Monday, March 18, AD 2024 10:53pm

PopeWatch: Liberal Catholic

VATICAN-POPE-AUDIENCE

 

Over the years PopeWatch has heard time and again from many Catholics that there are no liberal Catholics nor conservative Catholics but merely Catholics.  PopeWatch has never believed this since the evidence to the contrary is so abundant.  PopeWatch would suggest that there are liberal and conservative Catholics and that Pope Francis is an example of a liberal Catholic.  In what way is Pope Francis a liberal Catholic (using “liberal” in the current popular American sense of being on the political left)?

1.  He has a distrust, if not hatred, of markets.

2.  His preferred solution to most problems in this Vale of Tears is to call upon Caesar to find a solution.

3.  He has a great fondness for some sort of world government.

4.  He believes in some of the shibboleths popular on the Left, including that arms merchants start wars, and that rich countries are responsible for poor countries being poor.

5.  He seeks out allies from the loony Left.

6.  He favors stringent regulation and control of economies by governments.

7.  He favors environmental “reform” even if, as he expects, people become materially poorer as a result.

8.  He has a distrust of democracy as democratic states lack long term commitment to the environmental measures that he favors.

9.  His outlook on life is top down with leaders bringing enlightenment to common humanity.

10.The Left, who hated his predecessors, love Pope Francis, who they view as an ally in most of their fights.

Some of course would argue with a straight face that none of this is political and that all of this is merely Catholicism.  To the contrary, the Pope is attempting to write his political views into Catholic teaching.  Most Popes do this to a certain extent, but Pope Francis is doing more of it than any Pope prior to him, with the possible exception of Pio Nono.  Critics of Pope Francis are sometimes condemned as Cafeteria Catholics.  The simple fact of course is that Catholics look to the Pope for spiritual nourishment and in the case of Pope Francis they often receive instead a political program which the Pope is clearly attempting to ram down their throats.

PopeWatch will be taking a Fourth of July hiatus until July 6, unless something major occurs, like a Martian applying for baptism or common sense breaking out in Rome.

 

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T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 5:13am

At 7PM last night, 200 mere Catholics met in our parish Church to pray the Rosary for an infant who is direly ill.

11. He believes we have this one life/world and it is his and the socialist, huge state’s duty to make it better.

12. He believes the over-large, socialist state needs to reward sin.

13. He is more concerned about the things of this World than of the rewards of eternal life which Christ purchased for him by His life death and Resurrection. For him the Eternal is not important.

14. He believes that the corporal works presented in (only) Matthew’s Last Judgment story are accomplished in voting extremist abortion promoters who promise higher taxes for rich people whom they hate and judge as evil.

15. He counts as virtues hatred and violence they are aimed at rich people who they hate. This is primary for so-called liberation theology.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 5:38am

. The Left of course has gradations. Vox Nova website and Catholic Moral Theology website ( social justice left only…not sexual left) loved his predecessors because they maimed the death penalty. Those Popes had to affirm it because of Romans 13:4 so they affirmed it in ccc 2267 and maimed it there by saying that deterrence was complete when you deterred the one murderer out of twenty that you actually caught. The normal world sees deterrence as being about the murderers of the future…deterring them by killing the one you caught. The new Catholic definition of deterrence is deterring the one you caught only. Ludicrous. Pope Francis out did them by saying life sentence is an execution.
The three men were feminized late in life ( not always for the predecessors) as to mercy in this area in opposition to Scripture…. ” the harshness of a man is better than a woman’s indulgence” Sirach 42:14. Plato describes how a male becomes feminized in Book Three of the Republic…too much culture and too little sports…which describes many in the priesthood and profs in Theology departments. The two safest areas of the world as to murder are East Asia no.1 and Europe no.2. East Asia because it has the death penalty and strong families…Europe because it has few poor people though immigration will change that. The worst areas are Latin America and Africa…1 and 2. Virtually no death penalties in the worst half of Latin America….and many poor people. I’ve had ten encounters with thugs…once escaping four black males in an ATT telephone truck. I’ve never been jumped by a tax attorney or a dentist. It’s always the poor….he kind Europe and Vermont don’t have.
For my pet issue, all three recent Popes are liberal and Cafeteria about the Scriptures….with a capital C.

