Posted on 09/24/2015 7:45:59 AM PDT by Kaslin
I've been a Roman Catholic since 1954.
I have great respect for Pope Francis. When it comes to matters of faith and morals, what he says, goes.
But when it comes to politics and economics, the pope is about as far from infallible as anyone can get.
For example, he was in Cuba earlier this week, meeting informally with Fidel Castro and touring the island to say Masses and meet with priests.
Apparently the pope was having such a good time he forgot that for more than half a century Cuba has been a rotten communist prison camp and his hosts Fidel, and his brother Raul, have been the wardens.
The people of Cuba have been denied every basic human freedom there is, plus they've been impoverished en masse and deprived of the simple blessings of modern life by the Castros' brand of atheistic socialism.
Yet apparently Pope Francis couldn't see the barbed wire that still surrounds Fidel's broken-down paradise.
His visit to Cuba was a perfect chance for him to throw his moral weight around and shame the Castro brothers before the whole world.
But unlike John Paul II, who went to Communist Poland to encourage the creation of Solidarity and meet with its brave leaders, Francis ignored the existence of Cuba's political dissenters and prisoners of conscience.
How great would it have been if Pope Francis had stood in Havana Cathedral and delivered a "Mr. Castro, cut down that barbed wire" sermon?
Instead, in the poorest and least free dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere, he warned the people against letting riches rule your life.
Getting too rich and losing your spiritual values is the last thing the poor of Cuba need to fear right now.
I'm afraid Pope Francis wouldn't get that joke because, unfortunately, he really does think capitalism and its love child, manmade climate change, are the world's two biggest problems.
Not ISL taking territory and beheading people. Not terrorism. Not the Syrian refugees. Not a nuclear Iran. Not the civil wars in Ukraine or Yemen or Libya or Iraq. Not the poverty or lack of electricity or clean water for half of Africa. Not a hundred other things.
Global warming and capitalism. Seriously.
On Wednesday, one of the first things the pope did in Washington was call for a fight against climate change, which he said is a planetary crisis so serious it "can no longer be left to future generations."
He didn't explain how spending hundreds of billions of dollars to lower the global temperature a tenth of degree a hundred years from now will help the poor, because it's unexplainable even for a pope.
Before he heads back to Rome, Francis will surely get around to scolding America for the inequalities of its capitalist economic system and the greed of Wall Street.
But like so many Americans of the liberal faith, he has capitalism and socialism backwards.
It's capitalism that has made America the wealthiest and most generous country in the history of mankind and has brought forth everything we eat, use and enjoy.
It's capitalism and freedom, not socialism and its chains, that have brought a much better life on Earth for billions of the poor souls the pope cares so much about.
Does the pope realize that 401(k)s and pension funds owe their good returns to the health of Wall Street and the stock market?
Or that most of the enormous wealth the Catholic Church has acquired over the centuries was generated by greedy immoral capitalism?
I bet not.
Pope Francis is rightly praised for caring deeply about the poor and the marginalized.
But he'll never figure out how to actually help them until he understands what made America so wealthy and stops worrying about the wrong things.
AFAIK the Pope didn’t say anything about capitalism.
Did the Pope as Cuba to take in refugees?
I love the Pope, Pope Benedict....
Their current guy is the usurper pretender to the throne...
Michael Reagan has been Catholic since 1954? I did not know that.
He has before. And while not explicitly attacking capitalism in his speech here, he did so by reference to it’s perceived byproducts.
Actually most of the Church’s wealth was gained via methods much less honorable than Capitalism. Selling indulgences and the like.
Can't believe how much we have declined in the final year and half of a supposed lame-duck "president." All by design and I'm getting my tinfoil hat out thinking he means to take it all down so he won't have to leave office.
For example?
I see a group of people that might have benefitted greatly from a little arms trading Mr. Pope. Guns aren't evil. People are evil. And they're becoming increasingly evil.
Liberals decry the mixing of politics and religion, yet they revere this guy almost as much as they revere The One.
Global warming and unequal wealth distribution.
As usual, this adopted son of President Reagan makes a lot of sense. Ron Reagan, the biological son of Pres. Reagan, is on a CNN ad as spokesman for American Atheists, with the closing line,”I’ve been an atheist all my life, and I’m not afraid of burning in Hell.” Even Pres. Reagan had his failures.
Crying Boehner was a distraction.
Jane Wyman became Catholic in 1954. Michael was living with her at that time.
Interestingly, when Wyman became Catholic, her marriage to Ronnie was declared null, because she was married to someone else in 1937. She and Reagan were married in 1940 and divorced in 1949.
I remember when Democrat Catholics would sneer at Catholics who were voting for Reagan: “How can you vote for a divorced man?”
Little did they know that, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, Ronnie and Nancy were always validly married.
All the years Michael Reagan was on the radio, I was under the impression he was some kind of evangelical.
Not MOST of the Church’s wealth. Just St. Peter’s Basilica.
The Pope isn’t infallible about anything - including theology. He didn’t criticize the Castros because they’re of the same political mindset. Call it liberation theology, Marxism or communism, but they’re all shades of the same color.
How many times did the pope mention Jesus?
Forget the politics, when he said you don’t have to believe in God to get to heaven should have given you a clue that he is nothing more than a political hack. I keep hoping Catholics will wise up and think for themselves but no luck so far.
This guy is either a descendant of the Borgias or the offspring of one of the top Nazis who fled to Argentina in ‘45.
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