Saint Bernie's Basilica

The Sanders campaign and its followers have a remarkable talent of acquiring instant expertise on complicated subjects; Planned Parenthood, HIV/AIDS, feminism, the real history of the Civil Rights Movement and now on the politics of the Holy See.

Good work if you can get it, I suppose.

But it does help if you can shake yourself loose for a moment from the narcissistic delusion that everything in this world revolves around the Democratic primary in the United States, more specifically, around the concept that a Bernie Sanders win in it – or even in the State of New York – is humanity’s most breathtaking and highest goal.

Senator Sanders was not invited to Rome by the Pope. Just a hint: His Holiness will not be in Rome while Bernie Sanders is in Rome, on April 15th and 16th. What Sanders said is not true:

“This is an invitation from the Vatican, from a pope that I have enormous respect for in term of the level of consciousness that he’s raising on the need to have morality in our economy.”

Pope Francis will be on the Greek island of Lesbos – with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the head of the Orthodox Church – addressing the Syrian refugee crisis that is destabilizing Europe.

The Patriarch, relations with the Eastern Church and the crisis in Syria with all its attendant effects, say on the stability of Europe or thousands of refugees drowned in the Mediterranean are a little bit higher on the agenda of the Vatican than a U.S. partisan squabble. Sorry to disappoint.

Next up, again shaking the frame of But How Does This Relate To Bernie Give Me Moar Bernie Squee, I’d imagine the Vatican is if anything pissed at the uproar, not delighted to have a fellow truth-teller within its marble walls (talking to twenty academics, but anyway). Why?

Because if you paid any attention whatsoever, you’d know that yesterday, the Curia – the Papal administration – released what’s called an Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, dealing with the Church and the family – a huge and controversial document of immense importance, one they’ve been working on for years. A matter of Church doctrine, something Rome takes rather more seriously than anything really.

The Sanders controversy plunked itself right in the middle of that release with all the grace and subtlety of a cartoon falling piano.

A falling piano that – by the way – misstated the words, agenda and schedule of the Pontiff, whom Catholics believe to be the Vicar of Christ. Plunk. Plunk.

But of course, none of that matters because Bernie. Yay Bernie good press! Bernie and the Pope! Yay! Feel the Bern! Any press is good press! Moar Bernie Squee!

If that’s what you believe, I suggest you put down the bong for a second or two and think.

The Sanders campaign has from the beginning been marred by several deficiencies, among them a stunning lack of understanding what is and what is not culturally sensitive or appropriate, a flagrant lack of respect for any values outside its own goals – see, for example, the decision to denounce Planned Parenthood as ‘establishment ‘, a slap in the face of pro-choice women and liberals in general – and a fast and loose relationship with observable reality, such as endorsements it claimed but didn’t actually have, the spat two days ago over his opponent’s qualifications based on a too-cursory reading of a newspaper article or even the yawning competence gap illustrated by Senator Sanders’ interview with the Daily News.

That’s pretty bad even without the obligatory reference to the online squads of hecklers formally outside the campaign’s control but hardly unknown to or discouraged by it.

What is pretty much unprecedented in American political history however is this: to claim the imprimatur of the Roman Pontiff for a political campaign, let alone to do so without actually receiving it. Or for that matter blind-siding the Curia itself with the announcement on live national television.

Kim Davis, the homophobic Kentucky county clerk, tried something similar; she didn’t go this far. She did manage to get the Papal nuncio – the emissary of the Holy See, which doesn’t use the title ambassador – recalled to Rome. Because stuff like this is big.

Claiming a Papal endorsement – of whatever degree – you don’t have results in roughly the same optics you’d get from walking into Buckingham Palace in sweats and a tank top.

It’s just not done.

The New York Daily News, the state’s most-circulated tabloid

But no matter, it’s all worth it if he can squeeze a vote or two out of it, right? Wrong.

Dana Houle did a pretty good write-up on Twitter as to how this whole thing probably went down and how bad it makes Senator Sanders look.

That may not matter to his followers – in fact, I’m certain it doesn’t, once you’ve thrown Paul Krugman overboard, why stop there? – it matters to Democrats elected and not, it matters to Catholics, and it’ll matter to New York voters.

This in part because Sanders will be out of the state in the crucial days before the primary on the 19th of this month. He’ll be otherwise engaged addressing a few academics in Rome.

Among them notably not the Pope himself, given that Pontifex Maximus will not be in the Eternal City at all. Sanders may have even been led to believe he was, if true another can of worms I’d prefer to not even think about.

So the phrase you’re looking for is not Yay Bernie Papal Hugs Moar, it’s Oh My God how did this clusterfuck happen.

And that’s a good question. But as we all know, the remarkably introspection-free world of Planet Sanders doesn’t ask questions like that or – God forbid – consider a candidate fuck-up to be even theoretically possible.

Because oligarchy. Carry on.