UPDATE: Go to the bottom to see what Pope Francis responded on this issue to a reporter during the flight from these USA back to Rome.
ORIGINAL Published on: Oct 1, 2015 @ 13:26
Yesterday I posted about reactions to the Pope’s meeting with Kentucky country clerk Kim Davis, who went to jail rather than issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples.
Pope Francis meets with Kim Davis. The Left melts down.
More reactions are coming now. Make popcorn.
It is as if Pope Francis had met with the insane and murderous homophobic Asian dictator Kim DaeVis.
“How could be do such a thing!”
Francis should be lovingly and welcomingly and, of course, humbly, only embracing lesbians and kissing babies and smiling at nuns (as an obvious rebuke to meanies like … you know… bishops and, naturally, the entire Roman Curia)?
“If he met with Kim Davis … well!… sputter… it must be… it has to be a… a… mistake of some kind! RIGHT?”
The Pope meets for a few minutes with a clerk from a Appalachian county so small that you could pitch your tobacco juice can over it and the Left has a spittle-flecked nutty.
“His whole visit was RUINED!”
At the pro-homosexual National Sodomitical Reporter (aka Fishwrap), Joshua J. McElwee attempts to play down the meaning of the meeting: What we don’t know about Francis’ Kim Davis meeting:
For a while there, we had become used to papal mis-messaging.
The examples during Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy were legendary. Take, for one example, his 2006 speech in Regensburg, Germany. Meant as an invitation for dialogue between Christians and Muslims, the message of the speech was overcome by a phrase he quoted from a 14th century Byzantine emperor that deeply offended Muslims.
Until now, Pope Francis had seemed much better about sticking to his message and not undermining himself. [Ummm… really? Ask your feminist friends about that.] But that’s exactly what some think he has done by meeting secretly during his U.S. visit with Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who has refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses.
Just hours after giving his incredibly well-received speech to a joint meeting of Congress, Francis apparently met with Davis at the Vatican’s Washington embassy and told her to “stay strong” in her objection, for reasons of conscience, to issuing the licenses.
For many, the mis-message is rather stark. [You are simply expected to agree with his premise: that this was some kind of misstep, a mistake, that he got “off message”.]
[…]
On the other hand, is it possible that the Roman Pontiff was actually on message?
Are we not allowed to think that the Pope, who had probably heard at least something from an aid about why he was meeting this woman, is also – like her – not in favor of same-sex marriage and sodomy?
As a matter of fact, when you review carefully what the Holy Father has said in the past about homosexuality, he essentially sends the same message that Our Lord told the woman taken in adultery: “We don’t hate or condemn you, but you have got to stop sinning.”
Still at NSR, MS Winters finally chimes in with the “It was a goof!” theory:
So, in response to Ivereigh and Allen, let me offer an alternative theory of how the meeting happened and what it means: Somebody messed up. A source at the bishops’ conference told me on background that the meeting happened “against the advice of the bishops’ conference.” Other reports in both the Washington Post and the New York Times agree that the meeting was arranged by a “Vatican official.” Seeing as the meeting happened at thenunciature in Washington, it could only have happened with the approval and participation of the nuncio, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano. Perhaps he did not understand how Ms. Davis’ case was not really an instance of conscientious objection. Perhaps, he felt sorry for her, as I did, because sending that poor woman to jail was overkill by the judge. Perhaps he did not see how the news of this meeting would trample on the pope’s message and begin to drown out everything else the pope said or did during his six days here. Of course, it is a nuncio’s job to know such things and, most especially, not to put his boss in a compromising position. If the President visits a foreign country, and the ambassador, against the advice of the State Department, nonetheless introduces the president to someone who causes a controversy that reflects badly on the president, that mistake is laid at the feet of the ambassador, not the president. If this meeting was all the nuncio’s doing then he should, in conscience, quit too.
I forget. Did NSR rush to explain away the Sickle-fix given to the Pope in South America? Or was that gesture filled with thoughtful nuance and subtle humility?
Again… maybe someone did not mess up.
Perhaps what the Pope did is part and parcel of what his six days in these USA were about. MS Winters is one of those who desperately want “culture warriors” (for him, a really bad label and mark of shame) to be silenced.
Perhaps the Holy Father isn’t entire finished waging his own subtle culture war. Dunno… it’s hard to figure out this Pope sometimes.
At Esquire there is a piece about the Davis meeting from the Dan Brown School of Things Catholic. This channels a little of what MS Winters went on about: it’s that mean old Archbp. Vigano! HE did it! And wasn’t he close to… Ratzinger?!? Nudge wink.
LifeSite has a different view, predictably:
We are ever so grateful for the meeting with Kim Davis. It was likely the most important meeting the pope had while in the USA. However the secrecy of the Davis meeting and the downplaying of the Little Sisters meeting in light of the fanfare of the other meetings, leaves the impression that those high profile meetings were the real priority, when in truth it’s just the opposite.
That same impression was left by the pope’s overt calls for change on poverty, climate change, the death penalty and the arms trade, while calls for change on abortion and same-sex “marriage” were made in veiled references missed by most. [The catholic Left likes to miss a lot of things.]
Davis’ lawyer Mat Staver explained the Vatican’s desire for secrecy and the fact that the Vatican is not releasing the photos it took of the meeting, telling CBS, “The Vatican had specific themes it wanted to focus on. … The Vatican wanted to focus its message on a lot of issues.”
On the other hand, by not releasing photos and by making vague statements, they guaranteed that the story would remain in the news cycle for a while longer. Also, it is interesting to read the Kim Davies meeting in tandem with the “surprise” visit to the Little Sisters of the Poor. No?
Look. I am not sure what the meeting with Kim Davis meant, but the facts are that it seems really to have happened, that someone wanted it to happen, and that now it means something, not nothing.
I suspect that this meeting, along with the meeting with the Little Sister of the Poor was like a carrier wave in the Pope’s communications. Liberals would like to suppress that carrier wave.
It is fascinating to watch the media reactions and spins.
UPDATE:
During the presser on the airplane departing these USA for Rome, Pope Francis took a question from Terry Moran of ABC News (HERE):
Q: Holy Father, do you also support those individuals, including government officials, who say they cannot in good conscience, their own personal conscience, abide by some laws or discharge their duties as government officials, for example in issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples? Do you support those kinds of claims of religious liberty?
A: I can’t have in mind all cases that can exist about conscientious objection. But, yes, [!] I can say conscientious objection is a right that is a part of every human right. It is a right. And if a person does not allow others to be a conscientious objector, he denies a right. Conscientious objection must enter into every juridical structure because it is a right, a human right. Otherwise we would end up in a situation where we select what is a right, saying ‘this right that has merit, this one does not.’ It (conscientious objection) is a human right. It always moved me when I read, and I read it many times, when I read the Chanson de Roland, when the people were all in line and before them was the baptismal font – the baptismal font or the sword. And, they had to choose. They weren’t permitted conscientious objection. It is a right and if we want to make peace we have to respect all rights.
Q: Would that include government officials as well?
A: It is a human right and if a government official is a human person, he has that right. It is a human right.
From 
The 
Fr. John Zuhlsdorf on ROME 26/10-11 – Day 36: Ultimate: “I spoke with the sisters in Rome who do these corporals. I was told that they use a particular kind…”
