Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 10:21am

PopeWatch: Merchants of Death

 

 

VATICAN-POPE-AUDIENCE

 

In a Mass for the Copts martyred by ISIS, Pope Francis took the opportunity to miss the point again:

 

As he prepared to begin Mass in the Santa Marta Chapel, the Pope invited the congregation to join him in prayer for ‘our brother Copts, whose throats were slit for the sole reason of being Christian, that the Lord welcome them as martyrs, for their families, for my brother Tawadros, who is suffering greatly’.

He then prayed: “Be my protector, O God, a mighty stronghold to save me. For you are my rock, my stronghold! Lead me; guide me, for the sake of your name”.

Monday evening the Pope had made a personal phone call to Patriarch Tawadros, who is the Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria, to express his sorrow at the brutal murder.

During his homily the Pope spoke of man’s capability for evil and destruction and condemned what he termed ‘merchants of death’, business people who sell arms to those at war, furthering a cycle of hate, fratricide and violence. 

Go here to read the rest.  In the face of an Islamic death cult that has basically declared war on the Catholic Church, the pope returns to one of his pet bug-a-boos, the alleged merchants of death arms merchants.  This is not the first time the pope has raised this meme.  From PopeWatch June 16, 2014:

 

Ah, the Pope has given another interview!  This interview is with the Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia.  The Pope makes several comments in the interview, and PopeWatch will be dealing with them this week.  First up is the musings of the Pope that what undergirds the international economic system is war:

 

The rate of unemployment is very worrisome to me, which in some countries is over 50%. Someone told me that 75 million young Europeans under 25 years of age are unemployed. That is an atrocity. But we are discarding an entire generation to maintain an economic system that can’t hold up anymore, a system that to survive must make war, as the great empires have always done. But as a Third World War can’t be done, they make zonal wars. What does this mean? That they produce and sell weapons, and with this the balance sheets of the idolatrous economies, the great world economies that sacrifice man at the feet of the idol of money, obviously they are sorted.

Go here to read the rest.

What the Pope said was a fairly common meme in the thirties when it was argued with a straight face, in the wake of World War I disenchantment and the growth of pacifism in the democracies, that World War I had been caused by arms dealers and by governments eager to profiteer from war.  Alas it was complete and utter rubbish and it is rubbish still.  The Pope’s comments indicate a man who does not have a clue as to how economies actually work and apparently believes the myth of wars being fought to produce economic riches for the few, a not uncommon trope in the comboxes of many leftist websites.  A Pope who is ignorant of economics is one thing, a Pope who believes he knows how economies functions and manifestly does not is quite another.   It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so, is an observation that has been attributed to 19th century humorists Artemus Ward and Josh Billings, and to 20th century humorist Will Rogers, but whoever said it history will verify that it is resoundingly true.

The Pope often condemns ideology which PopeWatch finds curious.  The Pope clearly himself has a set of ideological beliefs, completely impervious to facts.  ISIS slaughters 21 Christians and the Pope takes the opportunity to claim that the real villains are arms merchants.  We start Lent today, but PopeWatch fears this entire current pontificate is a long Lent for the Church.

 

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Paul W Primavera
Wednesday, February 18, AD 2015 8:25am

“It’s all the fault of the United States – its industrial military complex.”
.
That is what Pope Francis believes.

Steve D.
Steve D.
Wednesday, February 18, AD 2015 8:57am

The only thing missing was the pope telling the West not get on their high horse about ISIS.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, February 18, AD 2015 9:08am

I take it there is no one in the Vatican who can show the Pope how to make use of World Development Indicators. Were there, the Pope might learn that just about the most militarized economy in Europe is that of Russia. Russia devotes about 4% of domestic product to military uses. European countries active on the world stage (e.g. Britain and France) devote just north of 2%. You have, at most, five countries willing and able to make an extraregional deployment not auxiliary to some other country’s deployment. That’s the ‘system which must make war to survive’. The Pope does not have to be schooled in economics. He does need to know how to read some descriptive statistics and be broadly familiar with the before opening his mouth.

Rude guest (sorry)
Rude guest (sorry)
Wednesday, February 18, AD 2015 10:04am

“I am humble”
Riiiiight.

“Global warming is real” (so real I’m writing an Encyclical on it)
You are hyper focusing on a myth, while I and my fellow Catholics in America are practically being forced to act as though the Church is a myth–not even protected as a legitimate religion under the most incredible man-made document in history, our Constitution. (And whoa, let’s not forget that whole “Immaculate Conception” myth, and don’t even mention Our Lady as though she is real.)

“The West’s economies are fueled by arms making”
Yup. Sure. Rosie the Riviter is now Rosie the Rifle-maker. And look at her go, breeding like a rabbit and making rifles for the enemy! It’s Rosie the Rabbit making rifles!

