Pope Comes to America, HuffPo Prepares for Disappointment

I’ve been trying to work up some excitement for the visit of the Pope this week. I don’t have that much time to read the news every evening before crashing into sleep. Whatever has come across my feed I have tried to digest but have mostly just immediately closed my eyes in slumber. That actually goes for all the news this last month. I know there’s lots going on but I just don’t have what it takes to get worked up about any of it, except the planned parenthood thing. But I did take a little scroll through HuffPo, just to see what they were all thinking about the Pope, and I came away uber depressed.

As a Christian person, I do have a short list of stuff I wish the Pope would say. I wish he would stand up to Congress and absolutely rake them over the coals for not yet defunding Planned Parenthood. I wish he would develop some long, beautifully articulated screed against the idolatry of sex and the insanity of our moneyed sexual culture. I wish he would tell the whole room to get over themselves and fall on their faces in repentance and sorrow for just being so evil. I’ve been wishing this so much I went ahead and prayed about it yesterday.

But when I scrolled through HuffPo, you’ll be shocked to learn, that’s not what they are wishing for. Speaking of the idolatry of sex, just go from the top to the bottom, not actually clicking on anything, but just counting the number of articles that join together the word ‘Pope’ with ‘lgbt’, ‘gay Catholic’, and sentiments (my own concise summery of all I saw) like “oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no what if he doesn’t spend enough or any time affirming lgbtqness oh no oh no oh no….” Even that great love, Global Climate Change, is taking second place to the hopes of the lgbt community on that great paragon of American journalism.

So, um, I might be disappointed when the Pope speaks to congress, but I’m having a little feeling that everybody who reads and loves the Huffington Post is going to be disappointed too. And I bet I know who is going to be more so.

It’s interesting, this sudden complete shift of the culture to affirming this One Thing. In my own church, the point of my leaving was a matter of seeing, more clearly than I wanted to, that a different god was being lifted up, that the God of scripture and the god of sex cannot be worshiped together in the same place at the same time. That I was the one who was going to have to leave. Having been nourished in the bosom of a church that has historically over prized inclusion and compromise over doctrine and belief, it was a surprising place to be. The pressure, to accept homosexuality as the most beautiful and perfect thing, was laid on thick. We were sued for our building, we lost, we walked away from it all in the deep appalling cold of the coldest January I can ever remember. At any point I suppose we could have said oh never mind, we’ll get on board with the stated agenda. We couldn’t have said, ‘let’s agree to disagree.’ You can’t disagree, not even if you’re the Pope. Here’s an interesting question, why would the Pope have any interest in meeting Gene Robinson?…..um, I can’t imagine that he would. But somehow the White House thinks this will be a clever thing.

I stand here in far away Binghamton, the far reaches of a dying empire, and shake my head and chuckle. Oh Mr. Obama, the Pope isn’t here to learn. He isn’t going to be instructed by you. That’s not why he’s coming. You have set up a great big idol and are rushing around the world trying to demand and cajole everybody to bow down to it–playing the music, the harp, the tambourine, the lady Gaga (is she even still a thing? Oh I am so woefully out of touch), throwing the gay pride parties and waving the flag, and most, maybe, will bow, but not everyone. There are a lot of stubborn Catholics out there. I have a feeling maybe the Pope himself is one of them.

No, I expect the Bishop of Rome will take his short tour of this great land and say the things he came to say and then go back home and carry on with his own agenda. And the American sex culture will resume flailing about in its usual angry way, maybe a little angrier for not having been affirmed by Himself, digging a deeper well of bitter outrage against Christians everywhere.

Welcome to America!