Saturday, April 09, 2016

Margaret Archer-- Nasty, Nasty

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I woke up yesterday at around 4am and fumbled around for the TV remote to get some light on in the room. And who should come up on my TV but BERNIE! What a happy surprise! He was chatting with the Morning Joe crew, most of whom were making an attempt to act like humans for a change. All nice! And then they started talking about how Bernie had been invited to speak at the Vatican on the morality of economics or something like that and I was thinking, "Oh, this is going to be a good day!"

That didn't last long. Once I got downstairs to my computer, there was already a budding scandal, set off by an academic, Margaret Archer, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Does she ever sound like the worst sadistic nun I ever heard of from my Catholic friends when I was a kid, the one who took great joy in inflicting pain and drawing blood.
It has also inserted Sanders into a dispute among Vatican officials. The president of the academy said Friday that Sanders didn’t follow proper protocol by failing to contact her office, and that his presence threatens to make the event political. The academy’s chancellor said he arranged the invitation and defended the Vermont senator.

“Sanders made the first move, for the obvious reasons,” Margaret Archer, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which is hosting the conference, said in a telephone interview. “I think in a sense he may be going for the Catholic vote but this is not the Catholic vote and he should remember that and act accordingly-- not that he will.”
"Not that he will?" Is she a soothsayer as well as a professor who can't express an idea in a way that anyone can understand? "'The president of the academy organizing this event has not been contacted with monumental discourtesy,' she said, referring to herself" and continuing her incredible nastiness. Sounds like David Brock gave her 30 silver coins.


Bernie's spokesperson said Archer had it wrong and that he had been invited. The Chancellor of the Academy, Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, a close aide to Pope Francis, didn't specifically call her a lying sack of shit or anything like that but he did mention to the media that he had extended the invitation to Bernie. Now that Hillary characters have started a whispering campaign that Bernie invited himself, the Bishop felt he needed to set the record straight. "I deny that, he said flatly. "It was not that way. He said it was his idea to invite Sanders. "This is not true and she knows it. I invited him with her consensus," said Sorondo, who is senior to Archer.


Sanchez Sorondo: "We are interested in having him because we have two presidents coming from Latin America, I thought it would be good to have an authoritative voice from North America."
A copy of the invitation to Sanders provided by the chancellor’s office is dated March 30 and signed by Sanchez Sorondo. The letter says he’s inviting the senator “on behalf of” Archer and the conference organizers. An announcement about Sanders’s participation, also under Sanchez Sorondo’s name, was released early Friday.

...The conference Sanders will attend marks the 25th anniversary of an encyclical by Pope John Paul II that criticized excesses of unfettered capitalism.
Archer, 73, is now laying low and won't respond to phone calls and e-mail requests from the media for a response to Sanchez Sorondo’s remarks, that seem to indicate she's off her rocker. Or maybe she just hates Jews. Or is violently anti-something Bernie stands for (like Choice or marriage equality)... who knows. But, as far as I know, she still hasn't apologized for her ugly, rude boorish remarks to the press. What a pitiful creature!

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10 Comments:

At 9:18 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

So many pitiful creatures to disappoint, so little time!

John Puma

 
At 10:15 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

There is a rebellion in the Vatican. It's Francis + 3 vs. 1,000 departments and most of their staff. Many support our awful American Bishops, so it would have been easy to find someone to stick a microphone near a disgruntled female feeling her power was being usurped. It's the same ratfucking that had the Kentucky gay marriage martyr slipped into the US Papal reception. Francis knows how to play hardball. The priest who did that was canned. Another famous PITA was actually exiled to Malta, reduced to being head chaplain of "the knights of Malta" and unable to recommend or appointment any more priests or bishops.

 
At 10:15 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

There is a rebellion in the Vatican. It's Francis + 3 vs. 1,000 departments and most of their staff. Many support our awful American Bishops, so it would have been easy to find someone to stick a microphone near a disgruntled female feeling her power was being usurped. It's the same ratfucking that had the Kentucky gay marriage martyr slipped into the US Papal reception. Francis knows how to play hardball. The priest who did that was canned. Another famous PITA was actually exiled to Malta, reduced to being head chaplain of "the knights of Malta" and unable to recommend or appointment any more priests or bishops.

 
At 12:08 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The mouth-breathers at Daily Kos and TPM thought this was the biggest scandal ever. They still do, despite what Archer's boss had to say.

 
At 12:45 PM, Anonymous Rupert said...

I think there must have been an honest misunderstanding.

I'm somewhat familiar with Margaret Archers works. She is brilliant theorists who has made important contributions to sociological theory, especially with regards to the relation between structure, culture and agency.

And as a person she is feisty with a lot of integrity. Look for example how she responded to conservative anti-abortion critics: http://www.endslavery.va/content/endslavery/en/getinvolved/contributions/archer_reply.html
I think she honestly believed that Sanders was trying to score a political point in a dishonest way.

She's definitly not againt his politics. She is after all a leading scholar in the Critical Realist movement, and it's not really a secret that "Critical realism" is marxism, basicly. The whole bunch of them are/were socialists in some way or another: Roy Bhaskar, Maggie Archer, Tony Lawson, David Graeber, Andrew Collier, Andrew Sayer, Geoffrey Hodgson, Ted Benton etc...

They are doing some important stuff, furthering critical socialist reasoning within the academies. T



 
At 1:53 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Fortunately, not everyone in this country is a catholic.

 
At 4:21 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

........Ha! and watch Bernie snub her as he's being introduced to some people here at the Vatican: http://imgur.com/SEu5n5x?r

 
At 8:48 AM, Blogger Sun said...

If she truly thought, as you said, that Bernie was trying to score points, illegitimately, she is the impetuous, self-righteous, bombastic, ignorant, know-nothing, piggishly stubborn, blowhard we imagine her to be. Nothing new, here.

 
At 5:07 PM, Blogger Yastreblyansky said...

You'd like Margaret Archer's sharp tongue when she's calling out assholes who attacked Sánchez Sorondo specifically for inviting abortion supporter Jeffrey Sachs, yes, the same one, to a Papal Academy of Social Sciences conference during the rollout of Laudato Si last year:
“Is your sole concern with human dignity confined to the period between conception and live-birth? If so, this is a travesty of Catholic Social Teaching, whose concern is not confined to the newborn but extends to the development of all those potentialities and powers that exist only in potentia at birth (such as walking and talking) that develop or can be irreparably damaged throughout life....
“Do you really have a higher moral standard than the Pope? Or is your own minimalistic version of the Creed, consisting of the single item: ‘’We believe in the ethical depravity of abortion’ considered to be an improvement?....
“I am appointed by the Pope and responsible directly to him. I’m afraid that leaves you and your cohort out in the cold. Moreover, we work pro bono and are therefore are self-supporting, which makes me wonder which lobbyists meet your salary bill?”

Whatever the truth of the current kerfuffle, Archer is not one of the bad guys.

 
At 5:14 PM, Blogger Yastreblyansky said...

Sorry, I see Rupert above linked the same piece.

 

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