Tag Archives: catholic

Is the American Pope a case of follow-the-money?

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To everyone’s surprise, the new Pope is an American. Like almost everyone else in the world, I’d never heard of him before yesterday. But he looks like a straight shooter and a stand-up guy. And, as popes go, he looks pretty healthy.

For readers in my tribe who are dismayed that he once expressed some passing criticism of President Trump’s summary deportation of illegal aliens, I ask you: What’s a clergyman supposed to say – kick the SOBs out?

I did not expect to see this – an American Pope – now or ever. Reports are that the smoke-watchers crowding the Vatican grounds didn’t either, and were a bit disappointed.

That’s not because Europeans hate or even dislike Americans. The practice of scorning American tourists ended at least a generation ago. The days of ugly Americans are now replaced by the days of rich Americans – and everyone likes customers who are rich.  (That said, it doesn’t hurt to greet people in their language when you’re in their country. “Buenos dias” and “bonjour” fetch a lot more smiles than “Hey, howya doin?”)

So don’t be fooled by Americans who sanctimoniously advertise to fellow Americans that they identify themselves as Canadians, not Americans, when they go to Europe, ostensibly to trick the Europeans into liking them. Those Americans are revealing a dislike for Americans alright – by themselves. Those Americans hate America, and they project that hatred onto the world.

Although Europeans don’t hate Americans the way some Americans hate Americans, I still wouldn’t expect the sun-drunk, ecstasy-filled citizens of Rome milling about St. Peter’s Square this week to be whispering, “Let’s pray they elect an Americano!”

And they weren’t. So why did the Cardinals elect an Americano?

Here’s a relevant factoid: The Vatican has deep financial problems.

Here’s another relevant factoid: When the Notre Dame burned a few years ago, guess who donated the greatest amount for the rebuilding, apart from the French themselves (several of whom were extraordinarily generous). It was the Americanos.

Connect the dots. 

I hope the strategy pans out. We need the Catholic Church more than ever before – and I say that as a Protestant.

Who the heck does the Commie Pope think they is?

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Now when the radical priest come to get me released
We was all on the cover of Newsweek

Paul Simon, Me and Julia

Let’s start with a different Pope. Let’s start with the Pope who came of age in Poland while it was enslaved for decades under the Soviet Union after WWII. He’s the Pope who went home after the Sistine Chapel routine to accept the adoration of literally millions of his countrymen.

He’s the Pope who helped bring down the tyranny of the Soviets who knew all about military power but nothing about the spiritual kind. He’s the Pope who nearly died in an assassination attempt apparently masterminded by those same Soviets and carried out by a Turkish thug with aid from another enslaved country, Bulgaria.

He’s the Pope who publicly forgave his Muslim attacker, downplayed the attacker’s Soviet and Bulgarian connections in order to keep the peace, and asked that the attacker be pardoned. The would-be assassin was duly pardoned, went back to Turkey, and converted to Catholicism.

He’s St. John Paul II.

I join tens of millions of Poles – and hundreds of millions of Catholics, fellow Protestants and other people of faith around the world – in loving that man. (I once saw him at the conclusion of a pilgrimage but that’s a different column.)

The current Pope was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina, and took the name Francis when he moved to Rome. The Cardinals thought they were showing real strategerie in picking a guy from Latin America. There’s lots of alleged Catholics there, and their numbers grow every day. In contrast, in Italy there aren’t even many putative Catholics, even fewer real ones, and their numbers are dwindling every day as Italians make a religion out of defying the Church’s birth control prohibitions.

Pope Francis is known for what he doesn’t like. He doesn’t like Israel. He doesn’t like Ukraine. He doesn’t like America. He doesn’t like Europe. He doesn’t like the best tool in history for alleviating material suffering – capitalism. 

However, he does like food. He likes to lecture people about their morals. Like all Argentinians, he likes inflation. He likes Karl Marx. But (or is it “therefore”?) he likes the most lavish palace in all of Christendom, the Vatican.

But let’s give the radical priest his due. He just came out against the gender-bender stuff. You can’t just change your gender, he says. That constitutes playing God. Only God gets to play God.

To be sure, however, it’s still Francis who gets to tell us what He says when He does.

But hey, this is a start! We have a world leader who thinks or at least says that having virtue is more important than signaling it, and that Christianity is a greater religion than wokeness.

The congregations of the woke are crying “blasphemy!” They had trusted Francis to toe the line, drink the Kool-Aid, and carry their tin cross. And he had, so far.

The problem for the woke is, the radical priests of Latin America may well be Commies and may even be gay, but they’re not transexuals. Buenos Aires is not Bangkok.  Intersectionality doesn’t go as far as intersexuality.

Francis likes to wear a dress and wears a lampshade for a hat, but don’t be fooled. There are no trannies in Argentina. John Paul II is probably glad.