Y'all - the Catholic Church is not only a conservative institution, it is a strong contender for the most conservative institution in the world. I don't say that (here) in a disparaging way, I mean it in a neutral, literal sense. The Church's entire modus operandi is that it seeks to conserve what it believes to be apostolic teaching - disciplines, practices, and prudential judgements vary across place and time, but the teachings themselves never ever change. Hailing the Pope or a bishop as some kind of progressive icon is nonsensical, and is hard for me to see as anything other than a very worrying sign of the reactionary period we're living in.
The President of the United States is to the right of the head of the most conservative institution in the world (the Pope) and instead of viewing that as an extremely worrying sign of the reactionary period we're in, people have decided the Pope and the Church are progressive