Cthemfly25
Cthemfly25
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 7:45am

16. He uses the language of the left. Scripture and other authority, sometimes, from my reading, is used to support ideology.
17. He uses the dialectical techniques of the left: straw man, crisis/conflict/compromise, isolation of opposing viewpoints, and disdain for facts especially those at odds with ideology.
18. I sense a duplicity when looking at his behind the scene machine tins regarding the synod and the disclosures regarding the characters involved with his encyclical.
19. Like a leftist, he uses a class paradigm ignoring history, tradition and the rich teachings of his predessorrs regarding property, free will, authentic social justice…teachers such as Leo XIII, JOII, Pius X, XI, XIII. This to me is very sad.
20. This will seem odd but in my view, catechisis seems unimportant and it may be that he is not well informed about teachings contained in the catechism. Eg immigration.
21. He maintains that material poverty is a prerequisite to Church membership. Christ did nit say to the Centurion seeking to save his servant “empty your pockets first”. Our poverty of spirit is critical and we will be known as Christians by how we serve the Body of Christ including the poor, not by our agreement with the Pope’s malformed reliance on political ideology.

Paul W Primavera
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 8:08am
Foxfier
Admin
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 8:15am

I know that the “there are no liberal or conservative Catholics” have GOT to be talking about something, but in practice it seems to be (as you observe) an excuse to elevate their own views to religious authority levels.

Cogito
Cogito
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 9:03am

As an orthodox conservative Catholic myself, I find in the Holy Father a style of verbal communication that is confusing and liberal, a style of written communication that is clear and more orthodox than most would have us believe, and on prudential judgment I find him to be liberal and lacking. That results in 2 strikes out of 3.

However the most crucial and important of these is his writing since from these flow Church teaching.

Addressing this morning’s post, it would be much more engaging to provide:

1. Actual examples of the Pope’s words in each of these instances, otherwise it is merely hearsay.

2. In doing so it should also be pointed out from what source his words flow since an encyclical will carry more weight than an offhand comment to a reporter.

Don L
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 10:01am

“You are either with me, or against Me.”
That simple clear talk leaves little room for deceitful Godless political agenda’s of the diabolical left in my book.
God will judge, but we must discern……

bill bannon
bill bannon
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 10:15am

. The trouble with the completely non critical (of the present Pope) Catholic writers ( e.g. Jimmy Akin, Mark Shea) is that they can’t cause growth in the Church or in people in those areas where they submit inordinately. It also means in other times they would have assented to Pope decisions that current Popes and they themselves now abhor….burning heretics ( Innocent IV in 1253 and Leo X in 1520 inter alia)….and enslaving and despoiling resistant natives in the newly discovered lands ( Nicholas V in Romanus Pontifex 1454..mid 4th large paragraph).

Foxfier
Admin
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 11:05am

Looking for the silver lining, I’m getting lots of chances to explain the difference between binding and non-binding teachings, and I’m running into some awesome blogs! Like this guy doing the “neither left nor right” thing quite well at the Catholic Geeks group-blog. (Biggest problem? No Treebeard quote. *grin* )

Art Deco
Art Deco
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 12:12pm

The Pope strikes me as a variant of the modal clerical type in our time. Catholic, oldline protestant, or evangelical, you see these types. It’s just that their idiom and aesthetic varies. You talk to them and discover they’re pretty shifty and for all their years of schooling never display any trace of erudition. They cannot repair any problems in their congregations and do not seem to want to. For all that they confront people’s problems every day, none seem to have any of what Thomas Sowell calls ‘the tragic vision’ or ‘the constrained vision’. I think it will be many generations before these shallow and silly clerics are displaced. A while back, Fr. Paul Mankowski offered that the early 20th century clergy in the occidental world may have been the most committed and diligent since the end of the early Church. It’s amazing how rapidly the whole edifice collapsed.

@FMShyanguya
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 1:41pm

using “liberal” in the current popular American sense of being on the political left

That is an erroneous way of viewing the Catholic Faith of others i.e. through the lens of American Politics.
*
heard time and again from many Catholics that there are no liberal Catholics nor conservative Catholics but merely Catholics.

And you are right, this is also erroneous. So what is the accurate method of analysis?
*
Either one is a faithful Catholic or not.

Whoever wishes to be saved must, above all, keep the Catholic faith. For unless a person keeps this faith whole and entire, he will undoubtedly be lost for ever [and that includes the Pope] – the beginning of the Athanasian Creed.

