First, there’s economics. I wouldn’t call Pope Francis the “Commie Pope,” as some do, but it’s a fact that his admirers have included Cuban communist dictator Raul Castro and self-described American socialist Bernie Sanders who implied that the Pope is a socialist.
Understand that this former Argentine priest named Jorge Bergoglio was shaped by Argentinian economics and politics. In the early 1900’s, Argentina was wealthier on a per capita basis than Canada or Australia – it was about the tenth wealthiest country in the world.
But political instability and recurrent bouts of socialism and oppressive regulations choked off the economy. Argentina has now deteriorated to the status of an undeveloped country. Inflation runs rampant, politics are unstable and corruption is everywhere.
This is what shaped Bergoglio’s views. The form of capitalism he saw was something we would describe as, at best, “cronyism.”
As Pope, he frequently impugns capitalism, as if the cronyism he witnessed in Argentina is the same thing. He suggests that capitalism is responsible for world hunger. He thinks socialism is a better model.
Most educated people know that the reality of socialism is quite different than this Pope’s idealization of it. It is a fact, not just an opinion, that capitalism makes the economic pie bigger for everyone. Over the last 100 years, capitalism has reduced the rate of extreme poverty in the world from 60% to 20%.
Meanwhile, socialism shrinks the pie and encourages class warfare over what little remains. The winners of the socialist exercise in pie-shrinking and class-warring are the ruling elites. The poor get ground into dust.
Two popes ago was Pope John Paul II, who saw this first-hand as he grew up in communist Poland. A smart, worldly and compassionate man, he helped rid his native country of the Soviet menace to the point that the Soviets tried unsuccessfully to assassinate him through Bulgarian proxies. Finally free of socialism, Poland is now a prosperous and capitalist member of the European Union.
Like naïve high school students, Pope Francis seems stuck on the idea of socialism with no historical awareness of its repeated failure and no self-awareness of his hypocrisy in advocating it.
He embraces socialism for others, not himself. He lives as the absolute monarch of the country known as the Vatican in an ornate palace filled with magnificent art collections where visitors beg to kiss his $650,000 ring. He presides over an empire to which millions of people pledge their fealty and give their money, even as he calls money “the devil’s dung.”
In exchange for their fealty and their devil dung, the devout mostly get damned. The Pope criticizes them for trying to make money even as he expects them to gift to his empire some of it, and mocks them for “breeding like rabbits” even as he clings to prohibitions on contraception.
Seems this Pope abhors hard work and frequent sex. Is it because the joy people feel in such pursuits distracts from his command over them?
Contrast Judge Amy Coney Barrett. As a respected federal appellate judge, she’s skeptical about overreaching governmental regulations that squelch economic opportunity.
She thinks the job of judges is to judge by applying the law to the case in front of them. It’s the job of legislators accountable to the people, not judges or popes, to make those laws.
She’s doubtful that the Constitution contains a right to an abortion, for the simple but compelling reason that it’s never mentioned. If people want narrow or broad or unlimited rights to abort a fetus, they should ask their legislators to enact legislation saying so, not ask judges to invent such legislation.
She thinks people accused of crime should be entitled to due process rather than being presumed guilty by administrative kangaroo courts, even if they’re men and the crime of which they’re accused entails sex. She thinks immunity for cops should not extend to falsifying evidence.
In her personal life, Barrett and her husband have been, as I suppose the Pope would say, breeding like rabbits. She has five biological children, one of whom has Downs syndrome, plus two adopted Haitian children. The Left condemns her “colonialism” in adopting the Haitians, as if those children are hankering Haiti. The Left is also bugged that she didn’t, and still hasn’t, aborted any of the seven.
I’m guessing the Pope is annoyed that the couple slowed in shoveling devil dung his way for long enough to enjoy the God-given pleasure of conceiving, birthing and raising children.
As a judge, Barrett earns a government salary that is a fraction of the millions she could earn at big law firms after having graduated number one in her Notre Dame Law School class. She wears a wedding ring, but it’s not valued at $650,000 and she does not invite people to beg to kiss it. She lives in an ordinary house, not a palace, and is a mom to her school-age children. I don’t know this for a fact, but I doubt the house contains any Michelangelo’s.
She’s definitely a Catholic, and doesn’t just say that. (I’m not Catholic, though I have a lot of respect for that faith and most others that are sincerely felt.)
Here’s the question: Is she too Catholic for Pope Francis?
So much is upside down in today’s world. Maybe Francis would fit better as a Supreme Court justice where he could infallibly invent leftish laws without accountability to the people, and Barrett would fit better as a pope where she could lead Catholics by example.
