Who Does Pope Francis Love More, America or Obama?

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Not abusing Capitalism but still hard-working

Not abusing Capitalism but still hard-working

Vatican’s La Stampa has an interview with Obama’s ambassador to the Vatican, former Catholic Relief Services Director, Kenneth Hackett about Francis’ upcoming visit to the United States and Cuba.  Apparently the whole thing was hatched not so much at the invitation of the House’s Boehner, but Obama.

The President invited him to the United States?

Yes, the President invited him and more importantly, in the context of that invitation, the dynamic, the personal interaction, was more than warm; they hit it off on a number of issues including, I think, migration, poverty, exclusion, and people falling through the cracks. Those are the kind of things that I believe they were discussing behind closed doors. As soon as we were let in immediately afterwards you could feel the atmosphere in the room was very positive. So somehow Pope Francis had a very positive view of President Obama and what he is trying to do, and they clicked. And I think that led to his decision to come.  

Then the following September I carried the invitation from Speaker Boehner to speak to Congress and I probably said at the time that this is a long shot, but Francis picked it up and there it goes.

The UN was not on the cards in the very beginning because we kept hearing it’s going to be a pastoral visit, and yes he’ll go to the White House, and then he’ll go to Congress.  But all of a sudden (UN Secretary General) Ban Ki-moon came in and locked down the UN because a lot of people were saying it is the 50th anniversary of Paul VI’s visit to the UN, and Francis could speak about climate and about the sustainable development goals, and so they were creating an environment for him to speak at the UN.

“The dynamic, the personal interaction, was more than warm?”  What does that mean? If it was more than warm was it hot?  Did the pope have the least bit of Christian council or concern for the world in the face of a man like Obama?  Is President Obama Pope Francis’ favorite person in the world?  Was he in love?  Is Obama a spiritual guide to Pope Francis?

What was the President’s reaction afterwards?

As you know well, the private conversation went on for a very long time.  And coming out of the Pope’s meeting Obama was refreshed. He was happy!

Obama was refreshed after a very long conversation via interpreter?  Was there a shower in there?  Why was he so happy?  Did his meeting with Francis succeed beyond his wildest dreams?

What is your own personal memory of that meeting?

It was two friends talking about things, even though they had never met before.  As I was seeing it, this was warm and positive, and everything I have heard from the White House since he got back says the President was overjoyed with the visit.

Why is the entire monstrous liberal machine giddy about Francis?  Is he handing over the patrimony of the Church so fast they can’t contain their demonic glee?

The lengthy interview is full of spin, but the biggest helping of it is applied to Francis and Communism, I mean, ‘anti-Capitalism.’

Some of his statements in the encyclical “on our common home” and in his speech to the Popular Movements, during his visit to Bolivia, were strong critiques of the way the economy is run. Many in the US read them as a strong critique of capitalism.  What do you say to these critics?

I didn’t read them as a strong critique to all forms of capitalism. I think he’s basically saying what his predecessors said, but he is doing it with a Latin flare. He talks about the excesses of capitalism, and as I pick up the paper and I see who has been jailed in this place and that place for some banking scandal, I see there are excesses.  I cannot believe that he is saying that the capitalist system which rewards hard work, good decisions, is totally wrong. He’s certainly not saying that the socialist system is the answer! He just saying don’t abuse things, don’t abuse your capitalism.

 “A Latin flare, eh?”  He has that. 

In Francis’ mind having more than someone else is an abuse of freedom.  As he travels to Bolivia and around the world Francis is saying that situation must be fixed.  He wants a new ‘system’ where things are no longer ‘unequal.’  If the free system where you buy goods and services and spend your own money to do so doesn’t work, then we need a ‘system’ where that’s restrained, checked.  Francis wants to impose some alternative to our God-given right to our lives and property, and then call it Catholic morality.  That’s socialism, communism, Liberation Theology.  Obama loves it and Ambassador Hackett is lying.

He’s certainly has raised this concern in various quarters about the stratification of our society, that so few at the very top have accumulated so much wealth and have left out the entire next three or four levels, and not just the poorest but even those who are struggling to get by on 30,000 dollars with three kids – that’s below the poverty line in some cities.  He recognizes the issues, and I think those who are criticizing him as anti-capitalist are going too far. I may be wrong but that’s the way I read it.

