Capitalism, according to his way of thinking, is never a solution to poverty but a cause of it. He has devoted much of his pontificate to “Catholic social justice,” which amounts to reflexive advocacy for government-planned economies. His repetitive use of such ostensibly harmless phrases as the “preferential option for the poor” do not refer simply to charity toward the poor, which is undeniably Christian, but to pervasive government regulation of private property and business in the name of the poor, which is socialist.
“He’s very concerned for the poor, but I’m worried whether he has a very good theory for how you get the poor out of poverty,” says the theologian Michael Novak.9
Home Depot founder Kenneth Langone, who has complained that his efforts to raise money for the Church have been hurt by the pope’s socialist rhetoric, attributes it to the “pope’s experience in Argentina.”10
In 2013, Pope Francis made a visit to the Italian island of Lampedusa, where at an open Mass near its harbor he praised illegal immigrants for trying to “find some serenity and peace.” He called opposition to illegal immigration the “globalization of indifference” and likened critics of illegal immigration to Cain and King Herod.11
“Herod sowed death to protect his own comfort, his own soap bubble. And so it continues,” he said. “Let us ask the Lord to remove the part of Herod that lurks in our hearts; let us the Lord for the grace to weep over our indifference, to weep over the cruelty of our world, of our own hearts, and of all those who in anonymity make social and economic decisions which open the door to tragic situations like this.”
The crossing from Africa to Lampedusa is fraught with danger. “More than 6,000 people are believed to have drowned in the waters around Lampedusa between 1994 and 2012,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “The United Nations recorded 500 deaths of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean during 2012.”12 In light of these numbers, Italian politicians warned the Holy Father that his Mass and his romanticized view of illegal immigration would only encourage more dangerous crossings. He waved off those objections.
The Pope Encourages Eurabia
In 2016, as a wave of illegal immigrants from Islamic countries crashed upon the shores of Europe, Pope Francis called on all Catholic parishes to open their doors to them.
“Faced with the tragedy of tens of thousands of refugees who are fleeing death by war and by hunger, and who are on a path toward a hope for life, the Gospel calls us to be neighbors to the smallest and most abandoned, to give them concrete hope,” he said. “May every parish, every religious community, every monastery, every sanctuary in Europe host a family, starting with my diocese of Rome,” he said.13
At an Italian parish, which had opened its doors to Islamic immigrants after the pope’s directive, the Catholic organization Caritas lectured Catholics on the need to avoid pious practices such as reciting the rosary, lest it disturb the “migrants.” “Pray in silence,” Catholics were instructed.14
One of the top bishops in Hungary, a country reeling from the crush of illegal immigrants, told the press that he found the pope’s instruction mystifying. “They’re not refugees. This is an invasion,” said Bishop Laszlo Kiss-Rigo, whose diocese stretches across the southern part of Hungary. “They come here with cries of ‘Allahu Akbar.’ They want to take over.”15
“On the question of taking in immigrants Pope Francis is wrong,” Jarosław Gowin, a Polish Catholic politician, said. “In no case should we take in Muslims.”16
In stark contrast to his predecessors, Pope Francis has shown no interest in reviving a historically Christian Europe against a potential Eurabian future. Pope Francis subscribes to the left’s suicidally softheaded explanation for the rise of Islamic terrorism in Europe. He blames it not on Islamic radical ideology but on the West’s unwillingness to “integrate” Muslims and open its borders to them.
“Coming back to the migrant issue, the worst form of welcome is to ‘ghettoize’ them. On the contrary, it’s necessary to integrate them. In Brussels, the terrorists were Belgians, children of migrants, but they grew up in a ghetto,” according to the pope.17
Conservative Catholics in Europe, like their counterparts in America, find the pope’s politically correct grandstanding on the issue of Islamic refugees baffling and divisive.
Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, a largely Catholic country, has warned that Europe’s Christian identity is vanishing under an ethos that privileges “those arriving [who] have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture.”18
Cardinal Dominik Duka, the archbishop of Prague, has tried to explain the pope’s boosterism for illegal immigration as a by-product of his Latin American roots. In an interview with the Czech Republic daily newspaper Lidove noviny, Duka said, “The sensitivity of Pope Francis on social issues is different from ours in Europe. He comes from Latin America where the gap between rich and poor is much bigger, as a result of its Indian cultures.”
