Many people were chagrined that Pope Francis met personally with Kim Davis, lending a patina of spiritual credibility to her odious mission of exclusion and bigotry. A close friend of mine found this a solid reason to dismiss him completely, calling him "a kinder, gentler bigot, but still a bigot."
I am an ex-Catholic atheist. I'm not an anti-theist, which I think is how atheists are seen by most theists (and to be fair, most public atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Bill Maher and the late Christopher Hitchens certainly ARE aggressively anti-theist). As a liberal and atheist, I was disappointed that the pope lent that awful woman credibility, but as an ex-Catholic, I was not surprised by it.
It depends on what you expect of a Catholic pope. Francis has already far exceeded my expectations of what a liberal pope can achieve. And not just through his public statements. For example, he took that asshole ex-bishop of St. Louis, the one who stated publicly that John Kerry could not take communion in his diocese - literally and unilaterally ex-communicating him - and who was rewarded for his assholedness by Benedict with a cardinalship and seat on the Vatican equivalent of the Supreme Court - and basically moved him to an irrelevant sinecure, where his opinion would never matter again.
Point being, Francis has brought a massive doctrinal and cultural shift in the Vatican to the left.
But is it enough? No pope will ever be pro-abortion or pro-homosexual, or as liberal as I am. I don't expect a pope to reflect my values. Most Catholics I know, some of whom are liberals who still somehow believe, and some of whom are cultural Catholics who never bothered to question it, are overjoyed at the changes he has brought to the church.
As I've said, I'm not an anti-theistic atheist. A lot of people do wonderful things in the name of their god. A lot of people do terrible things in the name of their god too. Mostly, I want religion to inspire their people to be kinder and nobler, or at least do no harm. But religion is just one cover for abominable behavior. We still see lots of asshole Christians, and if they didn't have a god, they'd likely be asshole Atheists. Even without an imaginary sky-boss, humans are quite ingenious about inventing ways to rationalize their atrocities.
I reject arrogant public policy done in God's name, but I still can't wholly reject religion as a negative. I couldn't even begin to list all of the programs run by churches of every denomination that directly and positively impact our neighborhoods and cities. If religion were to stop existing, a huge portion of this nation's charity would be wiped out with them. Some other non-religious charities might step up to replace them, but I doubt they would come close to fully replacing the needs served now. These churches are damn near worth their tax exemptions.
Nor does Francis' meeting with that troll completely discount everything else he's done. He has taken a corrupt, arrogant and, in many ways, moribund institution and given it a greater push in the right direction than anyone has in hundreds of or maybe a couple thousand years.
In the same sense that all politics is local, all religion is similarly parochial. Most Catholics don't experience Catholicism beyond the boundaries of their parish. American Catholics have long negotiated the dissonance between Church doctrine and their own lives as they lead them without too much fuss, no matter how massive the dissonance. They can even shop around for more liberal parishes within a diocese. Here in Cleveland, liberal Catholics drift toward St. Malachi, a near West Side church locally famous for their services to the poor.
The parish I grew up in was very strong socially and well-supported by a congregation of mostly middle to upper-middle class parishioners. That congregation has drastically eroded over the decades. When I was growing up, they had four masses on Sunday as well as a Saturday night mass. Now I think they have two a week, maybe three. And this is after absorbing a significant share of parishioners from a nearby parish that was completely shut down.
My old parish, I think, is quite typical. The erosion of the parishes has been slow and steady. Some like me left because we could no longer defend the whole concept intellectually. Some left because of the mean nuns. (This is not an exaggeration. Some of the hardest laughs you will have in your life can come from listening to ex-Catholics telling you nun stories.) Some just don't want to get up early on Sundays.
And a LOT of people whose faith withstood the liberalization of culture from the '60s and '70s completely checked out as the molestation scandals broke. I don't think any other organization could withstand something like that. No matter what you believe religiously or intellectually or cosmically, I honestly don't understand how you could retain spiritual investment in an institution where something like that happens.
So if this pope can bring back some of the energy, virtue, integrity and affirmative mission to a church that seemed certain to collapse under its own corruption, scandal, perversion and inherent cultural and spiritual stasis, I'm all for him. He has already done much good, and may continue to do so for many years.
But don't expect him to be Abbie Hoffman.