I had thought The Stranger was too smart to be joining the Pope Francis Is Swell bandwagon.

He's not changing a damn thing. He's a great bit of PR and nothing else.

you're not catholic or ex-catholic or post-catholic so STFU sarah.

francis' job is to rehabilitate the church's image. full stop. nothing essential changes.

So if she doesn't believe what she hears in the media, does that mean she won't be reading all the newspapers and magazines any more?

I'm not a great fan of religion in general, and the damage the Catholic church continues to wreak around the world is despicable. No, New Pope is probably not going to dramatically change the catholic church; it's still a dysfunctional and damaging organization.

But this guy? I *like* him. I would take my kids to see him - even just as proof that the religious aren't all bad.

She reminds me of Seattleblues. Though I'm guessing Seattleblue's dress size is larger.

@3 "any more"? Ever?

He's a showman. Words are cheap. We'll see what he does of substance. In the meantime, Sarah Palin is irrelevant.

@6 - That's what she told Katie Couric back in '08, and I don't know what kind of monster would lie to Katie Couric.

@8 oh, right. I had forgotten about that. heh. (I try to ignore Palin's existence most of the time as it is.)

@2 Worse yet, she's a holy-roller, speak-in-tongues, faith-healing kind of Xtian. She's not qualified to talk about the religious meanings in Family Circle.

...unless I really dig deep ...., and do my own homework, I’m not going to just trust what I hear....

Sounds about right for someone who went to 5 schools to get a BA in Communications.

In educational terms, Catholicism is med school. Sarah Palin's brand of megachurch is a community college in Boise.

I feel like my ears are going to bleed whenever I hear her talk. I don't even care about her opinion of New Pope (or anything else for that matter). But Palin seems to be completely incapable of stringing a basic sentence together in proper English. Every time she talks, she just spews an endless stream of run-on word salad. How did this woman ever graduate from high school, much less college? Drives me fucking crazy.

This new pope just isn't hateful enough!

You're a fan of the new pope? The guy hasn't made any changes (nor seems inclined to do so) in church doctrine. Right now it's just pretty words. And the pope hasn't been asked to answer serious questions about his very active role in the Argentinean Dirty War.

@ 15, Ha! Awesome.

@15: Seriously, hole-in-one.

I have an uber-Catholic acquaintance who loves to remind everyone on her facebook feed that the new pope is just as hateful as the last one. Not in those words, of course, but any time a Francis-loving liberal responds to one of her posts on Catholicism, she points out proudly that the church still hates gays and abortion and we need to quit acting like Frank is going to do anything differently when it really comes down to it. Seeing her, the most Catholic of all the Catholics I know, worshiping the new pope is reason enough for me to not feel the least bit swayed by his signs of humanity.

@14: Ignoring the new fluff book written by the Jesuits, an Argentinean Rabbi is generally complimentary of Bergoglio's personal efforts, and says that he is a harsh critic of his own performance.

http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/07…

Does Sarah Palin sh!t in the woods?

Palin is fucking astounding. This article snippet reads exactly the way it would have been mockingly written in the Onion.

Who makes more $$ from Palin? The left or the right?

i can’t believe anyone still gives two craps what granny grifter has to say, left or right. so, the right is dumb enough to pay attention to her, but they would lose interest if the left would just ignore her. is this not obvious?

/popcorn