Pope Francis: Fashionable, Reactionary, Shrill and a Threat to American Patriotism?

American conservatives continue to attack Pope Francis even as America prepares to honor him this week.

On Friday, notorious climate denier George Will wrote, "(Pope Francis embraces) ideas impeccably fashionable, demonstrably false and deeply reactionary... His social diagnoses are shrill. He stands against modernity, rationality, science and, ultimately, the spontaneous creativity of open societies... Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and celebrate their nation's premises." 

Politicus USA writer RMuse distilled that statement to: "More simply put and typical of Republicans; Americans who honor the Pope and reject Republicans' devotion to the fossil fuel industry really hate America."  

The last sentence of the Pope's Encyclical on the Environment and Climate Change could be interpreted as a direct message to the Republican Party.  Pope Francis asks God to please "Enlighten those who possess power and money that they may avoid the sin of indifference, that they may love the common good, advance the weak, and care for this world in which we live."

what eye thynk: A few days ago I commented on an article about Gene Koprowski, marketing director at the Koch-backed Heartland Institute, who suggested that Pope Francis was bringing "nature worship" and paganism into the church.  George Will is just another Koch-money, big-oil sycophant who can be held up as an example of how low the right will go to keep oil money flowing in their direction...all in the cause of patriotism, of course.

What is truly fascinating, is the way in which conservative Christians are tying themselves in knots over the Church-Bible-Earth trinity.  Looking at the results, you cannot help but be impressed by the way Catholic conservatives and Protestant conservatives have reached a common point based on completely opposite methodology. 

Protestant evangelical Christians, proud of their devotion to their faith, insist that every syllable of the Bible is the exact word of God and must be followed to the letter.  They see anyone who strays from the dictates of their church leaders as an apostate.  

At the same time, American conservative Catholics, equally proud of their devoutness, have somehow reached a point in their history where calling the Pope a liar is not only acceptable but a sign of religious fortitude.   Far from exercising stringent devotion to church word, they see picking and choosing which words to follow, which to believe and which to disregard as their right.

And yet both groups see their anti-science stance as, not only religiously righteous, but the height of patriotism.  Anyone who dares to disagree with them is immediately suspect, a person of questionable American loyalties, a person not right with God.

But look deeper into every-word-of-the-Bible-is-true Protestantism and buffet-style Catholicism and their joint reaction to the science of climate change and you find the same thing: conservative politicians and oil money.  Conservative politicians who believe patriotism can only be measured by wealth, and oil money so unimaginably big that the money holders can invoke the name of God in their crusade to rape the earth and still call themselves holy. 

American conservatives seem to view pride of country as a Christian commodity over which they alone have jurisdiction.  How did we get to this point?