However much is said and warned about, Francis is undeterred in his embrace of Marxism/Communism. And he has “packed the court” with an overwhelming number of adherents (leftist cardinals) that the Church will be dominated by his ilk for decades to come.
Never felt that, as a Catholic, I was signing on to Communism. Still don’t. Nothing that Francis espouses as to the world order resembles anything I was taught and believed in, growing up as a Catholic and practicing long into adulthood.
To paraphrase, as they say, I may not leave the faith, but the faith appears to be leaving me. DLH
PanAm.com is a publication to pay attention to. Its reports and commentaries regarding the Western hemisphere are important. We have added it to our blogroll. Excerpts below are from an article by Hana Fisher, read the entire article here.
Is Pope Francis Resurrecting the Nefarious Liberation Theology?
Instead of finding inspiration in Pope Francis’s latest pronunciations, Catholics should be worried.
His latest political and economic ideas are a throwback to the 1970s, when Latin America was in full swing with “liberation theology,” a brand of Catholicism inspired by Marxist doctrine. (snip) . . .
In a speech given during the Third World Meeting of Popular Movements organized by the Vatican, Pope Francis said money rules the world.
How? Through “the whip of fear, inequality, economic, social, cultural and military violence that engenders more and more violence in a downward spiral that never seems to end,” he said, stressing that such a system is “terrorist.”
Demonstrating either rampant simplicity or ignorance, Pope Francis affirmed that “anyone who has too much attachment for material things” should not get into politics. Is money or lust for power the root of all evil?
Neither Adolf Hitler nor Lenin nor the early Soviet Bolsheviks had any attachment to money or material things. However, both regimes created hell on earth for tens of millions of people.
Someone should advise the Pope not to speak on matters outside his competence, if only out of respect for the institution he represents. His words have the potential to undermine the very religion he represents.
Pope Francis further asserted that the world suffers from “moral atrophy” and that capitalism offers “cosmetic implants that are not a true solution.”
In view of the tragic consequences provoked by liberation theology in Latin America, Pope John Paul II asked Church scholars for advice on whether it fit within the teachings of Jesus Christ.
At that time, it was Cardinal Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and later Pope Benedict XVI, who analyzed liberation theology. He strongly advised against it.
Ratzinger warned of the “serious ideological deviations that inevitably lead to betrayal of the cause of the poor … the class struggle as a road to classless society is a myth that prevents reforms and aggravates misery and injustice.”
He also condemned liberation theology’s “new interpretation, which comes to corrupt what was true of the generous initial commitment to the poor.”
The Gospel tells us that Jesus expelled the merchants from the temple. Many take that passage as a reproach of money. However, properly understood, what was indignant to Christ was that the essence of religion, denoted by these words, be denatured: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
Perhaps in our day, Jesus would throw out more than one “merchant” from the temple.
Yes! Apparently, the Catholic Church now has its own “Great Helmsman”, Chairman/Pope Francis. Expect our Great Leap Forward to continue.
This two and a half year old Reuters article will show how Il Papa’ s ‘narrative’ is an extension of his earlier (as we can show, unique) Papal pronouncements:
Pope says communists are closet Christians
Pope Francis, whose criticisms of unbridled capitalism have prompted some to label him a Marxist, said in an interview published on Sunday that communists had stolen the flag of Christianity.
The 77-year-old pontiff gave an interview to Il Messaggero, Rome’s local newspaper, to mark the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, a Roman holiday.
He was asked about a blog post in the Economist magazine that said he sounded like a Leninist when he criticized capitalism and called for radical economic reform.
“I can only say that the communists have stolen our flag. The flag of the poor is Christian. Poverty is at the center of the Gospel,” he said, citing Biblical passages about the need to help the poor, the sick and the needy.
“Communists say that all this is communism. Sure, twenty centuries later. So when they speak, one can say to them: ‘but then you are Christian’,” he said, laughing.
Since his election in March 2013, Francis has often attacked the global economic system as being insensitive to the poor and not doing enough to share wealth with those who need it most.
Earlier this month, he criticized the wealth made from financial speculation as intolerable and said speculation on commodities was a scandal that compromised the poor’s access to food.
Never mind that capitalism, true agricultural markets have produced more abundance, more productivity benefiting the poor than any communist scheme (forgive us if we do not use Christian interchangeably with communist).
IL PAPA COMES CLEAN…AT LAST!
Doubling down on what appears to be a money quote he loves, the Pope, this month repeated his communism is Christian heresy. This is Pope Francis speaking:
“It is the communists, in all cases, that think like Christians. Christ has spoken of a society where the poor, the weak and the excluded are those who make the decisions. Not the demagogues, or the barbarians, but rather the people and the poor that have faith in God or not that we have to help obtain equality and liberty.”
The article further exposing the quote, is again from PanAm.com, this time Orlando Avendaño writing:
Pope Francis Equates Christianity to Communism
In an interview with Pope Francis published November 11 by the Italian newspaper, Repubblica, the supreme authority of the Catholic Church equated Christianity with Communism when asked about his views on Marxist ideology.
“It is the communists, in all cases, that think like Christians. Christ has spoken of a society where the poor, the weak and the excluded are those who make the decisions. Not the demagogues, or the barbarians, but rather the people and the poor that have faith in God or not that we have to help obtain equality and liberty.”
The end of the interview turned to the topic of Donald Trump and the United States. Pope Francis said he was not interested in judging the politician, but more in the “sufferings that his way of acting causes the poor and excluded.” (emphasis ours)
“What we want is to fight against inequality, the greatest evil that exists in the world,” he said.
The interviewer said the Pope has many adversaries in the Church, to which the Pope said, “I wouldn’t call them adversaries. Faith unifies us all. Naturally, each individual sees things differently; the picture is objectively the same, but subjectively different.”
There have been a variety of reactions following the Pope’s comparison between Christianity and the Communist ideology.
The Spanish journalist and writer Hermann Tertsch tweeted that, “The apology for a criminal ideology surprises at the Vatican. Although almost nothing there can surprise now.”
“It’s inconceivable that we attend so frivolous of a criminal ideology with 100 million murdered. From the Vatican,” Tertsch said.
We have analyzed two seminal Papal documents on the subject of socialism in our Papal Pages found on the page bar above. We refer readers to that posting as explanation in part that Pope Francis has abandoned established church doctrine on the matter. The earlier papal pronouncements are statements for the ages.
DLH with R Mall
“The end of the interview turned to the topic of Donald Trump and the United States. Pope Francis said he was not interested in judging the politician, but more in the “sufferings that his way of acting causes the poor and excluded.” (emphasis ours)
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But then, His Holiness has feelings for other politicians (from Reuters):
“Pope Francis said the death of Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro was “sad news” and that he was grieving and praying for his repose.
Francis expressed his condolences in a Spanish-language message to Fidel’s brother, President Raul Castro on Saturday.”
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Despite his thinly veiled criticisms, past and current, of Donald Trump and of capitalism and the “lust for money”, Pope Francis seems to certainly have great affection, tolerance of, and compassion for brutally oppressive dictators who have accumulated unimaginable riches while brutally exploiting their own people, as they claim to “fight against inequality” and practice the same type of Marxist “governance” Il Papa seems to advocate.
Of course compassion for fellow man, especially by the Vicar of Christ on Earth, is appropriate and expected of all spiritual leaders, . But Il Papa’s “grief” for the likes of Fidel Castro exceeds the proper expressions of prayer for the repose of one’s soul and gives an unacceptable pass for the horrors this man’s rule has visited on thousands of innocent people for decades.