So now that you know how to conduct yourself if you have the audacity to go out in public, let’s turn our attention to Congress and the pope. Congress has asked the pope to come along and talk to them next time he’s in town, officially.
Congressional leaders have invited Pope Francis to address a joint session of Congress during his expected visit to the United States next year.
He’s planning to come over in September for a conference on families. Because that makes sense, right? Having an officially celibate cleric participate in a conference on families? They should invite him to a conference on early childhood development, too; he could explain the benefits of being raped by the priest and watching nobody care.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), as the constitutional officer of Congress, made the formal invitation on behalf of House and Senate leaders, according to House and Senate aides. The House speaker is the officer who formally invites the president each year to give a State of the Union address. All joint sessions of Congress occur in the House Chamber because it is the larger of the two chambers.
As the constitutional officer of Congress, he sent that invitation to the world’s only King and Emperor of a Global Religion. As the constitutional officer of Congress, did he give any thought to the separation of church and state? Did he pause to wonder why secular legislators should have the world’s only pontiff lecturing them?
If there’s one person in the whole world who should not be invited to lecture the US congress, it’s the pope. There is no one else on earth who has the position the pope has. Not one. It’s a unique position, and uniquely anachronistic, and uniquely theocratic. Congress has no business inviting him to talk to Congress.
Aides to Boehner said he sent the invitation Thursday to officials in Vatican City. If Francis accepts the invitation, he would be the first pontiff to ever address American lawmakers from the U.S. Capitol, according to Boehner aides.
In his formal invitation, Boehner noted that Francis’s ascension to the papacy and his social teachings over the past year “have prompted careful reflection and vigorous dialogue among people of all ideologies and religious views in the United States and throughout a rapidly changing world, particularly among those who champion human dignity, freedom, and social justice.”
What horse-shit.