Newsletter: Opinion: John Boehner steals the pope’s thunder

Happy Saturday, everyone. This is Matthew Fleischer, web editor of The Times’ Opinion section, filling in for Paul Thornton.

It was all Pope Francis all the time this week until John Boehner inserted himself into the news cycle. Even the House speaker’s resignation, however, couldn’t outdo the fanfare surrounding the pope’s first visit to the United States.

Progressives have been quick to applaud Francis for his seemingly liberal takes on climate change and poverty. But the pope is neither Democrat nor Republican, and on certain social issues, he still has a long way to go to catch up to 21st century thinking. Case in point: his efforts to improve gender equality in the church. Theologian and University of Roehampton professor of Catholic studies Tina Beattie wonders “Where are the women?” in Francis’ lofty rhetoric.

[If] Francis is serious about creating a church of the poor, he cannot ignore what has been described as "the feminization of poverty." An estimated 800 of the world's poorest women die every day of causes related to pregnancy and childbirth, and it is scandalous that the question of maternal mortality remains unaddressed in Catholic social teaching. The international community's attempts to promote women's sexual and reproductive rights repeatedly founder on opposition spearheaded by the Holy See acting as a mouthpiece for religious conservatives.

At the grass-roots level, the Catholic Church is a force for good in poor communities. Books by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, and by Robert Calderisi, describe congregations and Catholic nongovernmental organizations in the forefront of providing education and healthcare for the world's poorest women and girls. These efforts rarely allow edicts from Rome to dictate their response to the need for contraceptive advice and post-abortion care, but they are constantly under threat from powerful conservative forces.

Francis repeatedly insists that realities should come before ideas. He says he wants a messy church that is a "field hospital" for the wounded. To that end, he could challenge the church's culture of censorship on many women's issues.

>> Click here for more

One person apparently not disappointed by the pope or his rhetoric was House Speaker John Boehner, whose “blue eyes grew moist and his voice shaky” as he described an audience with his holiness to reporters. He promptly resigned his post the next morning. Washington Post

Boehner’s departure was probably long overdue. He was a largely ineffective relic from a bygone era of deal-making, in an increasingly partisan world. L.A. Times

Do you know who Junipero Serra was? Not a lot of Americans do. That may soon change, thanks to Pope Francis, however, who just made Serra this country’s first Latino saint. L.A. Times

GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson recently said he "would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation." It’s worth remembering a time in the not-so-distant past when many Americans thought the same of a Catholic president. L.A. Times

Ben Carson may not think a Muslim should be president, but that puts him a few centuries behind the thinking of America’s founding fathers. During the writing of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson was asked to consider whether a "Mahomaden," as Muslims were referred to back then, should ever be allowed to hold office in the United States. Guess what his answer was? L.A. Times

Want to weigh in? Please send any feedback you have about this newsletter to letters@latimes.com.