming” to be disabled. Back then it was 1 in 50 ratio. Yes, I say there is waste, fraud, and abuse and layabouts in that disability system.
You and I are on the same page regarding the free trade deals.
1 wage earner vs 2. Reagan didn’t tell women to burn their bras and enter the workforce, I do recall it the women’s Lib Movement who tended to be more liberal, pushing a Constitutional Amendment for ERA (no, not earned run avg). So when there is greater supply, prices go down, wages stagnate, etc. I find it a miracle inspite of all this during the 80’s, people’s wealth and incomes rose dramatically, at least for most Americans. If one purchased a home in 1980, by 1988, it was worth 5X more. The 80’s was a huge wave of prosperity, and most were able to enjoy it……..
From the Dean candidacy in 2004 through the Lamont challenge in 2006, the biggest complaint about the Democrats was incoherence:
* There was no narrative.
* There was no clear thing they stood for.
* Even the things which everyone thought they supported and which they in fact supported they wouldn’t defend.
It was a mess. The Clinton triangulation was not far in the past. There were Democrats who had supported the Iraq invasion.
Lots of people here and elsewhere, me included, took part in the left blogosphere jumping up and down demanding that our political representatives stand up for things.
The narrative coherence of the Democratic message remains an issue surely, but we’ve also entered a period where there has been rapid radicalization on the right and where the policy debate on the budget has been distorted. The first has become, frankly, an emergency. Unless we can stem the radicalization on the right of the political spectrum, addressing climate change — never mind the huge decrease in employment, is going to be near impossible.
The first step is to understand its appeal. I submit that, in our outrage, it is very easy to caricature that appeal.
I only brought the DLC up to note that they were right to look in the mirror and see how our side helped create the ‘Reagan Democrat’. Where they were wrong, with tragic results, was diagnosing it as desire for economic as well as cultural conservatism-and misdiagnosing the cultural conservatism for more broader social conservatism. I think we should still use the same analytical process though, since we still have yet to rewin that demographic. The Obama coalition is great for winning presidential elections, but it’s reliance on younger voters and minorities makes it downright anemic in midterm elections. A strategy that gets those voters engaged every election and not just presidential years is essential-but must also be coupled with a strategy to win back some of the swing voters we have steadily lost. I think to make the real changes we need we have to look at getting close to the kind of majority Reagan enjoyed in 84′. That’s a message election and one that will force our opponents to move left.
I want future Democratic candidates to force themselves to be ‘severely liberal’-and the only way to do it is to merge liberalism with the Democratic brand and revitalize liberalism as a brand and a message resonante with Joe six pack. Most of them are liberals-they just don’t know it yet, and they have been conditioned to view that word with fear, derision, and apprehension. Merely changing the name to ‘progressive’ and converting Rockefeller Republicans to Clinton Democrats won’t be enough to win the long game. We need the majority of the middle and working class regardless of geography, ethnicity, or culture to be reliable Democrats. Only way we can defend and expand the New Deal.
I like this poke at unbridled capitalism too, but as an LGBT person I’m not much mollified by his quieter tone. He still says that people like me are objectively disordered, and he hasn’t reigned in his anti-LGBT attack bishops here in the USA. So, while I appreciate his tone and his apparent focus on “the least of these”, my appreciation is with profound reservation.
Some of those bishops are getting demoted as we speak, the demotion of Burke and Rigali is a signal that the communion wafer can no longer be tolerated as a political football. The fact that Wuerl, who was one of the few big city bishops to explicitly state he wouldn’t deny communion to pro choice politicians, got the nod, shows us the approach Francis favors. I might add the ‘who am I to judge’ line explicitly rebuked and retracted a long standing policy of Benedict’s implementing gay witch hunts in the seminaries.
Will we see ecclesial same sex marriages with the equal status accorded to them in Canon Law? We’d be lucky if we can get heterosexual remarriages accorded that status within the lifetime of this Papacy. But will we see bishops continue to waste funds on vanity projects, or against gay marriage? Dolan is a careerist, unlike Burke and Rigali, and he is shifting with the new winds blowing off the Tiber. The throwing of his hands on gay marriage may look like the aloof cleric at it’s most condescending heights, but in reality, they know they bet the farm and lost big. Just as Francis predicted as an Argentine bishop when he favored a civil union compromise. Francis is right to redirect the funds to aiding the poor. It’s far from the equal justice that the LGBTQ community deserves not just within the walls of the Church but in the entire world. It’s a human rights issue, and Francis should be as aghast at Russia’s actions as he is at Syria’s. But it’s a sea change in thought in a short amount of time, right from the very top. How far the ripples go is an open question and one we shouldn’t be afraid to ask.
