Pope Francis and the End of the Religious Right? | Steven Conn

 

Steven Conn

Author/Professor, Ohio State

…now comes news that the Pope has demoted Justin Rigali and Raymond Burke, two hard-right cardinals from the influential Congregation of Bishops. Rigali presided fecklessly (or mendaciously, take your pick) over the pedophile-priest scandal in Philadelphia while he was archbishop there, while Burke liked to dress up in the "cappa magna," a "long train of billowing red silk," in order to lecture us all on the evils of homosexuality.

Pope Francis has left conservative Catholics, the loudest voices in the American church for the last generation, wondering if they aren't being dissed. What, after all, is a faithful, obedient Catholic boy like Paul Ryan to do in the face of a pope who claims to have known some "good Marxists" back in Argentina?!

Whatever Pope Francis's papacy means for American Catholics, his shift in tone and his interest in economic justice may have the effect of upending the political coalition that we call the religious right.

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