Duka sees the pope’s enthusiasm as naïve and unfair to Christians on the continent. Throwing open the doors of Europe to illegal immigrants is a formula for an “enormous humanitarian and economic catastrophe,” all for the sake of accommodating members of a “completely different culture and civilization,” he said.19
Would Pope Francis, some wonder, even want a secularized Europe to return to Christianity? He sounds at best agnostic on this subject. In 2016, a group of liberal Europeans awarded Pope Francis the Charlemagne Prize. He used his acceptance speech not to call for the restoration of Christianity but for the spread of a “new European humanism” open to illegal immigration and socialism:
I dream of a Europe where being a migrant is not a crime but a summons to greater commitment on behalf of the dignity of every human being. I dream of a Europe where young people breathe the pure air of honesty, where they love the beauty of a culture and a simple life undefiled by the insatiable needs of consumerism, where getting married and having children is a responsibility and a great joy, not a problem due to the lack of stable employment. I dream of a Europe of families, with truly effective policies concentrated on faces rather than numbers, on birth rates more than rates of consumption.20
In an interview with La Croix, the French Catholic newspaper, Pope Francis broke with his predecessors in denouncing Christian confessional states (states that give a privileged position to Christianity in their constitutions) and gave his blessing to the post-Enlightenment concept of the secular nation-state.
His remarks revealed why the prospect of Eurabia doesn’t bother him. What his predecessors called indifferentism—the heretical notion that all religions are of equal value—crept into his remarks.
“States must be secular. Confessional states end badly. That goes against the grain of history,” he said. “We are all equal as sons (and daughters) of God and with our personal dignity. However, everyone must have the freedom to externalize his or her own faith. If a Muslim woman wishes to wear a veil, she must be able to do so; similarly, if a Catholic wishes to wear a cross.”21
On his return to Rome from a visit to the Greek island of Lesbos in 2016, the pope brought back with him three Muslim families. In a sad irony, he left behind a Christian family, whose papers, according to the Vatican, weren’t in order, even though he had just been waxing indignant about indifference to the “undocumented.” That generated a spate of embarrassing stories for the Vatican.
“Pope Francis reneges on offer to take in Christian refugees,” headlined a story in the New York Post. It reported that “A Christian brother and sister from Syria felt blessed to have been among the dozen refugees selected to start a new life in Italy—but now say their savior, Pope Francis, abandoned them on a Greek island, according to a [Daily Mail] report.”
“Roula and Malek Abo, who had been housed in a refugee camp on Lesbos, said they thanked their lucky stars when they found out the Vatican had selected them during the pontiff’s visit to the island last week,” it continued. “Their dr
eams were shattered, though, when they were informed the following day that they would not be traveling to Rome. Instead, three Muslim families were taken. Asked why they were all Muslim, Francis said there was something wrong with the papers of a Christian family on the list.”22
Conservatives who seek to rebuild a “Christian Europe” embarrass Pope Francis, as he explained in his interview with La Croix: “We need to speak of roots in the plural because there are so many. In this sense, when I hear talk of the Christian roots of Europe, I sometimes dread the tone, which can seem triumphalist or even vengeful. It then takes on colonialist overtones.”
Christianity’s influence over Europe should be reduced to humanitarian service, he argued: “Christianity’s duty to Europe is one of service. As Erich Przywara, the great master of Romano Guardini and Hans Urs von Balthasar, teaches us, Christianity’s contribution to a culture is that of Christ in the washing of the feet. In other words, service and the gift of life. It must not become a colonial enterprise.”23
In 2016, during a visit to Poland, he urged the faithful to give up their objections to illegal immigration. His words sounded like they had been borrowed from the lyrics of John Lennon: “People may judge you to be dreamers, because you believe in a new humanity, one that rejects hatred between peoples, one that refuses to see borders as barriers and can cherish its own traditions without being self-centered or small-minded.”24
At a time when jihadists are cutting off the heads of priests and calling for the destruction of the Catholic Church, the pope’s naïve amnesty advocacy has left many conservative bishops appalled. “I would expect a more firm defense of Christians,” the Italian bishop Andrea Gemma said. “I would like a pope more energetic in defense of our principles and our faith.”25
The Clericalism of Amnesty Advocacy
Previous popes treated the debate over immigration law as a matter on which reasonable Catholics can disagree. But under Pope Francis the entire weight of the Catholic Church has fallen on one side of the debate, and politically liberal bishops feel increasingly empowered to impose their personal opinion in favor of amnesty on their flocks.
British bishops cast Britain’s departure from the European Union as “xenophobia.”26 The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has a web page titled “Catholic Church’s Position on Immigration Reform,” which represents nothing more than the left-wing politics of the bishops. It offers a “parish kit” for advancing amnesty, offers an “intercessory prayer” for amnesty, and directs priests to a “sample homily on migration related issues from Cardinal McCarrick,” which “may provide some insights on creating a homily related to immigration.”
After the U.S. Supreme Court blocked President Obama’s blatantly unconstitutional order to grant amnesty to four million illegal immigrants, the U.S. bishops blasted the decision: “The decision is a huge disappointment; it means millions of families will continue to live in fear of deportation and without the immediate ability to improve their lives through education and good jobs.”27
There is no doctrinal authority for such statements. They simply reflect the ideological preferences of influential bishops. The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains no justification for illegal immigration. It says that the “political authorities” have the right to secure the borders of their countries and that they may make the “exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions.”