And oh I could go on but I’m too mad, a bit ashamed, but most of all embarrassed for all of us at his lack of knowledge of the basic underpinnings of our nation. And to think he’s only going to the worst (as in ugly and/or corrupt) cities in America when he is here. I’d love to take him on a tour of some regular American cities, with regular people just trying to get by.

JS Person
JS Person
Wednesday, February 18, AD 2015 10:13am

What do you mean about the theory of the causes of WW1 being rubbish? I know enough of the history that it does sound like one can put a lot of the blame on the kaiser. Is that what you are referring to?

Patricia
Patricia
Wednesday, February 18, AD 2015 11:47am

” … the Pope invited the congregation to join him in prayer for ‘our brother Copts, whose throats were slit – …
He then prayed: “Be my protector, O God, a mighty stronghold to save me. For you are my rock, my stronghold! Lead me; guide me, for the sake of your name”. … ”
.
His first words were for us to pray for him. What about teaching and exhorting us to pray FOR our brothers to the One, he little mentions, in the gospels which are balm for souls.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, February 18, AD 2015 12:14pm

And oh I could go on but I’m too mad, a bit ashamed, but most of all embarrassed for all of us at his lack of knowledge of the basic underpinnings of our nation.

What he said suggests he’s a consumer of crummy opinion journalism and gets his understanding of political economy from some Buenos Aires equivalent of Barbara Ehrehreich (or maybe the Spanish language edition of Mother Jones and Barbara Ehrenreich’s tomes). Memo to the College of Cardinals: Don’t Hire Okupiers.

Marietta
Marietta
Wednesday, February 18, AD 2015 2:24pm

“He then prayed: ‘Be my protector, O God, a mighty stronghold to save me. For you are my rock, my stronghold! Lead me; guide me, for the sake of your name’. … His first words were for us to pray for him. What about teaching and exhorting us to pray FOR our brothers to the One…”

Patricia:
They’re a combined paraphrase of Ps. 18:2 and Psalm 31:3, the lament psalms of David, prefiguring Our Lord’s Passion and Death. They’re scriptural prayers for protection which we appropriate for ourselves or for others. Obviously here they’re applied by the Pope for the victims.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Wednesday, February 18, AD 2015 3:52pm

Yes, of course, arms merchants are the cause of ISIS, Al Qaeda, etc.

Having a Mass for the Copts murdered by ISIS is altogether good and necessary. Blaming it on “arms merchants” is par for the course for the current Roman Pontiff.
I have ceased to be amazed at the current Roman Pontiff’s words. We all need to pray for him. He needs wisdom. Badly.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Wednesday, February 18, AD 2015 5:03pm

Addressing ISIS would be a better occupation for Pope Francis but I don’t know what he should say. They believe apocalyptically that the Mahdi and Jesus will join them in their fight against the West at Dabiq, Syria. The Pope could address this belief of theirs. He could gently show them that Jesus is actually God; that He ended the God mandated violence of Elijah who killed either 450 or 850 idolaters ( if a verse is missing) at Carmel but Jesus forbade the disciples in Luke 9 to kill heretics with lightning as was allowed to Elijah….and Jesus will come in glory on the clouds not as a soldier among others. Pope Francis subconsciously may be addressing gun merchants because it’s easier. I know I’d rather address the CEO at Heckler and Koch who make the Swiss Guards’ submachine gun than the guys writing the below linked IS magazine.
Clarion Project has links to Dabiq, the magazine of ISIS, whose name Dabiq is a town in Syria where their apocalypse will take place where they believe they will be helped by the Mahdi and by Jesus as he joins Islam. Here is a fragment from a Clarion Project article from November 18 2014:
” ‘ One collector of the hadith, Sahih Muslim, states, “The Last Hour would not come until the Romans would land at al-A’maq or in Dabiq.’
When the Islamic State refers to President Obama as the “dog of Rome” in the video, they are making the case that the U.S. is the modern equivalent of the Roman Empire and American military action in the Middle East is the actualization of this prophecy.”

Link to above article: http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/dabiq-islamic-state-wants-battle-end-days

Link to page that has links to all ISIS magazine issues: http://www.clarionproject.org/news/islamic-state-isis-isil-propaganda-magazine-dabiq

bill bannon
bill bannon
Wednesday, February 18, AD 2015 5:32pm

Don,
Try my last link. I read Dabiq this afternoon after the market closed. They have sunnah or tradition cites for every atrocity they do including burning the pilot….issue 7. And they justify the Libyan atrocity by referring to a murder of their women by some Coptic Christian leader. Apparently they need not find him…any Copt will suffice. Satan is so pleased with that precise principle and state of mind, he’s beside himself. Their absurd confidence in victory is rooted in the help they will ultimately get from Jesus and the Mahdi….so their lack of an air force or navy is immaterial since also they envision worldwide followers to be great in number not minuscule s they really are. It’s a delusion from Satan pure and simple.