Cogito
Cogito
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 1:44pm

Your conclusion, Art, reminds me of a recent quote from Robert Royal at theCatholic Thing.org:

“You have to hand it to the Irish bishops, priests, and religious. It’s not easy to de-Christianize a whole people. Yet they managed, in about a generation, to help detach an almost entirely Catholic population from its 1500-year-old religious and social roots.”

Apparently it’s more common than we thought to witness such a wholesale collapse of Catholic institutions.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 1:57pm

“Liberalism is a sin.” Paul W. Primavera
.

A++
.
Brevity is the soul of wit.

Cogito
Cogito
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 2:35pm

Thanks for those quotes, Don. At least that gets them out on the table for discussion, rather than discussing the Pope’s words in the abstract.

Pengiuns Fan
Pengiuns Fan
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 7:04pm

Excellent work, Pope Watch. A break is deserved.

In 1900, Argentina had the world’s seventh largest economy. Poland did not exist as an independent nation.

The territory that became the Republic of Poland was wrecked in WW1. Argentina sat it out.

Poland was invaded,devastated, lost almost six million of its citizens and STILL fought the Germans. Argentina provided a place to escape for Nazis, among them Mengele and Eichmann.

In the 1950s Argentina elected the Perons, the greatest demagogues of Latin America. They wrecked the Argentine economy in the name of the poor.

Poland has had a market economy only since 1989. Poland lost territory, citizens and its freedom. Yet today, Poland has the world’s 18th largest economy and has a higher per capita income than Argentina.

Poland does not have gay marriage or abortion. Argentina? Guess!

The Roman Pontiff is a captive of his upbringing and his environment (Yankees – bad). His encyclical is a dead letter to me. His political views are nonsense to me. I should pray more for him because we are stuck with him until God decides otherwise.

Cthemfly25
Cthemfly25
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 7:28pm

PF (oops I mean that not as a pejorative so henceforth Penguins Fan) — interesting quick history and comparison. Thx.

@FMShyanguya
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 8:52pm

@Donald R. McClarey: Clarification understood.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Tuesday, June 30, AD 2015 11:07pm

Cthemfly25 —

very good :
17. He uses the dialectical techniques of the left: straw man, crisis/conflict/compromise, isolation of opposing viewpoints, and disdain for facts especially those at odds with ideology.

all the other points too Donald , T. Shaw and C them fly

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Wednesday, July 1, AD 2015 12:21am

It is very easy to find scathing attacks on capitalism from the Right. The French Catholic Counter-Revolutionaries, Joseph de Maistre, Bonald and Chateaubriand are full of it.
A fine example in English is from the staunch High Tory, Dr Johnson:
“In the Islands, as in most other places, the inhabitants are of different rank, and one does not encroach here upon another. Where there is no commerce nor manufacture, he that is born poor can scarcely become rich; and if none are able to buy estates, he that is born to land cannot annihilate his family by selling it. This was once the state of these countries. Perhaps there is no example, till within a century and half, of any family whose estate was alienated otherwise than by violence or forfeiture. Since money has been brought amongst them, they have found, like others, the art of spending more than they receive; and I saw with grief the chief of a very ancient clan, whose Island was condemned by law to be sold for the satisfaction of his creditors.
The name of highest dignity is Laird, of which there are in the extensive Isle of Sky only three, Macdonald, Macleod, and Mackinnon. The Laird is the original owner of the land, whose natural power must be very great, where no man lives but by agriculture; and where the produce of the land is not conveyed through the labyrinths of traffick, but passes directly from the hand that gathers it to the mouth that eats it. The Laird has all those in his power that live upon his farms. Kings can, for the most part, only exalt or degrade. The Laird at pleasure can feed or starve, can give bread, or withold it. This inherent power was yet strengthened by the kindness of consanguinity, and the reverence of patriarchal authority. The Laird was the father of the Clan, and his tenants commonly bore his name. And to these principles of original command was added, for many ages, an exclusive right of legal jurisdiction.
This multifarious, and extensive obligation operated with force scarcely credible. Every duty, moral or political, was absorbed in affection and adherence to the Chief. Not many years have passed since the clans knew no law but the Laird’s will. He told them to whom they should be friends or enemies, what King they should obey, and what religion they should profess.”
As Lord Acton has pointed out, no better protection against tyrannical government, whether of kings or mobs, has ever existed.

