The Pope and Rhetorical Affirmation

A person seeking rhetorical affirmation asks a question, usually in a sarcastic manner, to which the obvious answer must be yes. Familiar examples abound:

Does a bear sh*t in the woods?

Is the sun hot?

Is the ocean salty?

There’s a similar question that concerns the leader of the Catholic Church. No particular pope, just any one. You’ve probably heard it many times over your lifetime, snidely retorted by some smart ass or another (if you know what I mean. And I think you do.)

Pope Francis has been in the news ever since he became pope. Quite a controversial figure, if beloved by many, yet seemingly most beloved by folks who are not Catholic but who are progressive and/or globalists. Odd, isn’t it?

Those who are Catholic are often left scratching their heads after hearing some of the teachings and pronouncements of this particular pope. Confusing, to say the least, in that much of what he is purported to have said or proposed doesn’t align at all with what most Catholics have been taught all their lives.

You don’t have to be Catholic, however, to be confused by this guy.

The Pope made a big splash with his encyclical on climate change, singling out “the intensive use of fossil fuels” as a big part of the problem. Yet he himself is seen, jetting around the world, burning God only knows how much fossil fuel, spewing God only knows how much pollution into the atmosphere of “Our Common Home”.

Then there’s the Pope’s unusual attitude–for a Catholic leader–towards gay relationships and transgenderism. “Who am I to judge,” he famously said.

The obvious answer is: He’s the Pope!

Doesn’t he know that by now? It’s his job to judge, in the sense that he’s supposed to lead people on the right path, which entails recognizing and pointing out the wrong path. It was reported that Pope Francis recently

met with, and hugged, Diego Neria Lejarraga, a transgender Catholic man from Plasencia, Spain, after Lejarraga wrote Francis a letter. Though a local priest had called Lejarraga “the devil’s daughter,” at the meeting, Francis told him, “You are a son of God, and the church loves you and accepts you as you are.”

Apparently Pope Francis, being politically correct, accepted this “transgender man” as she is not, given that “he” is a she, made so by God, and so therefore is a daughter of the church, if anything. Head spinning yet?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for compassion, but not for acquiescing to delusions, even if Facebook declares it against “community standards” to believe the science behind the factual biological concept of two sexes.

Heretofore, Catholic doctrine stated that a transsexual/transgender person, even after a sex change operation, remains the sex–the canonical condition–-originally assigned by God. Indeed, there was a time that the Church discouraged even ear piercing, as mutilation of the temple of the soul. How much more mutilating is the oxymoronic “sex change” operation?

Now consider the fact that this “transgender man” met with the Pope and brought along “his fiancée,” which begs several questions:

What sex is the fiancée, Macarena? Apparently female.

Where do they plan to marry, meaning in which church? Not disclosed.

Is  it possible to be a “Catholic man” who was born female and who now has a female fiancée?

Did the Pope advise them to be abstinent or did he give them a dispensation for a “marriage” in which the marital act will be lesbian in nature?

How can the church possibly accept them as they are, as the Pope claimed it does?

One has to wonder how donors to the Catholic Church would feel if they knew that the Church paid the expenses for this couple to travel to the Vatican to meet the Pope.

This isn’t the first time the Pope welcomed homosexuals with open arms.  Pope Francis met

with an old friend in Washington, D.C. during his visit, who is now “married” to another man. His embrace of these men and his kisses for them, could be taken as a sign of compassion. After the meeting, his old friend related that the Holy Father did not communicate to him the Church’s teaching on homosexuality or same sex unions so clearly expressed by the previous two Popes. He related that he had felt affirmed by the Holy Father. Loving a person as a child of God is one thing; implicitly approving of a life-style through silence is another matter, one that leaves open the questioning of truth.

The list of confusing, seemingly “non-Catholic” statements made by and behaviors exhibited by Pope Francis is long and growing longer by the day. The list is so long that a person might be forgiven for asking:

Is the Pope Catholic?

A question to which the answer is no longer obvious. What is obvious is that we’re going to have to ditch that question as a clever way to point out that something’s obvious.  We’ll have to use a different question, if we expect to receive rhetorical affirmation. How about:

Would you like another beer?

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