The unconfirmed rumor du jour is that Pope Francis’ staff arranged for him to meet privately for about 15-minutes with Kim Davis, telling her to “stay strong” at the end of the meeting.
If true — and I have a difficult time imagining even a goony like she or her odious lawyer, Matt Staver, making-up such a story — it is wildly inappropriate meddling in our affairs on his part, and betrays a very serious misunderstanding of how things work in America. For all the interminable yak-yak-yak about this matter, it is quite simple. According to our Constitution, the state of Kentucky may not have a religion; neither, then, may its agents when acting on Kentucky’s behalf. If she has an objection to the law she must hold her nose and carry it out, or she must resign. If she accepts pay for the work and refuses to do it, she commits fraud.
What on earth would provoke the Pope, while a guest in our country, to encourage somebody to break its laws? Here, I imagine, we are getting to the nub of it … the moral law! The higher law! What Our Invisible Friend said to some Bronze Age anonymities!
You cannot, of course, reason with people who are guided by such fantasies, people who delude themselves into imagining they operate in some ethereal realm beyond humdrum corporeal concerns — they have rejected reason. And they have rejected the ideals of the Declaration of Independence — that thinking, two-legged adults can give direction to, and regulate, their own lives. They have rejected adulthood itself, as well, for they wish to be children who are told what to do.
They must be defeated and pushed aside and ignored; that is all that can be done.