Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Another piece on Vatican-gate
This one written by a Congregational minister:
http://religiondispatches.org/bernies-roman-holiday/
How he kind-of-sort-of got invited to this event in the first place is a story unto itself, but the upshot is that he (or someone affiliated with his campaign) wrangled an invitation, failed to take a hint that they didn’t really want him to come after all, and then delivered not much in the way of a speech.
I’m serious. Ten minutes is not long to speak on a complex subject, and Sanders wasted almost a quarter of his speech thanking his hosts, name-checking popes, and giving an extensive quote from Centesimus Annus that he frankly would have been better off summarizing. The rest of it is Sanders’ usual stump speech, barely adapted to rather obviously bait Pope Francis into giving his blessing. (The campaign hoped for a meeting between the senator and the pontiff, a prospect that was summarily dismissed by the Vatican.) Sanders rattles off more or less the same laundry list of complaints he’s used at every rally in the past year, with only the thinnest nods at setting his perspective in a deeper moral or intellectual context. Again, ten minutes does not allow very much room for a deep dive, which is exactly why the Sanders campaign should have taken the hint and decided there was a schedule conflict that prevented him from speaking after all.
The whole Bernie-goes-to-Rome thing has been a shambles, to be honest. The campaign got Sanders a back-door invite which surprised and irritated the academy president, not to mention stepping on the roll-out of Amoris Laetitia, the Pope’s new teaching on the family. Then they did it again, taking a private jet to Rome to speak on the idolatry of money in the middle of a make-it-or-break-it primary in New York, and arriving in Rome on a day when the Vatican would much rather be talking about Francis’ meeting with Patriarch Bartholomew in Lesbos about the European refugee crisis.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Sanders showed up with his family in tow, undercutting the high-minded moral message he was supposed to be delivering, and Oh, sweet Jesus, did they really put his logo on a picture of the Pope?! All this in service of a message that won’t impress or inspire anybody who wasn’t going to vote for Sanders to begin with.
. ..
I’m serious. Ten minutes is not long to speak on a complex subject, and Sanders wasted almost a quarter of his speech thanking his hosts, name-checking popes, and giving an extensive quote from Centesimus Annus that he frankly would have been better off summarizing. The rest of it is Sanders’ usual stump speech, barely adapted to rather obviously bait Pope Francis into giving his blessing. (The campaign hoped for a meeting between the senator and the pontiff, a prospect that was summarily dismissed by the Vatican.) Sanders rattles off more or less the same laundry list of complaints he’s used at every rally in the past year, with only the thinnest nods at setting his perspective in a deeper moral or intellectual context. Again, ten minutes does not allow very much room for a deep dive, which is exactly why the Sanders campaign should have taken the hint and decided there was a schedule conflict that prevented him from speaking after all.
The whole Bernie-goes-to-Rome thing has been a shambles, to be honest. The campaign got Sanders a back-door invite which surprised and irritated the academy president, not to mention stepping on the roll-out of Amoris Laetitia, the Pope’s new teaching on the family. Then they did it again, taking a private jet to Rome to speak on the idolatry of money in the middle of a make-it-or-break-it primary in New York, and arriving in Rome on a day when the Vatican would much rather be talking about Francis’ meeting with Patriarch Bartholomew in Lesbos about the European refugee crisis.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Sanders showed up with his family in tow, undercutting the high-minded moral message he was supposed to be delivering, and Oh, sweet Jesus, did they really put his logo on a picture of the Pope?! All this in service of a message that won’t impress or inspire anybody who wasn’t going to vote for Sanders to begin with.
. ..
26 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
They really put his logo on a picture of the Pope
and they spent campaign finances to visit Rome.
the speech really amounted to was preaching to the choir.
Zeke Miller
✔ ??@ZekeJMiller
Bernie walking a fine line on sort of claiming the endorsement of the Pope https://www.facebook.com/berniesanders/photos/a.324119347643076.89553.124955570892789/1029290747125929/?type=3&theater …
5:03 AM - 15 Apr 2016
61 61 Retweets 45 45 likes
AlGiordano ??@AlGiordano
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, this is one inept campaign! https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/status/720991032523894784 …
meta ??@metaquest
@AlGiordano Putting his logo on an image of the Pope? Seriously, what is wrong with this guy?
5:16 AM - 15 Apr 2016
5 5 Retweets 6 6 likes
https://theobamadiary.com/2016/04/15/president-obama-on-the-benefits-of-precision-medicine/#comments
Yes, yes they did.
The whole stunt was a stunner. How anyone here in the US missed the fact that Bernie is a poser is beyond me. This makes me laugh: "ten minutes does not allow much room for a deep dive"--because he only ever splashes around in the shallow end. His rhetoric has no substance--no meat on the plate--just a picture!
treated it like the 2nd coming of Christ. They are so blinded by the Bernie Revolution.
