{"id":2466,"date":"2015-05-13T16:11:04","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T20:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/66.147.242.160\/~stumbli4\/?p=2466"},"modified":"2015-05-13T16:11:04","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T20:11:04","slug":"pope-francis-the-answer-to-obamas-prayers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/?p=2466","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis: The Answer to Obama&#8217;s Prayers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2480\" style=\"width: 581px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/66.147.242.160\/~stumbli4\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/francisman.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2480\" class=\" wp-image-2480\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/66.147.242.160\/~stumbli4\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/francisman.jpg?resize=571%2C319\" alt=\"Pope Francis: The Answer to Obama's Prayers\" width=\"571\" height=\"319\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2480\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Superhuman Political Force for the Poverty Panel<\/p><\/div>\n<p id=\"ember850\" class=\"ember-view\">NBC News <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/obama-castro-pope-has-pull-n357881\" target=\"_blank\">reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"ember-view\">It&#8217;s being dubbed &#8220;the Francis effect&#8221; and it&#8217;s hitting Washington, DC.<\/p>\n<p id=\"ember858\" class=\"ember-view\">From 4500 miles away Pope Francis is exerting his influence on everything from foreign policy to summits on poverty. Pope Francis got a big shout out on Tuesday from the leader of the free world as a great example of someone who understands what&#8217;s important.&#8221;Nobody has shown that better than Pope Francis, who I think has been transformative just through the sincerity and insistence that he&#8217;s had that this is vital to who we are,&#8221; President Barack Obama said during a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/obama-talking-about-poverty-requires-code-switching-n357746\">panel discussion at Georgetown University<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ember-view\">&#8220;And that emphasis I think is why he&#8217;s had such incredible appeal, including to young people, all around the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"ember-view\">Why does the Francis adulation from Obama go on and on and on? Is the Pope more sincere?\u00a0 Is he &#8216;transformative,&#8217; whatever that liberalspeak means?\u00a0 What does it say when something is &#8216;vital to who we are?&#8217;\u00a0 Does Pope Francis really have an &#8216;incredible appeal&#8217; especially including young people, or is it just non-stop well-funded hype?<\/p>\n<p class=\"ember-view\">I know one thing: it&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/gleanings\/2015\/may\/pew-evangelicals-stay-strong-us-religious-landscape-study.html\" target=\"_blank\">not filling up Churches<\/a>, but we don&#8217;t need those any more anyway.\u00a0 You can <a href=\"http:\/\/en.radiovaticana.va\/news\/2015\/04\/28\/pope_christians_should_kneel_before_the_poor_\/1140244\" target=\"_blank\">&#8216;kneel before the poor&#8217;<\/a> anywhere, can&#8217;t you?<\/p>\n<p class=\"ember-view\">Well, not in Georgetown.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p id=\"ember866\" class=\"ember-view\">The three day Catholic-Evangelical leadership summit at Georgetown is a direct response to the pope&#8217;s call to help the poor.<\/p>\n<p id=\"ember867\" class=\"ember-view\">It&#8217;s been answered by an influential lineup of people on vastly different ends of the political spectrum. Speakers include ideological opposites from progressive Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat and former conservative presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty to members of Opus Dei, a Roman Catholic lay organization, to Nuns On The Bus, a Catholic groups focused on social justice.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"ember-view\">Democrats, dissidents, and a Romney Republican.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p id=\"ember868\" class=\"ember-view\">&#8220;It&#8217;s been a long time since we&#8217;ve seen a pope have this kind of influence in the United States,&#8221; said E.J. Dionne, Washington Post columnist who moderated the poverty panel including President Obama.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"ember-view\">&#8230;and the whole thing run by a left-wing Wapo pundit.\u00a0 Does anybody ever help the poor by actually doing something for them?\u00a0 I&#8217;ve never met a poor broke person who would be interested in moderators of &#8216;poverty panels.&#8217;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p id=\"ember874\" class=\"ember-view\">However, it&#8217;s too early to say whether Tuesday&#8217;s talk will lead to change.<\/p>\n<p id=\"ember875\" class=\"ember-view\">&#8220;If they care about these problems, Americans can change the politics that would, over the next five to 10 years, make a huge difference. And I&#8217;m not talking about changing Republican-Democrat. I&#8217;m talking about making poverty and the opportunity to escape from poverty a higher issue on both parties&#8217; agendas,&#8221; said Robert Putnam, the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"ember-view\">I guess if both parties adopted your big government redistribution platforms it wouldn&#8217;t matter if they were Republican or Democrat, you&#8217;re right.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ember-view\">The report presents some silly charts showing how beloved and respected Pope Francis is.\u00a0 Then it talks about how important Catholics in Congress supposedly are.\u00a0 It all boils down to a sort of superhuman papal political force.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p id=\"ember889\" class=\"ember-view\">The president said he can&#8217;t wait to host the pope and if he can spur the least effective congress in history to action, it might just be a certifiable miracle.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"ember-view\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NBC News reports: It&#8217;s being dubbed &#8220;the Francis effect&#8221; and it&#8217;s hitting Washington, DC. From 4500 miles away Pope Francis is exerting his influence on everything from foreign policy to summits on poverty. Pope Francis got a big shout out on Tuesday from the leader of the free world as a great example of someone <span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span> <span class=\"more-link-wrap\"><a href=\"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/?p=2466\" class=\"more-link\"><span>Read More &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[207,26,326,327,90,19],"class_list":["post-2466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-castro","tag-catholic","tag-georgetown-poverty-panel","tag-joint-session-of-congress","tag-obama","tag-pope-francis"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2466"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2481,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466\/revisions\/2481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}