Ah, but that won’t work. This pope who preaches equality does not allow women to be priests.
the Aspen beat 
Excellent and accurate assessment. Francis is the least pope-like leader the Church has ever had and I am praying that we survive him.
The world would be a better place if we had more like this Supreme Court nominee. Judge Barrett…if she doesn’t make it as a Justice maybe she can be a saint.
Believe me, if Barrett were a Saint, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops would be among the last to know. This Sissy Empire wouldn’t know what to make of a real woman — Mary comes to mind, for starters (As for the “France First” patriot, Joan of Arc, who did she think she was — Donald Trump?). I imagine the prelates’ tastes incline more toward the openly lesbian bishops on display in The Episcopal Church.
The most significant difference between the two figures is that Barrett, as a federalist, will be far more faithful to the Catholic principle of subsidiarity (“local control”) than this over-reaching, globalist Pope will ever be, with his desire to fold The Church into an ecumenical, socially “integrated,” United Nations-run New World Order. She will uphold the U.S. Constitution, while he busily dismantles the 2,000-year-old Christian Deposit of Faith, brick by brick.
Meanwhile, the great irony is dawning on America’s Catholics that Donald Trump is the most Catholic president this nation has ever had, and he isn’t even a Catholic. As you said, the world is upside-down.
You’ve gotten to the crux of the matter. Great column.
“Crux,” of course, is Latin for “cross.” Yes, The Cross lies at the heart of the matter.
Pop Francis unlike his predecessor is also an appeaser of Islam. When I heard they had chosen an Argentinian to be Pope I knew the Catholic Church and the Western World would be in trouble as every Argentinian I have ever met was a Socialist.
I’m not a Catholic either but the last 2 Popes were something, Benedict was quite a scholarly thinker and the letter he wrote to the Imams was brilliant. I know a few who have left the Church over Francis, it would seem the Cardinals had other things in mind electing this guy, not a very worldly thinker at all. A Constitutional Constructionist is needed at the SCOTUS, enough with the activism.
Amen, as a converted Catholic and military veteran with several years of overseas service I too have been disappointed by our Pope. Compare the two Germanys which recently were reunited. Even with excessive government interference the economic growth of the west Bundesrepublic far exceeded the socialist eastern sector not to mention the environmental atrocities. It’s past time liberals took time to study history!
As one for the past 50 years who has worked and owned newspaper, television, and now radio properties it’s time today’s national media wake up and do the same!
Column right on the mark. I wonder if she has received the endorsement of Father Jenkins, Notre Dame’s President.
While I agree with most of this assessment, I need to address one thing “the Pope doesn’t allow women to be priests”. The pope doesn’t have the authority to change a sacrament, only Christ does because He instituted it. Jesus instituted an all male priesthood for good reason: the church is female and the bride of Christ.
Two significant aspects of the man: he is a Jesuit, and, Jesuits since 1942 are secular socialists now wearing a South American Communist ideology Jesuits and other members of other orders named Liberation Theology. I expect Liberation Theology is a topic familiar to Glenn and commenters here. My little contribution to awareness of Liberation Theology, to include its KGB roots, is here: https://theological-geography.net/?p=301
I got no idea why Anita Ekberg’s photo is at the end but I am very motivated to read and find out why. The column looks very intriguing. So few know just how deep into US the KGB was/is.
Yes. Testimony in the 50s by Bella Dodd about how Stalinists seeded our seminaries with homosexuals in order to corrupt The Church makes Ira Levin pop thrillers such as “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Boys from Brazil” read like comic books.
And David Graham’s “little contribution” to our knowledge is starting to make me feel like a kindergartner.
The KGB was also founded the Antiwar movement and funded the Stockholm World Peace Conference wile funding and instigating Revolutions around the world and the USA gets called Imperialist for being the opposition. None of this is in Howard Zinn’s history books AND that is the shame! After Saigon fell in 75, something like 11 or 13 other country’s fell to Communism yet the Domino Theory is called a crank.
Pictures of Anita and other lovely ladies from former years I include for two reasons, one gross and one subtle. The gross reason is, I want to repel the puritanical from lingering at my blog. The subtle reason is, and this has two aspects: (1) I am devoted to beauty and to me the human female form is beautiful, and (2) I want to say, with Oetinger and ever so quietly, that the end of the ways of God is corporeality . . . so, I say to myself, be at peace and homage with what is. After all, why should God have all the fun? (. . . an rhetorical question which has at least two possible meanings.)
Thank you for visiting Theological Geography!
I’m reminded of a song: “The radical priest came to get my release, it was all on the cover of Newsweek.”
Bottom of the 9th, down 1-0, bases loaded, (2) outs, (2) strikes, and you hit it out of the park! Congrats on the home run.
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