I hope I’m not going too far but, do you know where capitalism isn’t ‘totally wrong’ either?  Cuba.  The state-controlled Cuban labor scheme leaves employees with 4% of every dollar they generate, but that 4% is still some hard-working capitalism.  I may be wrong but that’s the way I read it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do Your Part to Share the Selfie Francis Faith

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Is this our Faith?

Believer?

The mainstream media is really pushing these life-size cardboard Pope Francises.  Why?  Is it just because it’s fun, or funny.  Is it just for the money?

In keeping with previous papal visits, Pope Francis’ U.S. visit in September has spurred a mad dash among souvenir sellers. For $160, you can order an official, life-size “cutout” of the pontiff from the group organizing one of the events in Philadelphia.

Why is it so expensive?  Is it a collector’s item already?

Those 69-inch “standup” versions of Pope Francis, whose global popularity is perhaps the only thing larger than the replicas themselves, are being placed around Philadelphia so people can take selfies and share them on social media, the Associated Press reported.

So the point is not just to have a big Pope Francis around to bother you.  It’s to take a selfie with it and ‘share on social media.’

“Pope Francis is described as the people’s pope. So we have him in places where many people can see him,” World Meeting of Families digital content manager Nancy Caramanico told the news agency. “People are just really excited to be around him and are anticipating his visit to Philadelphia.”

Nineteen-year-old college student Jennifer D’Angelo will be in school when Pope Francis visits her hometown, the AP reported, so she took the opportunity to pose with a two-dimensional cutout of the pope on display at a food court.

“It seems like he’s trying to bring the Catholic Church together,” D’Angelo, 19, said. “I think he’s doing a great job. I’m just kind of sad that I’m not going to be in the city when he comes.”

Aren’t all the popes ‘people’s popes?’  Why just Francis?  Was Benedict only for rich fancy people?

Is Pope Francis bringing the Catholic Church together?  I think he’s just rallying non-Catholics, dissidents, media people, and dictators.  How many actual Catholics are excited to be around Pope Francis?  Are we thinking with our televisions?

For those seeking a less-grand papal presence, you can also order a variety of posters, a coffee mug emblazoned with some of the pope’s more notable quotations, and a 10-inch tall Pope Francis “plush doll” that is “surface wash only.”

Merchandising papal visits has a long tradition in the United States and elsewhere. In 1987, the U.S. tour undertaken by Saint John Paul II, then in the ninth year of his pontificate, inspired such items as a “Pope-Scope,” a cardboard tube with small mirrors at an angle, so people could see his motorcade over the heads of others. Other souvenirs included buttons, a T-shirt inscribed “Your Holiness, Welcome to Texas” and additional booklets, a selection of which was for sale via the online auction site eBay for $49.99.

Everything that happens in FrancisChurch is always framed as part of a long tradition but it’s not.  It just manipulates and morphs traditions.  It abuses them.

Six years later, mindful of such kitsch as “Pope-on-a-Rope” soap bars, Catholic leaders in 1993 prepared for another Pope John Paul II visit to America by hiring the Famous Artists Merchandising Exchange of Dayton, Ohio, to handle licensing of the pope’s image, according to The New York Times (paywall).

“More than 100 items were deemed acceptable, including those … approved to bear the Pope’s countenance: medallions, T-shirts, posters, postcards, lithographs, fanny packs and the Pope-Scope,” the newspaper reported.

Perhaps one of the most notable pope-related products emerged during a 1965 visit to New York by Pope Paul VI. It came during a newspaper strike, leaving journalists for The New York Times and other print outlets to cover a story they couldn’t distribute in those pre-Internet days. The answer? An “instant book” created by Times staffers and Bantam Books, a paperback publisher that released 500,000 copies of the story within four days of the visit. As the Times reported, Pope Paul VI “got his copy for free.”

Don’t be fooled.  A few vendors promoting and capitalizing off previous papal visits is nothing like the worldwide media/marketing efforts behind Francis today.

At the top of the article there is an enormous photo  of a man kneeling in prayer before his Pope Francis cutout and grasping its cardboard hand. Francis swag is not about fun or money.  It’s McKinsey & Company’s idea of worship, worship of their new catholicism.

If St. Peter lived in our time and had access to cardboard images and selfies, would he make sure the countries he evangelized were filled with life-size statues of himself first?  Is there going to be a single image of Christ anywhere near Francis next month?  I suppose one or two are unavoidable.

The Francis cutout is symbolic because his papacy really a contrived event.  It’s something orchestrated and Francis is just filling the life-size pope spot within it.