I care that the RCC is still just as virulently anti-gay in its political activism and in its views as it was before Francis. Some anti-gay bishops have been demoted, but others have been retained or promoted. Slow but steady may win the race, but how many of us will die of old age before the RCC even takes a lap? I’m not patient with institutionalized hate, especially when the institution tries to make everyone believe it’s all about love. What BS.
coming from you is the understatement of the year:) I do have to say though the quick accumulation of states recognizing same-sex marriage does show I think what I have been telling you for years, that time is ultimately on our side.
I appreciate that Laurel is sensitive to the slow pace of change, but she is right to demand more immediate action. Consistency in how the issue is approached is vital and must come from the bottom as well as the top. It pains me that after the famous comment gays were still fired in Catholic schools and hospitals for getting married (even after years and sometimes decades of having partners welcomed and seemingly accepted), there was the infamous DC area priest who barred a lesbian from attending her own mothers funeral with her partner, and there are still examples of communion being barred and gay masses getting suppressed when new bishops are in charge. The inconsistency undermines the shift and Francis could do more to implement a consistent policy.
For now we are ok with splitting down the middle and attending an Episcopal parish with very Catholic sensibilities on the important things (private confessionals, Marian devotions, traditional liturgy and real presence in a weekly Eucharist) and very Protestant sensibilities on personal questions (no hang ups on all that sex stuff).
It will be interesting to watch the already fascinating dynamics play out between the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, and the Roman Catholic Church under the new Pope.
I note that the “no hang ups on all that sex stuff” is precisely what is driving the arch-conservatives that used to call themselves “Episcopal” to leave the Episcopal Church. Their current destination is the Anglican Communion (the world-wide umbrella of which the Episcopal church is a part), but the Anglican Communion is itself moving in the same direction as the Episcopal Church on such matters.
I also note the ups and downs of the various attempts to re-integrate the Anglican Communion and the RCC. The same forces who reject the modernization of the Episcopal Church have, until now, worked to align themselves with the RCC. As the RCC moves towards the Episcopal Church position on such matters (albeit with glacial slowness), those conservative former Episcopals are looking more and more isolated — precisely the correct outcome, in my view.
I also note that, at least in the Episcopal Church, the loud noises about gay and lesbian ordination are a smokescreen for the real issue with those fleeing the Episcopal Church — the empowerment of women. Bishop John Spong noted this in his autobiography more than a decade ago.
The unscrupulous agents of the conservatives have, for many years, been assuming that the latent homophobia in America will cause their agenda to play better than if they openly advocate against the ordination of women. They have joined forces with the emerging Episcopal dioceses in Africa (which tend to be both homophobic and misogynistic, at least in comparison to first-world attitudes).
If Pope Francis can succeed in moving the Roman Catholic Church towards empowering women, ending its persecution of gay and lesbian men and women (even if only a little), and in joining the battle against the class warfare that the 1% has been waging for decades, it will change much more than just the RCC.
The bane of the RCC is it’s anti-gay, anti-abortion and anti-women in general positions. These issues are intractable enough in secular society (while gay marriage continues to advance across the states, Roe v. Wade is being tee’d up to topple), but to expect a reversal of these within the RCC is magical thinking. So, Pope Francis, as I see it, has opted for the next best thing, that is, get the RCC and it’s management to stop talking about them 24/7. He just cut the legs out from under the arch-conservative Cardinal Burke by removing him from the Congregation of Bishops and head of the Vatican Curia – the churches legal and judicial body (think inquisition :)). Silence the incessant public voice of the church on these matters will go a long way in moving ahead on these in the secular sphere.
Here is a pope who has publicly called for the dismantling of the global, Neo-liberal architecture that is the source of increasing global inequality – and he has said it in just those terms – a far left perspective. That this pope, the only non-european pope in 1300 years, is from Latin America is no surprise. He gets it.
Pretty sure they have all been European since almost the beginning. St. Peter was of course an Israelite, but I think the trend of local candidates for Bishop of Rome started very soon thereafter.
He is not the first since Peter
Northern Africa and the Levant produced a lot of great early Christian thinkers and leaders (Augustine, Jerome, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, the Cappadocian Fathers, etc.).
about a Eurocentric church.
He has articulated it as much. He said he is the ‘son of the Church’, and will likely not be moving too many doctrinal goalposts-but the rhetoric has clearly shifted. I’ve long been arguing that ending poverty would do far more to end abortion than repealing Roe v Wade. Hence, a ‘church for the poor’ will still be a ‘pro-life’ one-albeit one that actually saves lives rather than alienate everyone.
