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What’s Wrong with the George Will Column Excoriating the Pope?
Begin with the title: “Pope Francis’ fact-free flamboyance.“
The Pope is fact free? He knows nothing? He’s flamboyant? How so? The article doesn’t tell us. It evidently relies for its persuasiveness on anti-Catholic or anti-papal prejudices and presuppositions.
The first paragraph piles on the slurs. The Pope comes to the US “trailing clouds of sanctimony.”
With a convert’s indiscriminate zeal, he embraces ideas impeccably fashionable, demonstrably false and deeply reactionary.
What those “demonstrably false and deeply reactionary” ideas of the Pope’s are, we aren’t informed. The first quote Will offers to substantiate his charges is an example not of the Pope’s ideas or “policy prescriptions,” but rather his “wooly sentiments” and “vacuity,” viz., “People occasionally forgive, but nature never does.”
Let him who has never said anything wooly or vacuous cast the first stone.
Next he quotes the Pope committing hyperbole.
And the Earth is becoming “an immense pile of filth”?
Only Will exaggerates a bit (not a great tactic for someone chastising someone else for hyperbole). What the Pope actually said (in a Tweet, where hyperbole is not unknown) is somewhat more modest and defensible: “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.”
Call me hyperbolic, but I’ve uttered the same cri de coeur myself many and many a time driving through urban sprawl or the endless strip malls of modernity. You don’t have to be a leftish environmentalist wacko to see and suffer from the fact that we are trashing nature left and right — especially the parts of it where most of the poor live out their whole lives. Rich people can at least vacation in the mountains or at the shore. The poor aren’t so lucky. (Try searching Google images for pictures of the slums of Buenos Aires. Bergoglio used to travel there regularly to say Mass because the people there couldn’t afford transportation to the cathedral.)
Read the Letters from Lake Como of Romano Guardini (one of Francis’s favorite authors), and you’ll realize that the pain and sorrow the Pope is expressing goes far deeper than mere sentiment, never mind political fashion. It has everything to do with a profound concern for the good of man, who urgently needs intimate contact with the beauty of nature for his happiness and spiritual well being.
The next direct quote we get is of the Pope offering an important caveat: “The Church does not presume to settle scientific questions.” Will apparently interprets this as rank hypocrisy, while I take it as characteristic modesty and basic catechesis. If the science on which the Pope bases, say, his call for “international collective action” on climate change turns out to be false, then forget that. His real concern isn’t with policy prescription, but with fundamental moral attitudes.
Consider this parallel. When Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae was issued in 1968, the scientific consensus of the day indicated that overpopulation was a major concern. Hence the encyclical mentions worry about overpopulation as a valid reason a couple might choose to limit their family size. It turns out (surprise!) that the scientific consensus was wrong. We’re in more danger from demographic implosion than a population explosion. Has the encyclical thereby been discredited? No. The science has been, but not the moral thrust of the papal teaching.
Then Will flings another gratuitous and ill-informed smear: “The church that thought it was settled science that Galileo was heretical.” Never mind that heresy is determined canonically, not scientifically. And never mind that the Church has since apologized for the error (albeit belatedly), proving that her temporal judgments are subject to revision.
Then comes more sneering:
Francis deplores “compulsive consumerism,” a sin to which the 1.3 billion persons without even electricity can only aspire. He leaves the Vatican to jet around praising subsistence farming, a romance best enjoyed from 30,000 feet above the realities that such farmers yearn to escape.
The poor aspire to “compulsive consumerism?” I thought they wanted a decent standard of living. The Pope “jets around” — like Al Gore, perhaps — living a life of luxury and moral preening? Is that a just description of this Pope?
Please note, all you critics who think the Pope is a leftist: “Compulsive consumerism” is not a synonym for “free markets” (which the Church considers the best means of equitable wealth distribution), just as “crony capitalism” is not a synonym for “capitalism.” It’s possible to condemn one without condemning the other. Note this too: material poverty is not the only kind of poverty; it’s possible for a person or a people to gain economically and lose spiritually at the same time. This is a real danger of the industrial revolution and global markets, as everyone who has suffered in the epidemic of depression and alienation in our society knows existentially.
