Posted on 07/19/2015 5:31:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
Recently we had a rendezvous with my daughter’s future roommate (plus her mother and her mother’s best friend). The roommate is moving to Los Angeles from New Jersey after graduating from college. When we met the mother and her friend, they were both prominently wearing crosses on necklaces. We felt much more comfortable about the future of our child’s new living arrangement. They were delighted to find out we were committed Jews.
I spend extensive time discussing with people who adhere to different denominations of Christianity. I am still befuddled by the varieties of Protestantism and I am confident I will never get it down as hard as I try. I rarely, if ever, criticize someone adhering peacefully to their religion. At this juncture I feel compelled to criticize this Pope (Francis) because he has crossed over into my area – public policy – more than sticking to healing the faithful of his religion.
That is not unfamiliar territory for Jewish Republicans. We experience this often from rabbis, due to the fact the vast majority of rabbis are people of the Left. They feel compelled to express their left-leaning beliefs from the pulpit, while Republicans often cringe at High Holiday services as we endure an onslaught of leftist mantra in lieu of a lesson about the Torah. As important as that is to us, it pales in comparison to the magnitude of the comments from our current Pope.
There is no doubt that Pope Francis came to his defined point of view after being shaped by his life experience in Argentina with its deeply-confused political structure. One might think that he would reject left-wing politics, having experiencing firsthand the failure of Argentina’s socialist-leaning governments. Instead he appears to have Paul Krugman, the befuddling economist and columnist for the New York Times, as his guiding light. Francis like Krugman seems to think that every failure of invasive government and restriction of capitalism is an excuse to double down with the mantra that the problem is government has not gone far enough.
First, Pope Francis issued an encyclical regarding climate change. I must stop here and cite that anyone who uses the terminology “climate change” is just downright silly. No one in their right mind does not understand that the climate is fully in flux at all times. The significant changes in the environment are not only outside our control, but beyond the scope of worldly endeavors as matters in our solar system and beyond, have grave effects on our climate and its ever evolution. I am more an adherent of George Carlin (certainly no conservative) who can be seen here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB0aFPXr4n4). I also have interviewed multiple real climatologists who question the models used to calculate these ‘severe’ weather changes either because of their inability to replicate the models or the fact that the models have been so divergent from actual experience.
But the bigger problem I have with Pope Francis generates from his comments on economic policy. You may know the Pope recently went to South America. Other than doing normal Popely duties he delivered a dissertation on economics. He chose to deliver these comments in Bolivia, which as a country is following in the footsteps of Venezuela. Bolivia is ranked as the 163rd freest country in the world out of 178 countries on the list. The President, Evo Morales, has been in office since 2005 and has no plans for retiring. Bolivia is rich in natural resources and oil, but has produced South America’s poorest economy with average daily earnings of $2. Morales has expropriated more than 20 companies.
The Pope railed against a system that “imposed the mentality at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature.” That is a turning of a phrase that any Marxist would be proud to have stated. This speech followed comments from President Morales wearing a jacket from his mass-murdered collection which was adorned with a picture of Che Guevara.
The Pope even invoked the true enemy in describing capitalism when he quoted a 4th century bishop by saying it was the “dung of the devil.” Wow, what would he call the mass murdering societies of National Socialism and Communism? Certainly, capitalists do bad things, but to be so ignorant as to not understand that more people have advanced through democratic capitalism to a quality and healthy life than through any other form of government just reeks of prejudice and denial.
This Pope does not understand how wealth is created. That very wealth feeds his church and keeps it solvent. He also does not seem to understand that capitalism breeds believers in the fruit of the divine. Does he really believe that the alternatives are not aimed at destroying the church? In effect he is expediting his own church’s execution. Yes there are religious people who abuse capitalism, but more often than not the ones who adhere to capitalism’s true betterment of mankind our religious souls and the non-believers are the abusers.
On a trip to Thailand, we had to buy a suitcase to bring home all the inexpensive clothing we bought. But I focused on how great it was for the Thais that they had quality shoes and shirts and pants at affordable prices as part of producing lower-priced products for us. Capitalism has moved in the past 30 years a few hundred million peasants in China and India from uneducated, barely-existing lives to a hope for the future where they are clothed and housed and educated.
