The pope’s a player, with a lot to lose

Francis doesn’t see himself that way. He’s more Ben Carson than Donald Trump. But he’s in it deeply.

Pope Francis is becoming an aggressive public player in secular politics, from the environment to economic policy. That carries risks, not for Francis alone, but for the papacy and the institution the pope leads.

Big problem there. He’s betting the farm, which isn’t his to bet.

The day before Pope Francis met with Mr. Obama, one of the president’s aides, Ben Rhodes, said: “How can we make use of the enormous platform that the pope’s visit provides to lift up the work we’re doing and demonstrate how it’s consistent with the direction that’s coming from the pope?” At the White House, Pope Francis praised Mr. Obama’s climate-change initiatives, and the president thanked the pope for supporting his policies on that and his opening to Cuba.

Brothers in Christ? Not quite, but consider this:

It is not possible to do this [exchange encomiums with
one of the big guys] and be “above” politics. Everyone in politics is one of the boys, including the pope.+

And your people have to be dragged along with you:

In Cuba, when the pope’s spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, was asked if Pope Francis knew that 50 dissidents had been arrested, he said: “I don’t have any information about this.” Embarrassing bunk is standard for the Josh Earnests of the world. It should not become so for the pope’s spokesman.

With unforeseen consequences galore:

On one hand, Francis is amenable to being photographed smiling and squeezing hands with Fidel Castro, a decades-long oppressor of his nation’s Catholics. But then the Vatican objects that the pope might be photographed with a famous pro-abortion nun invited by the White House. Barack Obama plays hardball. His Justice Department had already sued the anti-abortion Little Sisters of the Poor.

Whom he unexpectedly visited, true, in a distinctly muted show of support in their battle with one of his new best friends. He has his priorities:

In the past two years, the plight of Christians in the Middle East has gone from persecution to slaughter. Decades of Vatican diplomacy there for the world’s most at-risk Christians has produced very little. Soon there may be nothing left to protect. On Friday, the pope reportedly will address the U.N. about climate change. A jeremiad against Christian extermination would be welcome this week, too.

His new friends use him.

What many of his new political friends mainly seek is to have the pope “moralize” their politics. Francis’ spiritual message could not be more secondary. They won’t be with him in Philadelphia. How allowing the papacy’s core moral authority to be politicized is in the interests of the Catholic Church as an institution is difficult to see.

Very difficult.

Later:

Maybe the Little Sisters visit means more than a nod in the right direction.

“What a huge boon to Catholic educators who yearn for relief from the Obama administration’s HHS mandate and protection of their First Amendment rights. This brings attention to the case that represents not only the Little Sisters but so many of us whose rights are denied,” said [Patrick] Reilly [president of the Obama-fighting Cardinal Newman Society].
Than again, probably not. Can we imagine Obama feeling pressured (or much less, inspired) by the Pope, him of the photo-op potential?

We have here a case of understanding what Pope Francis says better than he does

The author is a British academic with a keen interest in economic inequality:

Martin O’Neill is a senior lecturer in politics at the University of York and a co-editor of “Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond” (paperback edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2014). He is currently a research fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, working on a project about the significance of inequality.

He sees Francis embracing not only “radical green” but hard-left economic solutions:

Pope Francis’ new encyclical [Laudato Si,
June 18] is making headlines mainly because of the tough line it takes on climate change, and its message to Catholics and others that they must embrace radical green solutions to society’s problems.

But the Pope’s ecological message is only part of his radical political agenda. Just as significant as his environmental message is a parallel progressive economic agenda that fundamentally rejects deregulated free-market capitalism.

The Pope has a bracing message for Christians and other “people of good will”: that the time has come to move beyond right-wing economics, and to embrace a different kind of economic system.

The papal explainers who play Francis’s radicalism down in favor of his mainly giving spiritual more or less generic advice should tell this fellow how wrong he is.

On the other hand, there’s this other annoying aspect: where is this deregulated capitalism Francis and this radical professor are talking about? Not in this country, where regulations are a constant bone of contention.