The gay issue is another one where the theory has always been more enlightened than the practice. In theory, homosexuality is an orientation and even the Church agrees with Lady Gaga that they are ‘born that way’. What it doesn’t do is take it’s own reasoning to the logical conclusion that they can love in long term stable relationships. But there is no reason for the Church, even under current doctrine, to be wasting time on defeating gay marriage at the ballot, firing gay employees in stable relationships, or using the sacraments as tools of exclusion. None. And Francis has some time to back his great words up with concrete action to ensure the Church follows its own conscience on this issue and not the bigotry (some of it a form of self-loathing I’m sure) of a few prelates. I think as gay marriage continues to demonstrate that gays are just as capable at forming stable families this doctrine will start to disappear.
The purpose of marriage, as consecrated in the Roman Catholic Church, is to create and raise children. Sadly, this purpose is echoed and amplified by the RCC’s corresponding (and misogynist) view that the purpose of women is to make babies.
The church has never cared much about “long term stable relationships” — it is re-marriage that is objected to, not divorce. There are no divorced Catholics being denied communion, only divorced Catholics who remarry. The “sin” they are being charged with is adultery, not leaving their spouse.
As several theologians (such as Sara Maitland) have observed, every form of sexual pleasure that is not procreative is a “sin” by RCC standards. Masturbation, bestiality, onanism, etc. — each is sinful. The only form of sexual pleasure that the RCC condones is the procreative act — and even there, the woman isn’t supposed to enjoy it too much.
My reading of theology suggests that the RCC opposition to gay marriage derives from this theory. In this context, two necessary preconditions to accepting gay marriage are to (1) redefine the purpose of marriage to focus on the relationship of the parties involved instead of their progeny, and (2) discard its misogynist, medieval and patriarchal view of women.
I note that the Episcopal church did step (1) pretty much at its founding and performed step (2) about twenty years prior to the ordination of its first practicing homosexual Bishop.
…but I think when jconway used the term stable families in his last line it was in the context of stable environment in which to raise children, which of course same-sex couples are perfectly capable of providing.
I see NO mention of children in the comment I responded to. In my view, the word “family” does not imply children. This is, perhaps, a reiterated form of my proposition (1) — I think a “family” consists of two (or more!) married persons.
…but again in this context, and given that I am confident that jconway knows where the Church is coming from, I think his last sentence could just as easily have said, “I think as gay marriage continues to demonstrate that gays are just as capable at [raising children in stable environments] this doctrine will start to disappear.” I inferred from jconway’s comment that he was trying to argue on the Church’s own turf, which means children as I think he knows and you explicitly pointed out, but he is certainly welcome to come back and clarify that himself.
I am arguing that the Church’s own logic regarding homosexual relationships, that the orientation is natural but the actions are disordered, is sort of incoherent, and the threat that gay parents posed to the stability of the family is clearly non-existent. I think we will actually see more positive movement on this issue within the Church and more swiftly than we will see on the abortion or women’s ordination question. Though ‘swiftly’ will be measured in years, if not decades.
I tend to agree with your prediction about the evolution of the RCC stance towards gay marriage. As in the Episcopal Church, I suspect that opposition to gay marriage is more superficial and therefore easier to change than the RCC’s misogynistic stance towards women. I suspect the RCC will accomplish this by adjusting its posture towards the purpose of marriage.
I also agree that it will take a long time — I suspect decades. Even the RCC will eventually have to recognize that divorce rates among gay marriages will be comparable to divorce rates among heterosexual marriages. The rest of the US (if not the world) will continue to be far ahead of the RCC on this question, and so the statistics about gay versus heterosexual divorce rates will be readily available.
The RCC will thus be forced to admit that sustaining its position would be tantamount to asserting that something about the RCC faith itself would cause the “instability” it claims to fear. This, in turn, requires arguing that homophobia is a part of RCC faith — something that even the RCC will have a difficult time rationalizing.
They shouldn’t waste another dime on anti-equality or anti-choice political action. I personally disagree with the Church entirely on homosexuality, I agree with it that abortion is wrong but disagree that either issue is a political question with a political solution. Pursuing political solutions have divided the church and alienated the flock while wasting precious dollars that should go to the poor. A church for the poor shouldn’t waste another dime on right wing social issues or form alliances with conservatives who undermine Catholic Social Teaching and the preferential option for the poor. Especially when we have hospitals, schools, retired clergy and churches to keep
Open.