The Social Media Hot Takes Are A Bit Much

Okay let's just clear thing up. The modern divide in American political division between liberals and conservatives largely comes out of events of the 1930's. The major party based divisions division over race and civil rights largely emerged in  in the 60's and 70's, after all for  several decades before then both the Republicans and the Democrats had pro and anti-civil rights wings. Moreover the partisan division over same sex marriage largely emerged in the last 15 years. Remember Bill Clinton signed DOMA into law.

Meanwhile the Catholic Church has been around for 2000 years more or less. 

So yes the views and actions of the Pope don't easily translate onto our contemporary American map particularly well.

Sorry about the polite rage, but even for a partisan hack like me the social media "hot take" response to what the Pope does or doesn't do, or does or doesn't say is getting a bit much. It's perfectly fine to say, "I agree with the Pope on this, but not on that." But trying to determine if the pope is "liberal" or "left" or "conservative" compared to other political figures is just silly.

The Pope is the Pope, and while the priorities of Catholic Church are important for our politics (yes climate change is more important than gay marriage!) trying to cram thousands of years of thinking into our current American political lexicon is just weird.

Meanwhile partisanship drives everything these days so everyone will just focus on the points where the Pope is on their "side" in our national debate and ignore everything else. So let's just focus on jokes about wearing white after Labor Day alright?