Kim Davis and Liberty Counsel (which group is not known to be truthful), have been having a field day. Liberty Counsel put out a press release and the NY Timesconfirmed from a Vatican spokesman that the meeting took place. 

On Tuesday night, her lawyer, Mathew D. Staver, said in a telephone interview that Ms. Davis and her husband, Joe, were sneaked into the Vatican Embassy by car on Thursday afternoon. Francis gave her rosaries and told her to “stay strong,” the lawyer said. The couple met for about 15 minutes with the pope, who was accompanied by security guards, aides and photographers. Mr. Staver said he expected to receive photographs of the meeting from the Vatican soon.

On Wednesday, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, confirmed that the meeting took place, but he declined to elaborate. “I do not deny that the meeting took place, but I have no other comments to add,” he said.

There are a number of things that are just weird as heck about this. The pope, first, tried to keep this meeting on the downlow.

Mr. Staver added that he, the Davises and Vatican officials had agreed to keep the meeting secret until the pope had left the United States because, he said, “we didn’t want the pope’s visit to be focused on Kim Davis.”

Since Liberty Counsel was caught in another lie about Kim Davis and a large gathering in Peru, it's to be expected that some, including myself, initially wondered if the meeting between the pope and Davis was even a 1 story. I do think it's peculiar he tried to keep it a secret. Why? Was the pope concerned that his private comments would throw shade on his attempts to appear to be a reasonable pope? Too late. Second, it was not appropriate in the first place to have the pope addressing congress. This country was built on separation of church and state and a secular government. Kim Davis is not catholic; for the pope to reach out to create a meeting in which he approved her religious objection stance instead of obeying the law was the wrong thing to do. He is not over the United States government. Third,  Davis just changed political parties to be a republican- is she now going to switch her religion to be catholic, since she was so eager to fly up to get a hug from the pope, since presumably the church she belongs to, since it's not the ONE 1 AND HOLY apostolic church would be an apostasy according to the pope? In fact, it's ridiculous-some of the early groups that came to this country came for religious freedom to escape the catholic church, and some of the current day evangelical groups are in direct opposition to the catholic church. 

Even as an atheist, I had some good will towards the pope, even where I thought it was wrong for him to address congress, because of his political positions. That good will has now evaporated. Once a political figure, even one that has comingled politics with religion, decides not only that it is okay to disenfranchise LGBT, but specifically reach out to a person who flouts our law and courts, in order to discriminate against others WHILE BEING PAID to uphold the law, that figure is not longer worthy of continued consideration. That's YOU, pope. 

Esquire