That is us capitalists, Pope Francis, Not Che and Evo’s socialist friends in Cuba and Bolivia. Sorry, sir, but you placed the devil on the wrong team. You may need to go back and study up on Pope John Paul II.
What a sycophant for the extreme left is this fool who will preside over the final destruction of the Catholic Church which began shortly after Vatican II.
Thank God for the Sedevacantists.
For the life of me I can’t figure out what the Catholic roommate had to do with this op Ed.
If Bruce wants to go at the Pope, then swing at him but find a better lead-in to the article
Final grade “ C”
Not to mention the Christians in the ME who are now routinely slaughtered by muzzies with nary a peep from this son of a bitch.
Pope Francis said this in the same speech:
"Today we are dismayed to see how in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world many of our brothers and sisters are persecuted, tortured and killed for their faith in Jesus""This too needs to be denounced. In this third world war, waged piecemeal, which we are now experiencing, a form of genocide - and I stress the world genocide - is taking place, and it must end."
1. First an activist media that controls the news.
2. That begat an activist judiciary that makes up law.
3. Now an activist clergy?
We are the only hope to stop this.
Besides the bad grammar, this is knotching up the stupid level. How can a 4th century bishop be speaking about capitalism when the word didn't even exist at that time?
That attitude is understandable, as if modern popes are valid then RCs are bound, among other things , to reject historical teaching and accepts Prots as (separated) brethren, uphold freedom of religion, suport seperation of church and state, apologize for certain conduct of the Inquisitions, and war against Climate Change.
Yet both medieval as well as modern Catholicism is the largest critical deformation of the NT church, while deciding the validity of Cath. teaching based upon your analysis of past teaching is contrary to the implicit assent to Rome which is required by past popes, and is to become Protestant in this regard.
The novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility means Rome can autocratically define herself, in which Scripture, Tradition and history only mean what she says in any conflict, which allows Rome to "reformulate" (redefine) herself as needed.
At best the connection is slim and casual. The article seems to be missing a paragraph or so. I guess wearing crosses=Catholicism=loyalty to the pope, which it is supposed to do.
A good economic lesson for Pope Francis. Something my late econ professor from St. Joe, Fr. White, could have explained to the pontiff.
Pope Francis: “And behind all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea called “the dung of the devil”. An unfettered pursuit of money rules.”
IOW, he called the unfettered pursuit of money the dung of the devil.
1 Timothy 6: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
I’m not a fan of this Pope, but he did not say what they say he said.
I think now impeding the free exercise of religion is the germane phrase; nothing I can find about separation (or seperation (sic)) in the 1st Amendment.
2 Thessalonians 3-10: For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.
The two scriptures do not conflict in the least.
All kinds of evils do spring from the love of money, and it is wrong to be a freeloader.
When the Pope speaks about matters of faith, he is infallible. When he talks about economics, he is obviously quite fallible.
I’m not that old and I can remember when the Church taught us children about the priests being tortured in Red China. This is a terrible turn.
“”The Pope railed against a system that “imposed the mentality at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature””
Can anyone add an interpretation to that sentence? Beats me.
Bad translation or transcription?
Here’s probably what he meant to say: “imposed the mentality of making money at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature”
Which I agree with. Too many conservatives forget that capitalism and the free market are utterly amoral, just like science.
Science is a method for finding out how the world works. Of itself it says nothing about how those facts are discovered or are used. Thus horrific experimentation on unwilling humans is a perfectly scientific method. You can’t use science to prove it’s wrong. Morality in science has to come from outside science.
Similarly, the free market system, the term I prefer to capitalism, does not in and of itself have any morality. Slavery, drug markets and child prostitution are all perfect examples of the market in action. The market is simply the most efficient method we’ve found for providing what people want efficiently. It has nothing to say about what they will want or the methods used to satisfy those wants.
Any morality in a market, as in science, has to come from outside.
Sorry Bruce, it is so, the Pope is a commie. He Doesn’t deserve to be called “Sir”, “Your Holiness” or anything like that.
*rme*How can the Holy Father be a Communist, who are Atheists and don't believe in God?
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