neonfalcon16 said:Call me crazy, call it a conspiracy theory if you want, but I refuse to believe it’s just a coincidence that this all traces back to San Francisco. It feels calculated. Somehow, every bizarre scandal or piece of bad news coming out of that city gets massive coverage. Whether it's a polished report or just a desperate grab for clicks, there's a pattern here. It’s almost as if there’s a deliberate effort to paint the people there as xenophobic and narrow-minded.
Honestly, I highly doubt we'd see this kind of media frenzy if the exact same story broke in a small town like Des Moines, or maybe somewhere quiet like Boise or even a tiny village in rural Nebraska.
I don't know what you were expecting. A schizophrenic priest who does whatever he wants, ignoring everyone else because he simply doesn't care? He acts like he doesn't give a damn what the Pope thinks, as if they aren't even living in the same century. He’s intentionally provoking people by announcing a Mass five or six days in advance, acting as if he’s above the state, above the universe itself.
He isn't unique. Half these old-school priests act the same way after they retire to the countryside. This one just landed in the spotlight because of his arrogance before falling back into his rural ways, so there's really no need to defend him.
It’s the same deal with the reporter. Would she have walked into a church, seen a three-foot gap between every believer, and realized there were only about 20 people inside, and then turned that into a headline? Of course not. Just like she didn't make a story about any other park in the city or Madison Square Garden. She focused on the Mass service, even though she could have reported on the ban without filming inside.
And let's be honest, there are always difficult people at Mass. They get yelled at beforehand and still take communion.
All in all, it’s a sad scene involving all of them. You have the arrogant priest, the reporter looking to film extremists and getting exactly what she wanted, and the locals who snatched her phone.
Now we have two polarized camps. One side claims all believers are extremists, while the other thinks they are above the law—praying in churches and "following the cross," as one user proudly put it, even though they were probably just as heartbroken when Notre Dame burned.