In 2016, Pope Francis baffled Church observers by making a relatively obscure archbishop, Joseph Tobin of Indianapolis, a cardinal. The liberal Catholic press saw the elevation as a reward in part for Tobin’s strong support for illegal immigration. In 2015, Tobin had sparred with then Indiana governor Mike Pence over the issue of Syrian refugee resettlement, defying Pence’s order to cease resettlement in the wake of terrorist attacks and reports of porous vetting. Tobin cast his defiance in lofty terms. Helping the Syrian refugees, he said, “is an essential part of our identity as Catholic Christians, and we will continue this life-saving tradition.”28
Beneath the misleading rhetoric about Christian identity lay a more compelling reason for Tobin’s stance: the Catholic Church in America has received tens of millions of dollars from the Obama administration to resettle migrants. Flush with government grants, the U.S. bishops have stepped up their lobbying, even calling on Catholics to write “a letter to President Obama, urging him expand U.S. resettlement efforts of Syrian refugees.”29
Francis-favored bishops, such as San Diego’s Robert McElroy, regularly rip into critics of their amnesty advocacy. McElroy has castigated Catholics concerned about the creeping Islamization of the West. “We are witnessing in the United States a new nativism, which the American Catholic community must reject and label for the religious bigotry which it is,” he said at a 2016 forum.30
Groups such as Dioceses Without Borders are springing up as the Church under Francis becomes indistinguishable from the National Council of La Raza lobby. In 2016, Pope Francis appointed a progressive French prelate, Christophe Pierre, to be his nuncio in the United States. One of his first newsmaking events was to say a Mass near the U.S.-Mexican border in Nogales, Arizona, which served as a political rally for “needed immigration reform” and the dissolution of “barriers.”31 After Donald Trump won the presidency, Pierre called on the U.S. bishops to “assume a prophetic role” in response and to step up their amnesty advocacy. He said the “pope is more prophetic than the Catholic bishops here today.”32
Pope Francis frequently denounces clericalism (the extension of Church authority to matters beyond it), but he ignores the rank clericalism of politically liberal clerics imposing their opinions on the flock. He is constantly blurring the line between official Church teaching and his personal political opinions. Pope Benedict XVI warned against this form of clericalism when he said that a pope “is not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and desires are law.” He said that a pope “must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God’s Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism.”
Much of this pontificate has revolved around exactly that kind of clericalism. Pope Francis never hesitates to use his office as a platform for opining on political matters. “The Church must be involved in the great political issues of our day,” he has said. “A good Catholic meddles in politics.” At a press conference in 2015, he was asked if he is improperly passing off his political opinions as Church teaching. He scoffed at the suggestion and said innocently: “I am sure that I haven’t said anything more than what is contained in the Church’s social teaching.”33
Imagine the cries of clericalism one would hear from liberals if Catholic bishops hosted web pages and “parish kits” in favor of Republican policies on taxation. Yet they don’t hesitate to do the same on the disputed issue of illegal immigration.
In his 2015 speech before the U.S. Congress, Pope Francis made a call for amnesty and tacitly accused those with principled objections to it as inhumane. “Thousands of persons are led to travel north in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones in search of greater opportunities in North America,” he said. “Is this not what we want for our own children? We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation. To respond in a way which is always humane, just and fraternal.”
Pope Francis is fond of quoting Jesus Christ’s description of the Pharisees as those who lay heavy burdens on people without carrying those burden themselves. But he is oblivious to his own tendency toward that on issues like amnesty, where he is demanding that countries adopt an unrealistic policy that the Vatican state itself rejects. Safely behind the walls of the Vatican, he declares to world leaders that they must tear theirs down.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Pacifist Pope
The Church has long supported the morality o
f the death penalty, the “just war doctrine,” and resistance to tyrants. At the level of official teaching, the Church has always rejected the superficial claims of pacifism, which spring not from the moral absolutes of the Christian tradition but from the relativism contained within post-Enlightenment moral and political philosophy.
Francis is the first pope to flirt seriously with these claims. He supports a pacifism fashionable in European liberal circles and leftist Latin American ones. He is entertaining proposals to discard the Church’s “just war” doctrine and has set up a commission to examine altering her teaching on capital punishment.
His musings on pacifism have been “silly,” says a former high-ranking Church official interviewed for this book. “He has been cursed by his background.”
“States kill when they apply the death penalty, when they send their people to war or when they carry out extrajudicial or summary executions,” he asserted in one statement, as if a military draft and capital punishment fall on the same continuum as state-sponsored terrorism. That appeared in a letter to the president of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty in which he quoted the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky as saying that “to kill one who killed is an incomparably greater punishment than the crime itself.”1
Many of his statements constitute little more than pacifist polemics. “War is always a defeat for humanity,” he has said categorically. Gone are the careful distinctions between just and unjust wars made by his predecessors.
Stopping the wicked from slaughtering the innocent, according to the Catholic tradition, is an expression of Christian love, not a denial of it. Yet his sweeping statements appear to rest upon that assumption.
The Political Pope Page 13