The Pope is not wrong to point to the moral hazards of our system; it’s what moral leaders do. Solzhenitsyn did the same, you may recall. So did John Paul II and Benedict XVI. So did Jesus, when he said, “Man does not live by bread alone.” To point out the moral hazards of capitalism is not to endorse socialism, which has more and worse hazards of its own (all duly noted in the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church.)
Next we get two paragraphs extolling the benefits of fossil fuels without any evidence whatsoever to indicate that the Pope opposes them.
Then Will writes: “Francis grew up around the rancid political culture of Peronist populism” — as if to suggest that the Pope approves of the system he grew up in, when, in fact, he was a staunch critic of it (and the US interventions that kept its elite in power and riches, while its masses languished in poverty and misery).
Will’s sarcasm and anti-Catholic vitriol go on:
Francis jauntily makes his church congruent with the secular religion of “sustainability.” Because this is hostile to growth, it fits Francis’s seeming sympathy for medieval stasis, when his church ruled the roost, economic growth was essentially nonexistent and life expectancy was around 30.
Attention Mr. Will: The Pope can’t make the Church anything; the Church (following the ancient Judaism on which it’s founded) has always preached “sustainability,” i.e., responsible stewardship of the environment. Further, “economic growth” is as susceptible as environmentalism to being pursued with religious zeal, as if it were an absolute good. It’s the kind of thing that happens when true religion is abandoned in favor of one false god or another.
The concluding paragraph too is pure, lying slur:
He stands against modernity, rationality, science and, ultimately, the spontaneous creativity of open societies in which people and their desires are not problems but precious resources. Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and celebrate their nation’s premises.
I personally am in favor of the goods of modernity, rationality, science, free markets, and human creativity. (I just don’t worship them.) I believe with all my heart in the preciousness and dignity of each and every human being. (I’ve learned a lot about how it looks in the concrete by watching the Pope.) I also endorse the premises of the American founding, and, I honor this Pope as the Vicar of Christ on earth.
Anyone who says it is impossible to honor both the Pope and America’s founding principles is either ignorant or bigoted or both.
Published in Culture, General, Religion & Philosophy
This is a thoughtful and well reasoned response to Mr. Will’s column. He accuses the Pope of ignorance. Perhaps Will might consider studying the things he criticizes–the teachings of the Church he criticizes–so that he can clear up his own ignorance.
Well argued. And nice to see you back on deck, Katie.
Well at least you have the decency to call anyone that disagrees with you an ignorant bigot.
Well played and very classy.
So this is worth the price of admission to Ricochet. Thanks for the rest of the story.
Thank you Katie.
Correction, Brent: Not anyone who disagrees with me, but anyone who says it’s impossible to honor both the Pope and America’s founding principles.
Methinks George Will suffers from Charles Krauthammer envy.
I agree with your criticisms of Will’s attitude.
On the substance, however, I find much to agree with. I read all of Laudato Si and found it distressingly poorly argued. While this review I wrote addressed only the first few chapters, I found it held up remarkably well throughout the document:
I’d be more amendable to this if Francis could have devoted more than a sentence or two to free markets and capitalism without turning to lengthy and dire warnings of the dangers of their excesses.
So, what part of the substance of George Will’s column do you agree with?
The Pope’s public statements reveal him to be at the very worst a Luddite and at the very best, far too sympathetic to the left.
It seems that Francis longs for an earlier time when the Earth was “pure” when there were few or no consumer products, life was nasty, brutish and short but people were probably much more in tune with the church. There was probably much less ghastly inequality but everybody was trapped in grinding poverty.
I’m just listening to what the man is saying. I’m not using the Catholic decoder/excuse ring on his statements which conveniently bounces between doctrinal language and “other” depending upon the context required to jam a particular statement through the portcullis of acceptability.
Who a person’s enemies are can be a telling thing; who he wants to be his friends is just as important.
That Francis is dangerously wrong about markets, energy, and how best to help the poor.
Where is that in the column? Be specific please.
More unsubstantiated smears. Put up or shut up say (meaning it nicely, Maj.)
The tweet was a quote from an encyclical. Paragraph 21 of Laudato Si, to be precise. I agree that it would have been more understandable (although nonetheless regrettable) if the Papal tantrum had been in an ephemeral medium.
