Family get together yesterday. The mother of my husband’s first cousin once removed’s mother (got that?) was there. She’s been active in liberal politics for decades. She somehow discovered I was a Catholic and says don’t I just love Pope Francis and starts in on how wonderful Francis is and that the Church finally has a Pope who wants to help the poor. Mr. Mercat says I did a good job. I said I have loved every pope in my lifetime. She said “oh, well did you hear what he said last week?” I said, I heard what the MSM said he said. etc etc. Finally she made the comment about the Church finally doing something about the poor. I said, very sweetly, that the Catholic Church has been helping the poor for centuries, millennium and that it was part of who we are. I started to offer her some books on Church history but I could tell she was done so I stopped. We started discussing the deserts.
Thanks for another interesting thread. Methinks the good Holy Father is quite guilty of breaking the Western cardinal rule that demands Western “nuance”, and Western pandering.
Francis often models the proverbial “bull in the china closet” with his proclamations, and certainly in observing our American self-centric reaction to everything he says, he appears to also have some Rhett Butler in him—wherein he might well say to the West, “frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”.
The man is not PC. Neither was, you-know-who.
Kind of an interesting slant when given the massive wealth the Catholic Church has amassed over the centuries. Even more amazing when, I know that the Church exhorts others to give of themselves while holding onto its own wealth. I was stationed in S. Italy in the late '70s and our unit sponsored a Catholic orphanage. The Church owned the facility, which was in terrible repair with many windows were just rough holes without even frames for pane, and a leaky roof, and dysfunctional plumbing, etc. The Church supplied one priest and 3 nuns and allowed use of the "facility" under the conditions that charitable contributions paid all the bills (including feeding/clothing the staff).