Bernie's campaign could create an association of Bernie with Francis's warmth and concern for humanity. It apparently didn't work well enough, perhaps too little too late for NY, but he needed to make a bold move and that's the one they decided on.

...who can set foot inside the Vatican without bursting into flames.

They burned Giordano Bruno in 1600 in the Campo de' Fiori of Rome for preaching science, among other things. They burned countless so-called heretics, brought about the crusades that slaughtered untold numbers of innocent people. They have done much good, to be sure, but they are not an organization without blemish so I do not know that I would be putting them on so lofty a pedestal nor do I want to see them manipulating our elections.

Since you believe she is the nominee it might come up don't you think? Somehow I feel that everything you posted would be as forgotten as whether it was Eastasia or Eurasia that Oceania is at war with.

My position on this issue is very long game and goes way beyond any one candidate. It was enough to turn me from long time lurker to poster. If this had been Hillary, I can guarantee you I wouldn't have liked it. As a matter of fact, had she done that I probably would have switched to Bernie over it. There are numerous things I don't like about this and there's a particular Catholic news article I wish I could find again because it summed up all my issues with this better than I ever could.

If Hillary gets an audience with the pope during the general, I will be just as irate and I utterly despise Trump. I do not like he precedent this sets. Oddly, my phone tried to autocorrect that as president. Even my phone know how bad all this stinks.

My apologies for lumping you in with the people who really do feel anything is ok if their team/party/candidate is caught doing it. Weird as it is for this ex-Catholic to jump to the defense of Catholicism, there apparently are some church officials that are not right-wing assholes. Keep in mind that some of the Catholic clergy (mostly nuns I think), protest nuclear weapons and the School of the Americas (aka the school of assassins, rebranded as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). Whether they do this between raping kids/covering up raping kids or treating unwed mothers and orphans as slaves is unknown to me. I hope the two factions don't overlap.

But I would take this test. It may surprise you on who believes what. This pope's style may be very different than the last, but his positions aren't all that different.

Who Said It: Pope Benedict Or Pope Francis

I never said that Pope Francis is perfect, just that he's the best Pope in my lifetime. Unfortunately he still thinks, among other things, that women shouldn't be ordained into the Priesthood, members of the clergy shouldn't marry, anti-choice, etc, etc, etc.

As far as Pope Benedict goes, like a lot of religious leaders, he could sound reasonable on occasion(sharing money with the poor and hungry, condemning violence against gays) talk is different than actions. I don't know why he resigned, but he was one of the senior Vatican officials who "handled" child molestation cases. As I understand it, usually by covering it up.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/11/pope-complicit-child-abuse-say-victims

Then again, I don't recall reading about any abuse cases lately in the Church. Either Francis has stopped this from happening entirely by his miraculous God-given powers or maybe they're all still covering it up.

I grew up in a staunch Catholic Democratic Massachusetts family. They love the Church but they do not like the Church meddling in their politics

Do you know how she did with the Jewish vote? I'm guessing she won that too.

of people with no religious affiliation.

Clintonistas can stop whining about the pope?

My issue with that visit goes far beyond Clinton, but yeah, It's clear Bernie didn't get what he wanted from National Lampoon's Vatican Vacation.

I am sorry for you that you don't understand there are people with principles.

He was seeking a tacit endorsement and many of his followers on this website mused about the potential increase in New York Catholic votes. If there's no meddling in Catholics, how are there Catholic votes? You all knew exactly what this was. You just hoped nobody else would notice.

Typical Sanders supporter. When you can't demonstrate your argument, you resort to ad hominem or alert stalking.

Of course you wouldn't understand that, since your candidate has no principles.

Lol

I tried to find this great article I saw the other day from a Catholic site that addressed very so-called pitiful issue I had with that visit. Could t find it. Either way, I'm sorry that you're so angry that your candidate is losing that you have to call me abusive names. If you didn't hate big pharma so much, they might have a pill or two to raise your mood.

So that's what they call it now.

So when super few of the super delegates switch over because of all the vitriolic and hateful abuse directly heaped on them by Sanders supporters on their social media pages, are those same supports going to give the same rationale you just did?

The only one who needs pity here is you. My blood pressure's just fine right now. All is right with the world and my candidate is winning while yours has fled back to Vermont to lick his wounds. :-D

was the best economic system.

So his principle was . . . what exactly?

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/bernie-sanders-pope-francis-meeting/478740/

Let these seeming similarities lead us not into temptation: The alliance between Sanders and Pope Francis is profoundly odd. For one thing, Catholic teachings don’t necessarily line up with Sanders’s stump speech as much as he might like to think. The conference he attended at the Vatican was gathered to commemorate Centesimus annus, Pope John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical that focused on the evils of Marxism and communism. In that document, John Paul II argued that economies exist to serve human freedom, the core of which is “ethical and religious.” He criticized a kind of thinking that “totally reduces man to the sphere of economics and the satisfaction of material needs.” While Sanders has called for economic policies that focus more on poverty than profit-seeking and that incorporate goals like care for the environment, he is absolutely a material thinker. He apparently believes that every policy area, from foreign affairs to women’s rights, can be explained by economic factors; politics, in his view, is neither ethical nor religious, but rather a function of wealth and class. His campaign-trail preaching seems to be in conflict with the very document he flew to Rome to celebrate—not to mention central Church teachings on topics like contraception and abortion, which directly contradict Sanders’s platform.

he should see a psychiatrist. . . .

... When what you're going for is a wink and a nod. Sanders supporters knew full well what this was. If they did not think there was any potential of a tacit (as in the aforementioned wink and a nod) endorsement, then why on earth did so many of them here talk about the potential boost in New York Catholic votes. They can pretend all they want that they don't know what tris is but they essentially traded one wealthy and powerful set of institutions for the most wealthy and powerful of them all. It was, by far, Sanders' most hypocritical move thus far.

I don't get the feeling that Pope Francis especially appreciated all of this. He whole thing felt like a desperate scramble from the Sanders campaign from the very beginning.

David Brock does not control one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most powerful institutions in the world.