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Wednesday, July 1, AD 2015 1:15am

Is Pope Francis Catholic? As appropriate.

Is Pope Francis Socialist? Unquestionably.

Is Pope Francis political? Yes

Please feel free to add to the list.

Tom D
Tom D
Wednesday, July 1, AD 2015 1:27am

Great history of Argentina v. Poland PF

“The Roman Pontiff is a captive of his upbringing and his environment (Yankees – bad).”
Very true

“His encyclical is a dead letter to me.”
Well, not to me, but I’ll have to be discerning about it.

“His political views are nonsense to me.”
Agreed, mostly. He is on the money with totalitarianism, but not with its camouflaged lite versions like Peronism, and he doesn’t see the conflict there. Worse are his economic views.

“I should pray more for him because we are stuck with him until God decides otherwise.”
Agreed. Or until he decides otherwise. Benedict may have set a precedent here, although I can’t imagine Francis as quiet in retirement as Benedict has been. He’s much more volatile and impulsive.

Tom D
Tom D
Wednesday, July 1, AD 2015 1:37am

Art Deco wrote “For all that they [the modal clerical type in our time] confront people’s problems every day, none seem to have any of what Thomas Sowell calls ‘the tragic vision’ or ‘the constrained vision’. I think it will be many generations before these shallow and silly clerics are displaced”

They cannot be displaced as long as our non-tragic civilization exists. No civilization has ever been as materially successful as ours, and these clerics despite their cries against ‘materialism’ love it as much as the rest of us. Only a reversion to 19th century conditions and longevity will displace them.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Wednesday, July 1, AD 2015 5:54am

Cthemfly25 – no problem.

For quite a long time, the Church hierarchy has not known exactly what to make of changing political and economic trends. The Church has been present in Latin America since Columbus landed in Cuba. However, the Church has not had the influence in Latin America that many outsiders think it has or had. When the independence movement began in Spanish Latin America, the Church hierarchy usually sided with the Spanish crown. The caudillos hare never been friends of the Church.

The Church hierarchy usually has little understanding of a free market economy. Capitalism is a term coined by Karl Marx, who was an idiot who should have been forgotten before he died. In a free market economy there are always some losers, but in a well functioning economy opportunities emerge to enable people to escalate their standards of living. When the Church hierarchy is stuck in an agrarian/mercantile way of thinking, problems ensue.

Pollution is worst in poorest countries. They usually lack the political backbone to enforce laws or just don’t care. Poorest countries tend to be the most corrupt.

Argentina is a country that considers ownership of land with prestige and the highest rank in class. In the USA, one can become a millionaire and rent an apartment. This concept doesn’t exist in Argentina.

We in the US and Canada share this hemisphere with Latin America but there is a massive gulf between us in so many ways, including in the Church. Outside of Quebec and some pockets in the USA, the North American Church is an immigrant Church. North America has never been run by caudillos, though Obumbler comes close and so did FDR. We usually produced enough or more than enough priests and nuns until about 40 years ago.

The Latin American Church often found itself as a target of the caudillos. It opposed independence at the start. It often relied upon Spanish and Portugese priests. The Left in Latin America often attacked the Church as an enemy due to its property holdings, most of which were granted by the Spanish crown.

Note the History Channel miniseries The Men who Built America. Latin America has not produced a Carnegie (I know he was born in Scotland) or a Westinghouse or an Edison or Rockefeller or a Ford or attracted a Tesla. The Church has not been as influential as it has been in Poland where it was a guiding light during the dark days of partition, occupation and Communist repression.

Latin America is a mess and I say that charitably. Violence, poverty and corruption are the norms in most Latin American countries, along with blaming Uncle Sam by their educated elite.

We see this in our current Roman Pontiff.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Wednesday, July 1, AD 2015 7:43am

When looking at the rôle of the church in Latin America, we should remember the model society created in the Jesuit Reductions, most famously in Paraguay, but also in the Argentine, Bolivia, Brazil and Uruguay. Most people will be familiar with Montesquieu’s praise of them in his L’Esprit des Lois, as did Rousseau applauded a society from which money was banished. Voltaire has an amusing depiction of them in Candide.

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