Matt Bors for December 19, 2013

Give him a little time.It’s not like Saint Ronnie tore down the Berlin wall his first week in office.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

to paraphrase – “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of Bors”There is a reason the founders wanted a barrier between gov’t and religion, but at the same time wanted citizens to be able to practice their religion as they wished.At least Pope Francis seems to practice the philosophy of “hate the sin, love the sinner.” Which is better than some who compare gays to terrorists and women’s reproductive rights as a capital crime. He is a religious leader with his beliefs and opinions. Would Mr. Bors prefer a Borgia?Change is incremental, but human attitude is too often excremental.Compassion, respect, and understanding is very important to a civilized society. Whether in tolerating a religious view, or tolerating a behavior against which your religion stands, we must recognize the rights of the individual if the rights of majority is to also be recognized. As long as gov’t is based on what is tangible, practicing a belief in the intangible is no threat, and offers many socially positive practices.Respectfully,C.

http://distractify.com/people/reasons-why-pope-francis-is-the-person-of-the-year/

You realize 100 years behind the times is pretty good for the Church, right? There are still a lot of Church officials inveighing against “modernism,” by which they mean anything from the Age of Enlightenment on…If Francis gets back Vatican II (which was inappropriate eviscerated by JPII), I, for one, will salute him.

Respectful Troll : Change may be incremental, but it is too slow. We seem to be restricted to one Christian Pope per century: Leo XIII in the 19th, John XXIII in the 20th, and Francis in the 21st.

You picked the most trivial of the 17. He hasn’t quite got the idea of the selfie yet, has he? He looks far too formal and dignified!

I like Matt Bors, but I think he’s being over-cynical here. Pope Francis is patently a very different sort of pope, and a truly good human being. .I’m a muslim, I have no particular vested interest here, but I’m extremely impressed by Pope Francis. I hope he lives long enough to transform the Catholic Church and to be an example and inspiration to us all. Peace.

The Church of Rome is old and has had many controversies, and the popes have been of widely varying qualities. This pope is only one of many now and to come. These days, do we follow a pope’s actions in cynicism or admiration? .What does it matter? The Nineteenth Century English historian Macaulay said this of the papacy in his time: “…The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs…The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigour…”.In the same passage, of the Catholic Church: “… Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term of her long dominion is approaching. She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s.".And at the end, as men destroy present life on Earth, it may be as portrayed at the end of A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ, by Walter M. Miller.

When you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig.

Bors, Rall, Sorenson and that other one-syllable dude whose name starts with a “P”, the trolls of cartoon world:

I think it says a lot about our expectations of the Catholic church that when a Pope comes along who’s good at PR and seems a fairly decent human being, people go mad about him.