The Bear
Wednesday, February 18, AD 2015 8:03pm

Oh bother. The Bear has given up the Pope for Lent, so please write extra stories to make up for his absence. This whole thing about wars being stated by arms merchants is just silly. Acceptance of conspiracy theories and simplistic arguments signals a narrowness of education and vision that is not far removed from the dark maze-like alleys of Cranktown. And there goes your chance to appear on Mic’d Up, too.

D Black
D Black
Thursday, February 19, AD 2015 8:34am

Well those “merchants of death” need to quit making those box cutters. And maybe if the Vatican can find the murdering psychopaths a job working around the Vatican they’ll quit decapitating Christians or anyone else they feel like murdering. If I didn’t know better I would swear that the pope is Barack Obama’s grandpa.

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Thursday, February 19, AD 2015 8:51am

PF: “…75 million young Europeans under 25 years of age are unemployed. That is an atrocity. But we are discarding an entire generation to maintain an economic system that can’t hold up anymore, a system that to survive must make war,…”

This failed viewpoint, esp. PF’s belief that “a system that to survive must make war” not only once again reveals Pope Francis’ appallingly superficial knowledge of essential facts, but could be a word-for-word quotation of someone who took the pseudonym V.I. Lenin, cf. Robert Service’s biography,simply titled “Lenin”). De jure belief of Marxist-Lenin credo was that capitalism and the West had to make war to survive economic downturns and seize new sources of raw materials. Bergoglio reveals ever again his severely socialist “colours”.
I know PF alleges to read “extensively”, but as a pontiff one has had a remarkably mediocre Catholic theological education (an STL from the 1970’s at a very poor theological faculty), who failed his Ph.D program at Frankfurt’s Sahnkt Georgen theologate (and is who now Supreme Teacher of the Faith), and who then retreated back to pastoral and rector assignments in Argentina, where his belief-system yet somehow qualified him for elevation to successively higher offices—well, I just can’t identify much of anything Catholic about him anymore.
Now, if you point these things out, people get defensive about attacking “Our Pope”. Best to avoid the facts.

I think I am going to throw in my lot with The Bear and give up the Pope for Lent. And Easter. And the time after Pentecost. And Advent..And anon.

Foxfier
Admin
Thursday, February 19, AD 2015 9:45am

During his homily the Pope spoke of man’s capability for evil and destruction and condemned what he termed ‘merchants of death’, business people who sell arms to those at war, furthering a cycle of hate, fratricide and violence.

Well, it does. Being able to defend yourself, rather than being slaughtered at the whim of those who attack, does make for more violence….. *shudder*
It’s kind of scary that he looks at a place like Europe, which is not a hot-bed of purified capitalism, and goes “know what’s wrong with this place? Too much freedom. Too many options for the young to do whatever they think will improve things in a way people will financially support. Needs much more top-down control!”

stilbelieve
stilbelieve
Thursday, February 19, AD 2015 10:44am

Why am I getting a feeling that Pope Frances and Barack Obama have the same script writer as to what is wrong in the world and what needs to be changed to improve it? Both seem to think Muslims shooting, beheading, and burning alive others is due to poor economies requiring top down changes from world governmental leaders.

William P. Walsh
William P. Walsh
Thursday, February 19, AD 2015 12:48pm

Hooray for the Bear. “Acceptance of conspiracy theories and simplistic arguments signals a narrowness of education and vision that is not far removed from the dark maze-like alleys of Cranktown.” I believe “Cranktown” to be another name for Obama’s Washington, DC. His “Violent Extremism Summit” is a charade of his ideological mythology. Did you hear the Man Who Would be King Hussein say,
“It was time to be “honest” that slickly-produced Isil videos of fighting scenes, beheadings other atrocities were succeeding in brainwashing young Muslims. That’s the truth. The high-quality videos, the online magazines, the use of social media, terrorists Twitter accounts – it’s all designed to target today’s young people online in cyberspace.”
So it’s all about a video again. We’ll just have to take over the internet and shut down all this nasty free speech. Why can’t these internet people be just like our wonderful newspaper editors and broadcast anchor-folks and toe the party line?
Hearing the current president say it’s time to be honest is more than one can take without losing composure. I think I’ll give up Obama for Lent.

Patricia
Patricia
Thursday, February 19, AD 2015 6:07pm

It’s so crazy that the products (produced by a series of people with jobs) he blames are also the same that are acceptable enough to protect his life, and the lives of his compadres and other world leaders who complain about these products.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Thursday, February 19, AD 2015 9:09pm

“Why am I getting a feeling that Pope Frances and Barack Obama have the same script writer” They have both read and believed some of the same authors- including Karl Marx, who was either atheist or satanist.

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