Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Liberal Tribalism Regarding the Pope?

First, a quick announcement that I'm hoping to pick up the pace on this blog a bit. I have ideas for another two or three blog posts and just need to dedicate some time to actually writing them!!!

For today, though, I just want to keep one that's short and quick about something that's been on my mind a bit. Once again, it involves the Pope. I guess it's been about two weeks since the Pope said the following:

If my good friend Dr. [Alberto] Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, then a punch awaits him. It’s normal. One cannot provoke. One cannot insult the faith of others. One cannot make fun of faith.

I saw a post on RawStory with Piers Morgan criticizing the Pope, accusing the Pope of endorsing violence against critics of religion. I agree with Morgan. Yet, the strangest thing happened in the comment section. RawStory is a liberal website, so the commenters are generally liberal. And what I saw was potential liberals both defending the Pope with comments along the lines of "That's not what he was saying!" and fun poked at Morgan with comments in the theme of "Is Morgan auditioning for a job at Fox News?"

One thing I noticed here recently is that Bill Donohue of the Catholic League had said something similar the week before when he said, "Killing in response to insult, no matter how gross, must be unequivocally condemned. That is why what happened in Paris cannot be tolerated. But neither should we tolerate the kind of intolerance that provoked this violent reaction."

Actually, unlike the Pope, he actually said killing is not an appropriate response, something the Pope failed to do. Yet, Donohue got skewered by liberals, as he should have. (I'll note, though, that Donohue said other things suggesting that those who were murdered at Charlie Hebdo kind of had it coming, which would seem to contradict his condemnation of killing in response to insult.) So what's going on here that the Pope gets defenders while Donohue gets skewered? I fear there is some tribalism here. Donohue is known to be a conservative, so he's not part of the liberal tribe and is fair game. There are many liberals who (falsely) believe that the Pope is liberal. So it would seem some liberals are willing to rally around him and protect him when he reveals his true colors. This concerns me.