Thursday, October 01, 2015

Pope Francis, Kim Davis, and the Five Stages of Grief



So like a lot of people, I was a bit caught off-guard when it was declared Pope Francis, during his wildly hailed visit to the United States, where he addressed everyone from Congress to the President to Mark Wahlberg (insert side-eye emoji) also made time for Kim Davis.  Davis, who defied the Supreme Court and became the poster child for the Right in the wake of her denying four gay couples their marriage licenses, has become a lightning rod, hailed by Mike Huckabee and loathed by every liberal on Twitter.  As a result, this set off a firestorm of emotions in me, a gay Catholic who had been until that moment enamored with the Pope's visit.  I figured the best way to illustrate this was to dust off my Psych degree and mine Kubler-Ross for answers.

1. Denial

"No way-the woman that got out of prison after five days and looked like she'd been freed from a Chilean mine met the Holy Father?  Not possible-this is clearly a hoax.  I mean, she did release that fake photo of 100,000 people in Peru praying for her-no way this actually happened."

2. Anger

"Wait, it's real?!?  Are you kidding me?  The Pope skipped out on meeting governors, orphans, nuns, millions of Catholics from all across the country and instead met with this woman, whose idea of sanctity of marriage is divorcing enough guys to form a Nascar pit crew?!?  Seriously-this woman has been married enough times to make Kim Kardashian look chasteand isn't even a Catholic and she gets to sit down with the pontiff?  WTF (forgive me father, for I have sinned...)?

3. Bargaining

"Is that warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark in Rowan County and the Pope was trying to get the Ark of the Covenant, because that's the only thing that makes sense here.  Or maybe he got confused, is a closet hockey fan, and thought she was actually the former Pittsburgh Penguins hockey centre Kim C. Davis?"

4. Depression

"Seriously-I get that the Catholic Church will always be a little bit behind the times, but after years of Benedict it felt like we were turning a corner on the whole gay rights issue.  Gay priests are "who am I to judge?" and the Pope met with a transgender man-I'm not expecting to be skipping down the aisle at St. Patrick's any time soon, but at least a tacit ignorance toward the most heinous of gay-bashers seemed in order.  I guess that's not the case yet though, and we'll just have to keep waiting."

5. Acceptance

"At least he's still making the Republicans uncomfortable about climate change."

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