I hope that Brent would agree with me that it is entirely possible to do this, with the most popular methods being either vigorous denial of what the Founding Fathers stood for or vigorous denial of what Francis stands for; sincere error on either matter makes honoring both a trivially simple matter.
Even an accurate understanding does not prevent honoring both. I honor Jefferson and Hamilton, despite their vigorous disagreement on many things (and Francis and the Founding Fathers agree on many things). In my mental shrines there are many such figures who disagreed with each other and yet still each contributed.
I think that Katie might be making a stronger claim, though, along the lines of Francis’ political and economic thought being compatible with those of the founding principles.
Without resolving the ambiguity in the statement, it’s hard to know how generous it is.
I’ll shut up when clowns like Sanders stop using the Pope to advance their agenda and the Pope just stands by with a cat that ate the bird grin.
It just looks to me that the Pope wants to comfort the afflicted by afflicting the comfortable – not by lifting them up. His vision of justice is to lay low the non-poor by encouraging governments to impoverish them.
Papal tantrum? More gratuitous ugliness toward the Pope from Ricochetti. (Talk about regrettable!)
This
this,
this,
and this
all make the claim directly.
This
makes the claim if you are aware of the papal disagreement with these claims.
On this claim, Will is wrong, but makes the allegation suggested by Tom.
Hmm. I would have thought you’d want to be fair-minded, regardless.
It appeared that you suggested that it was an emotional outburst in your post when you falsely claimed that Will was unfairly presenting a tweet as the reasoned thought of the Pope. If that wasn’t your intent, I misread you.
His vision of justice could maybe be summarized in the immortal words of Spiderman’s uncle: “With great power comes great responsibility.”
You critics keep condemning him as if he’s advancing socialism. He isn’t. He’s critiquing greed, rapaciousness, exploitation, egotism, and indifference toward the poor. Anyone want to deny there’s a problem with the those things in the world? Anyone want to defend them as good and wholesome?
That I thought it was a just a tweet is true. There I stand corrected. (Thank you.) But my main point wasn’t that the Pope just threw it out there, but that George Will clipped the quote to make it appear worse than it was. I had characterized it as a cri de coeur, not an emotional outburst. The former, like hyperbole, is not necessarily inconsistent with deep thoughtfulness.
At some point in our lives we have to begin drawing conclusions about things. That doesn’t mean that we close our minds to improved information, but even provisionally, I think it’s safe to assume that the Pope is no friend of free markets and is very much in favor of a strong central government. He provides succor to our enemies and ignores the victims of the vile dictators he fetes.
In Francis I see a man in a situation very much like Obama – he knows his time is limited. He wants to fundamentally transform something – with Obama, America, the Pope, the World – and that makes them dangerous.
What Obama wants to transform is the American system of government. What the Pope wants to transform (under grace) is human hearts.
Obama is a Marxist. The Pope is a Christian. A Marxist uses political power to achieve his ends. A Christian uses moral suasion and personal witness to achieve his.
Those are pretty big differences.
One man’s greed is another man’s comfortable existence. The words you’ve chosen here all have a negative connotation. Is it possible that there is a way to express these things in such a fashion that might have positive context? Of course, the left would recast as them ills. However, these unambiguous moral ills are only that after a certain point. We are arguing about that point – which is not Zero.
Merely using these words (as the Pope has) concedes the left’s semantic infiltration.
I don’t necessarily want to wear my atheist hat here, but the common denominator here is “socialist.” Whether you use christianity or Marx to advocate for that makes no difference to me – they’re both verboten.
You talk as if he’s condemning rich people. He’s not.
The words I chose (like his) identify real moral problems. The Pope is a moral leader, not a politician. He’s addressing consciences; he’s not levying taxes or passing legislation.
He doesn’t say all rich people are selfish. He calls on the rich to be generous with the less fortunate, as have practically all moral leaders from the beginning of time.
The left will recast the Pope, of course. They will pretend he is advancing their cause for more centralized state power, just as they pretend he is on the brink of changing Church moral teaching.
The Catholic Church condemns socialism as incompatible with the dignity of the person. The Pope is not a socialist. The difference between a Christian idea of a wealth-distribution and the socialist idea is the difference between sharing and confiscating. It’s not unimportant.
If he wanted to not lend this impression, he could dispel this “fallacy” with one or two statements. He doesn’t, so it seems as if he’s satisfied to excite the left.