Pope Francis’ covert meeting last week with a Kentucky clerk who refuses to issues marriage licenses to same-sex couples has left cable news pundits, reporters and columnists very disappointed.
This comes after many of these same characters heaped enthusiastic praise on Francis for his frequent comments on climate change and immigration.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, for example, characterized Francis’ meeting with Kim Davis as “bizarre in many ways.” Considering that the pope has been “very public about what he was choosing to kind of intervene in,” his meeting with the clerk is mind-boggling, he argued.
Hayes’ guests Wednesday evening, Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King and LGBT-activist Dan Savage, were equally disappointed that Francis would meet with a Christian who claims her conscience compels her to break the law and refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses.
“[I’m] very deeply disappointed about the meeting,” King said, conceding later that perhaps liberals like him have been “read[ing] too much into what the Pope thinks about gay marriage and the LGBT community in general.”
During Francis’ secret meeting last week with Davis, which was reportedly initiated by Vatican officials, he gifted her two rosaries, asked her to pray for him and encouraged her to “stay strong,” according to her legal counsel.
Earlier in his tenure, while addressing the issue of people who are inclined towards homosexuality, but also seek “the Lord in good faith,” Francis asked “Who am I to judge?” Though this won him high praise from media, his meeting last week with an anti-gay marriage Christian appears to have undone all of that as far as America’s left-leaning commentariat is concerned.
Elsewhere on MSNBC, “The Last Word” host Lawrence O’Donnell was similarly unhappy.
“It … made no sense to me that of all the people in the 50 United States to work through that filter to get into a room with the Pope, it made no conceivable sense to me that Kim Davis would be one of them,” he said.
These hosts and their guests are certainly not alone in airing their deep disappointment in Pope Francis.
Late Tuesday evening, after the pope’s secret meeting was at last revealed, a slew of media figures came forward to bemoan that the Bishop of Rome would do something with which they disagreed.
“I don’t begrudge Francis supporting someone standing up for religious beliefs. Where I draw the line is with Kim Davis,” Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capeheart said on social media.
Chris Hughes’ New Republic ran with a story headlined, “The Pope was never America’s liberal hero. Evidence: his meeting with KY clerk Kim Davis.”
Slate echoed these sad sentiments with a story reading, “Why Pope Francis’ meeting with Kim Davis is such a disappointment.”
“Seems like everybody was in love with Pope Francis,” Politico’s Roger Simon quipped on Twitter, “until they found out he met with [Kentucky] County Clerk Kim Davis.”
It appears for now that the goodwill that Francis had built with the press over his off-hand comments on abortion and homosexuality has all but disappeared as a result of his meeting with the controversial Rowan County clerk.
“Initially assumed liberals who felt betrayed by Francis for meeting Kim Davis existed mostly in conservatives’ imagination,” the New Republic’s Brian Beutler said. “Boy was I wrong!”