Real Francis is not flat.  He’s very round and so is the Church.  It has depth and it lives.  But FrancisChurch doesn’t.  It’s just a pasted veneer, a stage set.

 

 

The World Isn’t Killing the Church. The Bishops Are.

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Not racist

Not racist

Christopher Manion has had quite enough of Catholic leaders using Holy Mother Church and her faithful for their nefarious political schemes.  Not only do they pretend their agenda is noble rather than lawless and evil.  They smear the true and obedient members of the Church as murderous bigots!  Why on Earth must we pretend that these robed men are our Apostles?  They’re nothing like Christians.

Millions of Americans, including many Catholics, were stunned when Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Catholic Archbishop of New York, attacked opponents of illegal immigration as “nativists” in a recent and widely-circulated column in a liberal New York tabloid.

Unfortunately, Cardinal Dolan’s outburst represents a long line of liberalism on the part of America’s bishops — a position based not only on their “Social Justice” leftism, but because the welfare state which they celebrate doles out over a billion dollars a year to their Non-Government Organizations (Catholic Charities, Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Migration and Refugee Services, and so on).

And Cardinal Dolan is not alone. In fact, he is merely echoing his colleague in Los Angeles, Archbishop José Gomez. Gomez routinely attacks opponents of amnesty for illegal immigrants, accusing them with a string of strong epithets. In turn, he is merely echoing his fellow bishops in his native Mexico, who frequently rise to condemn “the arrogant, xenophobic, and racist attitude of the United States” (to which Abp. Gomez adds “bigotry”).

Is it ‘racist’ for Ireland to prefer mainly to be comprised of Irishmen, for Italy to prefer Italians, Germany Germans and Japan Japanese?  How about some deference toward Christian backgrounds?  Is that immoral?  What about Muslims?  How about criminals?

Must we choose between being fools and the enemies of our Bishops?

Nonetheless, the notion that all Caucasian Americans are guilty until proven innocent goes far to explain Cardinal Dolan’s unctuous condescension as he recalls his days as a teacher.

Any college student, he implies, knows that to oppose amnesty for illegal aliens (a term he refuses to acknowledge, by the way), or to demand that they follow the law (including the Ten Commandments) is nativist, backward — and anti-Catholic.

This unwarranted assertion cannot go unchallenged, since it is both unjust and counter-factual. Counter-factual because many Catholics are among the millions of Americans who oppose Obama’s program to import as many Third-World immigrants, legal and illegal, into the United States as possible.

Moreover, many of those same immigrants are not Catholic.

It is unjust because the Cardinal implies that anyone who disagrees with him is nativist — as though support of amnesty for illegal aliens were a requirement of Catholic Faith and Morals. This grievously overstates the matter.

What is required by Catholic Faith and Morals goes unmentioned: the doctrine on contraception and other sexual sins contained in Humanae Vitae.

Yet, in 2013 Cardinal Dolan bragged on national television that he has “only rarely, in my 37 years as a priest” taught the truths of that genuinely Magisterial document.

What is it that induces our bishops to ignore the Church’s timeless teachings, and instead browbeat us with their political preferences disguised as moral imperatives?

Well, as my father used to tell his Notre Dame Law students for thirty years, “if you take the first bribe, you may as well take the rest.”

So permit me ask a parallel classroom question to those that Professor Dolan shared with his college students years ago.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB for short) and its subsidiaries, as well as individual Catholic dioceses, receive over a billion dollars a year from the U.S. taxpayer.

Now, consider: Cardinal Dolan has exuberantly announced, on national television, that America’s bishops want to be Obama’s “cheerleaders.”

Can it be that our beloved bishops have — unconsciously, of course, just like the Cardinal’s target audience of “nativist” lay Catholics — could it be that our bishops have been bribed into silence by that billion dollars a year?

And could it be that our beloved bishops – who have watched more than thirty million of the faithful become “former Catholics” — could these prelates actually support amnesty because they want to keep the pews filled while they please their government paymasters?

These are merely questions, of course, not unjust accusations.

It seems today that the Catholic Church has no bishops, no shepherds.  That is the only reason that the flock is scattered and lost.  A bishop is not a bishop if he shows contempt for his faithful flock, as Cardinal Dolan certainly has, and teaches an anti-doctrine in place of the truth.

We are not Aaron’s Israelites dancing around the golden calf and the Cardinal isn’t Moses with the tablets.  We are humbly following God into the desert while this jolly prelate fires arrows with Pharaoh’s army.  Sorry to be noninclusive but he’s just not one of us.