What Pope Francis probably does not know about capitalism

Start with this from Cafe Hayek’s Don Boudreaux:

No institution in history comes close to capitalism’s success at inspiring multitudes of strangers, from different countries and with different talents, to cooperate for the betterment of humanity and of the natural environment.

Add this:

The production and distribution of the very encyclicals in which Francis criticizes capitalism are capitalist achievements. They require the efforts of tree farmers (perhaps in Germany), of paper-mill workers (perhaps in Slovenia), of ink producers (perhaps in Canada), and of printers (perhaps in Italy).

And this:

And each of these suppliers relies upon countless delivery vehicles (perhaps made in Japan), investors (perhaps in New York), insurers (perhaps in London) and designers of computer hardware (perhaps in China) and software (perhaps in Seattle).

Sum it up with this:

A true marvel of capitalism is its continual weaving together of the efforts of billions of individuals from around the world into a unified global economy, with each person — as producer and as consumer — more free than under any other economic system to choose just how to participate.

And this:

This process is peaceful, stupendously productive and requires no commands issued by any overseeing strongman or politburo.

To which, being a fervent Catholic, I say let us pray he comes to know this and other nuggets about how the world works.

How about a vicar for Latin mass?

Every diocese could have one, even if not a full-time job. New Liturgical Movement strikes an encouraging note here.

Some prelates fear diversity in this arena, however, have bigger fish to fry, etc.

Same for programs geared explicitly to help LGBT people to do the right thing. Courage comes to mind.

Prelates are often not so sure about this operation either. Low profiles are preferred. But this Courage site has a raft of video presentations, including a July 30 sermon by Archbishop Cupich of Chicago at the opening of the 2015 Courage Conference at Mundelein Seminary, and a moving one at that. His predecessor Cardinal George also welcomed the Courage group to the seminary on one or more occasions.

For Pope Francis, people are more important than ideas | Crux

If I were the pope, I’d object to a headline like the one above on grounds the copy editor is making me look like a nitwit.

As to the story, it opens like this:

ROME/BUENOS AIRES — As Pope Francis prepares to visit the United States, it’s telling that many Americans are still trying to get a political read on him. Some are convinced he’s a leftist reformer, some see him as a conservative in sheep’s clothing, and many are just a little bit confused.

Actually, for some who consider it muy dangerous to separate thinking from loving one’s neighbor, it seems the Holy Father is confused.

How I swerved away from conservatism as a young Jesuit . . .

From Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968:

Studying scholastic philosophy in the mid-50s,

we were a potentially influential group, which is why one group sought our membership in a mailing. This was the newly established Intercollegiate Society of Individualists (ISI) – free-marketers who wanted to convert us Jesuits to the cause.

At least two popes had got there first, however, Leo XIII and Pius XI, in their encyclicals which rejected “rugged individualism.” As a papist of the first water, I couldn’t buy what ISI (still existing, newly named with same initials) was selling. I responded to their pitch, quoting the popes, and they took me off their list. This was too bad. I could have used some free-market thinking in the years ahead. Indeed, I am more inclined to think these days that the popes were victims of bad advice, as by German Jesuits working for Pius XI who were unduly influenced by German political theory.

In any case, thus died a free-market tinge to my socio-political mentality. A few years later, I fumed at William F. Buckley’s dismissal of John XXIII’s “Mater et Magistra” – “Mater si, magistra no” – in which Catholic “social doctrine” (actually social “advice” or exhortation) was reiterated and expanded. How dare he? He had no heart. Worse, he had no obedience to go with his Catholicism.

His dissent represented something of an advance in the independence of lay people, but I was part of no such advance. As a loyalist and in my way a company man, I rejected conservatism anew and bought the liberal (better “neo-liberal), near-statist option, though involving salubrious hostility to Marxism, of course, as corrective. In any case, to endorse a position was to act on it. A religious-motivated conversion to social liberalism was a call to action, if I may use a phrase that became a Catholic (neo-)liberal rallying cry, then a conference, then a Chicago-based national organization of many decades standing, even to this day.