Ouch: The “Che Guevara Pope”

Maureen Mullarkey has written for a number of mainstream Catholic publications.  They have been distancing from her a bit as her deep distress (I think that’s a fair word) toward this pontificate has grown.  She’s written some pretty hard pieces, and this latest one, titled “Che Guevara’s Pope” might be the hardest yet.  At the same time, I think she raises some criticisms that are none the less valid for their severity.

This might elicit some pushback, I don’t know, but I think there is a lot to ponder here (my emphasis and comments):

…..In large measure, Thursday’s propaganda event [PF’s speech to Congress] will prove a concluding flourish to what this pope is on course to achieve: the descent of the Catholic Church into one more geopolitical “ism,” a pious-seeming companion to every other materialist -ism that tempts modern man away from freedom and toward submission to totalitarian order.Since ascending to the papacy, Francis’ actions have served a mongrel papo-caesarism that drains Christianity of its soul. Christian idiom degrades into the carrier of a secular agenda. [Which has always been the objective of left-wing Catholics, has it not?  But is this just the bumbling of an ideologically bent man, or is it a deliberate effort to produce a de-Christified new one world church for a new world order?]

Ideolatry, the idolatry of fixed ideas, is as rampant in the Vatican as in any other directorate, and just as dangerous. Even more so. Because the pope commands deference from the world’s peoples, the present object of his worship—from climate-change dogma to the antagonisms peculiar to an anti-democratic Leftist elite—disfigures the faith of billions. It becomes a golden calf festooned with gospel quotes. [But not too many, because the Bible is icky]

Deference to a pope comes readily to Catholics. We are groomed for it. Within legitimate bounds, there is grace in that. But the boundaries are not totalizing. Outside of them, obeisance falls prey to forces that do not serve the church. Neither do they lend succor to a civilization painfully wrought from endemic tyrannies and universal poverty. Far, far from it. [I agree, so very much. As much as it pains me to do so, this is why I do arrogate to myself the right to criticize this Pope. I wish I did not have to.  But I really feel it is something that must, in conscience, be done, because he agenda appears to run so counter to what souls, and the Church, urgently need at this point in time.]

There comes a moment when deference glides into collusion. At that point, we all become Good Germans. Fascist-friendly. Trust in respected authority curdles into a thing entirely different—a willed blindness to something dark in the particular voice commanding assent. Decent and dependable, we incline toward the beckoning circle of connivance. [And this, precisely this, is the crux of the argument between those willing to do what is “unthinkable,” to criticize, even severely, a reigning pontiff, and those who refuse.  I see things pretty much as Mullarkey does, though I think it possible to refuse to join in the criticism without becoming a “good German.”]

Our own lifetime has not prepared Catholics for such a moment.[Here I disagree. I think our lifetime has, or should have, prepared us, because this Pope is simply the next logical step to some of the previous ones.  But since 1978 in particular those popes have been just good enough to keep many from seeing the dread undercurrent running through them all at least since 1958, and quite probably since long before that.] But it is here now. We can adjust our sensibilities, our priorities, and our hopes to counter this juncture. Or we can surrender our children and grandchildren to a downward slide into a retrograde world order built on contempt for the bases of those very structures that have lifted a still-increasing portion of the earth’s population out of the misery that is history’s norm.

Something in me gave way at the sight of an exultant image of Che Guevara overseeing the altar in Plaza de la Revolución, the approved site of the recent papal Mass in Havana. A sadistic, murderous thug looked down on attendees in an obscene burlesque of Christ Pantocrator. Under the gaze of a butcher and amid symbols of the regime, Jorge Bergolio joined his fellow Argentine in service to the calamitous Cuban revolution. The entire spectacle played like a farcical inversion of John Paul II’s presence in Warsaw’s Victory Square, in 1979, and in stark contrast to the message he brought to Cuba in 1998.

What collapsed was any lingering sense of obligatory constraint. Gone is the time for courtesy extended to an occupant of the papacy despite his hubris and ruinous impulses…….

………Make no mistake—there is malice in this pope. [But is it accidental, or willed, or does it not matter?] It takes little sophistication to realize that the intentions by which people understand themselves to be motivated are often not the ones that really drive them to speak and act as they do. However incoherent Francis’ logic on issues from economics to munitions, his stridency makes clear his antipathy toward the developed world……[I wonder, then, whether this Pope has never visited the US until now (and when he does so, he comes bearing not a message to scandalize the world and especially the powers that rule it, but one very much in conformity with those powers, a frequently elitist message]

There’s a great deal more worth reading at the link.

Whether the malice is intentional or not is probably immaterial.  But I don’t think Mullarkey’s use of the term excessive.  In a worldly sense, is not the Pope’s call to abandon fossil fuels something that will assuredly lead to a very much poorer world, and in that world, will any suffer more than those already very poor?  Billions will shiver in the dark and go to sleep hungry most nights.  There is simply NO alternative available at present to fossil fuels for the vast majority of present energy needs – not at anything even remotely like present cost.  Modern agriculture would cease, for one thing, without fossil fuels. World population would plummet.  I have a hard time seeing how anyone but an ideologue could really advocate moving away from fossil fuels at anytime in the next 5o or possibly even 100 years.

Even Marx is in on the act

Even more distressingly, is not the Pope malicious in his misrepresentations of Catholic belief and his shunning of especially moral doctrine, but so many doctrines of the Church?  The Synod is entirely his creature, and its more progressive aspects have to be occurring under his direct influence.  There is far too much resistance for this sudden hard swerve towards full-on modernism to be simply happenstance.  Even more, has there not been an incredible shift in how the Church is presented to the world in terms of Her mission and purpose?  Pope Francis says his duty is to bring people together for worldly “good” deeds…..is it not to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to everyone and save souls?

Bones points out that Pope Francis had a golden opportunity to strike a game-changing blow against Planned Barrenhood in his speech before Congress, and refused to do so.  He only barely addressed the subject of the sanctity of life, and then to set up his call for an end to the death penalty!  No matter one’s views on how the death penalty may be used or abused in the US, the simple fact of the matter is, it is plain Catholic DOCTRINE that the State has the right of the sword!  But there is never any justification for abortion, ever, and yet, while the issue hangs in the balance in the very halls of Congress in which he spoke, he did not even breathe a word of condemnation for this hideous sin!  At the same time, he lectures us all on climate change and income inequality!  This, in the nation that has probably been more successful than any in history in lifting people out of poverty and into a much more comfortable life, to the point of destructive excess!!!

As Bones noted most poignantly:

If the Pope cannot join his VOICE to the millions in the US who are protesting and campaigning for the defunding of Planned Parenthood then I ask you, in what sense is this Pope’s visit ‘pastoral and to whom, precisely, is he a pastor’?

The US is only one of 6 nations that permits abortions beyond 5 months.  It is the only known nation with a well-established and prolific industry involved int he trade of murdered baby parts.  And yet, when the Pope visits…..crickets.

Pope Francis has the world’s elite – media, politicians, big business leaders, academics – salivating at his feet while they thunderously applaud.  On this trip, has he really chastised the powerful while comforting the afflicted, or has it been the other way around?  Who is more afflicted than the billions of dead unborn?  How does making energy, the lifeblood of all economic development, far, far more expensive, do anything to stand in solidarity with the poor?

I am at a loss, folks.  My heart breaks.  When all the world’s powerful, or the left-leaning of them, anyway (which is most of them) throw roses at your feet, watch out. That’s a very dangerous spot for any soul to be in, let alone the Vicar of Christ.  I fear it means something is horrifically awry.