Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 10:12am

PopeWatch: Delusional

An example of how some people view the world through fact altering goggles:

In a fascinating exercise in fact-flipping, Times writer Mattia Ferraresi made the assertion Thursday that, unlike his predecessors, Pope Francis has refrained from pronouncing on political issues, leaving a vacuum that contrary voices have filled.

Francis’ approach “represents a sharp break with the policies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who attempted to keep the church’s views relevant in societies, including Italy, that have grown increasingly secular,” Ferraresi declares in an article titled “How the Catholic Church Lost Italy to the Far Right.”

Mr. Ferraresi makes the incredible claim that Pope Francis has “embraced a new model” for the papacy, withdrawing from political engagement and limiting church action “to the pastoral dimension.”

The fact that “millions of Catholics are voting for Mr. Salvini,” making the League “the leading party among churchgoers,” Ferraresi proposes, stems from the fact that the Church under Francis has retreated from political debate.

As any Vatican watcher can attest, Pope Francis makes political statements on a nearly daily basis, focusing particularly in the issues of immigration, climate change, and economic justice. Vatican journalists share nearly unanimous awareness that for better or for worse Pope Francis is arguably the most political pope in recent memory.

Several simple examples will suffice to demonstrate Francis’ relentless political engagement.

Last January, the Vatican published a collection of the pope’s pronouncements and addresses on the topic of immigration. The sheer heft of the massive, 488-page volume attests to the significance of the immigration issue during Francis’ six-year pontificate, which the pope has dealt with on scores of occasions.

In April of this year, Francis sent a half million dollars to support migrant caravans seeking to enter the United States in an astonishingly political move, since the issue had already created an immense partisan divide within the U.S.

From his first visit to migrants in Lampedusa in 2013 to the launch of the Vatican’s “Share the Journey” pro-migration campaign in 2017; from his unqualified support for the U.N. Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) to his yearly Migrant Masses in the Vatican, the Francis papacy has been characterized by an uninterrupted string of declarations, speeches, gestures, and pronouncements on the immigration issue.

In the area of climate change, in 2015 Francis became the first pope in history to devote an entire encyclical letter to the topic of care for the environment, and since then he has never missed an occasion to promote United Nations’ efforts to persuade nations to take dramatic steps to curb carbon dioxide emissions.

Go here to read the rest.  Facts are stubborn things, as John Adams observed, but too many people are oblivious to them if they get in the way of what they wish to believe.

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Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, July 8, AD 2019 5:11am

She only notices when it’s something that irritates her.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Monday, July 8, AD 2019 6:14am

Was that the NY Times? Everything it finds fit to print either is incorrect or a conscious lie.

What irritated her? Did a dreaded-conservative win an election? Can’t have that. It’s a fatal flaw in a nation’s constitution.

Good news from Greece: voters replaced their lefty PM with a conservative. Highly irritating!

Paul (Drak Bibliophile) Howard
Paul (Drak Bibliophile) Howard
Monday, July 8, AD 2019 7:15am

IMO To some people “political” means “holds positions different than mine”. 🙁

Dave Griffey
Dave Griffey
Monday, July 8, AD 2019 7:20am

I think it’s because so often those on the Left don’t see what they do as politics, or religion, or opinion. To them, it is Truth. Pope Francis isn’t being political when he opines about global warming or the evils of arms manufacturing. That’s just Truth. The first person I remember enunciating it that way was Barry Lynn, of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. When pressed by Anderson Cooper about why he was upset when Christian leaders interfered with politics, but he didn’t mind Christian and Jewish leaders going to Congress to oppose a marriage amendment, he responded that those leaders fighting for gay rights weren’t promoting religion. They were merely advocating Truth. Since then, I’ve applied that template and noticed how often it seems to match the assumptions of those advocating various progressive ideals and agendas.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Monday, July 8, AD 2019 11:20am

That blind spot David Griffey so aptly identifies is what comes of making the personal political.

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Monday, July 8, AD 2019 11:30am

I second Dave G’s point. That is a paradigm I’ve seen that most consistently explains their behavior. It also explains why they get so bent out of shape about disagreement, because to them, arguing with them is like someone arguing that the sky isn’t blue.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, July 8, AD 2019 1:13pm

The first person I remember enunciating it that way was Barry Lynn, of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. When pressed by Anderson Cooper about why he was upset when Christian leaders interfered with politics, but he didn’t mind Christian and Jewish leaders going to Congress to oppose a marriage amendment, he responded that those leaders fighting for gay rights weren’t promoting religion. They were merely advocating Truth

True. Keep in mind, though, that Barry Lynn is a professional huckster of secularist viewpoints. He doesn’t necessarily believe his own arguments. He has a divinity degree, but that’s a beard. He also has a law degree. He’s never been employed as a minister nor has he ever been employed in any position which incorporated what you’d call ‘corporal works of mercy’. Everything he’s done over a period of 40+ years was in the realm of public advocacy and lawfare. (He worked for the ACLU at one point, too). It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s as obtuse as you claim. You read the periodical issued by ‘Americans United’ and you know it wasn’t composed or written for people who make it a habit to do more than plumb the shallows of a subject.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, July 8, AD 2019 1:26pm

Good news from Greece: voters replaced their lefty PM with a conservative. Highly irritating!

You never get good news from Greece. The winning party is the one that cooked the books during the period running from 2004 to 2009. Both ND and PASOK were deeply implicated in the ruin of Greece’s fiscal situation. PASOK has been punished by the Greek electorate, and even with a cavalcade of allies can hardly cadge more than 5% of the vote. Greece might benefit from a new starboard party which puts ND out of business. (The new prime minister is a legacy pol, btw). You want Richard Nixon’s grandson in the President’s chair (not the male nurse in Philly, the securities lawyer with the bad haircut and the bizarre ex-wife)?

ken
ken
Monday, July 8, AD 2019 1:40pm

She’s blind and Francis is having the same affect in Italy that progs with TDS are having here every political utterance by them reinvigorates the conservatives.

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