The minions of leftist billionaire George Soros are active on the Catholic front this election year:
While the IRS revoked the non-profit status of the George Soros-subsidized Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG) in October 2013 for failing to file a form 990 for three consecutive years, the organization recently re-emerged with a progressive voter guide for the November presidential elections. For A Revolution of Tenderness: A 2016 Election Pope Francis Voter Guide, CACG collaborated with other progressive groups—including the Soros-supported Faith in Public Life Catholic Program, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, Pax Christi International, and others—to produce a voter guide that claims to “show how we apply the teachings of our Church to the problems of our day with a heart of mercy.”
Like the organization’s previous presidential voting guides, the new guide provides encouragement to Catholics wishing to support candidates who promote progressive positions—sometimes at the expense of the non-negotiable teachings of the Church on life and marriage. Claiming that their long list of social ills are “all related,” the 2016 guide, like the 2012 guide before it, stacks the deck in favor of pro-choice politicians who promise to protect the poor, the environment, and LGBT rights—but not the rights on the unborn or of the family.
Abortion is included as one among several threats to the dignity of the human being:
In this new place of mercy, the last are first, the poor are blessed, and enemies are loved. Black lives matter here. LGBTQ lives matter here; and so too do the lives of refugees, the imprisoned, the unborn, and anyone else who suffers dehumanization, exclusion, and injustice…. Today, human dignity and life is degraded by racism, violence, abortion, war, the death penalty, euthanasia, human trafficking, torture, environmental damage, and poverty.
Still, there is one major difference in the 2016 guide. Rather than calling it a “Catholic” voter guide, this new version is called a “Pope Francis Voter Guide.” In fact, on page one, in an apparent attempt to avert criticism from anyone in the Church hierarchy or the laity, the Pope Francis voter guide celebrates the fact that “…a new community with new rules is established…hierarchies are subverted, concentrated power is decentralized, and prodigal children are welcomed home.”
Go here to read the rest. Leftists around the globe have long viewed the Catholic Church as enemy number one. That is why the Church is always under ceaseless external attack by leftists, and ceaseless internal efforts at subversion by leftists within. None of this is new. What is new however, is that under the current pontificate they believe, at worst, the Pope is a “useful idiot” who can be relied upon not to resist their efforts, or, at best, is one of them.
At least there is truth in labeling —“Pope Francis Voter Guide”
Protestants sometimes accuse Catholics of having a cultic subservience to the Popes. Of course, we on the inside know that this is hogwash.
However, there does seem to be a cult of personality around Pope Francis that his predecessors lacked. My own parish calendar, published by a local funeral home, has Francis on every page. They never published such a calendar with John Paul II or Benedict XVI.
I don’t think this has yet reached the level where it is unhealthy. The rank and file in the U.S. are largely unaware of the controversies and implications thereof that are reported on TAC. Pray that they stay that way, because if they do then a cult of personality will trigger serious temptations.
TomD wrote, “However, there does seem to be a cult of personality around Pope Francis that his predecessors lacked.”
The pope as personality is a rather modern development. Until the 19th century, for most Catholics, the pope was a very remote figure. Even in Catholic countries, they had the same impact and the same popular appeal, as the average Secretary-General of the United Nations or President of the World Bank.
Benedict XIV (1740-1758) had been the first pope to write an encyclical. His predecessors had mostly confined themselves to deciding questions referred to them on appeal.
The first pope who could be described as a personality, in the modern sense was Pio Nono. He was the first pope to be photographed and cheap lithography meant that his portrait, heavily subsidised and widely distributed, found its way into the poorest home. The same period saw the invention of the rotary press and the rise of a cheap and popular Catholic press that reported on his allocutions and sermons, in which he was far more prolific than his predecessors.
That’s something of a tautology in that the phenomonon of a personality (celebrity might be the better word) is itself a modern development.
I appreciate this post and the linked article. Aren’t we getting So Tired! of the shallow thinking of the left!
Meanwhile Rotondaro is trying to think of a rational reason..,
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The quote used in the introduction of the voter’s guide concerning tenderness is from paragraph 88 in the exhortation.
Interestingly and ironically a quote from the next paragraph, # 89 warns about people being “taken in”:
89. … Unless these people find in the Church a spirituality which can offer healing and liberation, and fill them with life and peace, while at the same time summoning them to fraternal communion and missionary fruitfulness, they will end up by being taken in by solutions which neither make life truly human nor give glory to God.
Maybe that would be the PF quote that could be used for a real Catholic voter guide. We don’t want people to be “taken in”. That is why the first 3 spiritual works of mercy are
To instruct the ignorant.
To counsel the doubtful.
To admonish sinners.
Here’s my Catholics’ Voters’ Guide: If you vote all-abortion-all-the-time Democrat you won’t get into Heaven.
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For other Christians: Determine, and vote against, the candidate that will act to remove Christianity from America. That would be Hillary who would continue Obama’s anti-Christian policies.
TomD you must come from the same Parish as I do. This is the second year of the Pope on every page of the calendar. Twelve months of him was too much and twenty-four months was way too much. So I am using a good Catholic calendar with The Virgin Mary on every page.