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The Francis Effect
According to a comprehensive Pew poll, since Francis became the supreme pontiff, the number of Catholics in this country has remained unchanged, the rate at which Catholics attend mass has remained unchanged, and the rates at which Catholics go to confession or participate in volunteer activities in their churches and communities has remained … unchanged.
In view of all this, Mollie Hemingway on the Pope’s visit:
It’s wonderful that some people say that Francis makes them feel the church is more welcoming to them. But if it’s just making people feel more comfortable in their politics, instead of making them feel the comfort of absolution, communion and strengthening of faith, that’s not much to get excited about.
Time, I suppose, will tell.
Published in General, Politics, Religion & Philosophy
“It has left no other nexus between man and man,” they wrote, “than callous cash payment.”
Always enjoy reading an argument on a supposedly conservative site quoting Marx and Engels. “Egotistical calculation” requires discipline, forethought, prudence, and a work ethic. Apparently those nouns are no longer considered essential to peace and prosperity.
Pope Francis Called For More Work From Priests, But 20 Percent Of Parishes Don’t Even Have One
But Francis doesn’t agree with that. Scruton’s criticism of capitalism is that it makes the poor richer, but that is not enough. Francis denies that it makes the poor richer. While Scruton gives time and respect to the views of Marx, which are in this respect considerably to Francis’ right (Marx believed that the capitalist system lifted people out of poverty, which is why it allowed society to progress to a communist system), he does not agree with the leftist attack on inequality, as Francis does.
Scruton bases his environmental conservatism in gratitude and appreciation for the Earth’s beauty. Francis thinks that the Earth looks like a huge ball of filth. Scruton argues for weakening international government, Francis for strengthening it. Scruton thinks conservatism begins with “the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.” Francis tells his acolytes to “make a mess”.
Scruton openly talks about being left wing on some issues. Agreeing with him on those issues does not make you a conservative, any more than Sanders agreeing with Paul on prison sentencing and some foreign policy makes Sanders a conservative, or Clinton agreeing with Fiorina about the importance of protections against sexual harassment makes Clinton a conservative.
Agreeing with Scruton on areas where Scruton agreed with conservatives would be helpful.
I should note the general disclaimer that the Pope is more conservative than Scruton on abortion and SSM, but even when the Pope disagrees with Scruton in that direction it is not an endorsement of the claim that he is in Scruton’s school.
I’m going to flog support of corrupt and totalitarian regimes for creating millions of poor and hungry persons.
As for my checkbook, I’ll simply reiterate the values with which I was raised:
The Protestant work ethic (or the Puritan work ethic) is a concept in theology, sociology, economics and history which emphasizes that hard work and frugality are a result of a person’s salvation in the Protestant faith, particularly in Calvinism, in contrast to the focus upon religious attendance, confession, and ceremonial sacrament in the Catholic tradition.
Are you coming to the Reagan Library meetup? I so rarely get to offer legal advice without the disclaimer that I am not a [state] lawyer, so allow me to say: It is an offense under the laws of California to flog supporters of corrupt and totalitarian regimes without their consent. It’s not one of those laws that they overlook, either. As such, please refrain from assaults even on the most obnoxious of leftists, at the very least until after the meetup.
How disappointing.
All of which raises the question “what is a conservative?” Does this disqualify Ronald Reagan?
He’s not a political philosopher or a politician or an Anglo-Saxon. He’s a priest and a pastor.
It’s not by promoting political conservatism that he is a friend of our brand of same in our part of the world; it’s by preaching the gospel and touching hearts and healing wounds and offering hope and and mercy and getting people back in touch with God that he advances the cause of truth and good and freedom and self-control and compassion and patriotism and mutual care and honesty and piety—all those fundamental moral values at the foundation of the civil society and ordered liberty.
And it’s not just the fact of his preaching, but it’s his preaching in and through his personal witness of holiness and faith and profound humility, within the charism and with the great influence of his office.
It’s not mine, you know. I got it from John Adams. :)
It’s true that not all religions comport with our system. But the Pope isn’t preaching all religions. He’s certainly not preaching radical Islam. Or Marxism.
I’d say you have that about right. A friend reminded me the last time a speaker was brought in to talk about abortion at our parish was the Sunday after Obama won the 2008 election. And our priests never bring it up themselves.
I’m a huge fan of Pope Francis’s message of Mercy, but the Church has always had a “Both/And” approach. As Bishop Barron points out, the Church makes both extravagant moral demands (be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is Perfect) and offers extravagant (Divine) Mercy to sinners.
The reason leftists are so happy with Pope Francis is they think he’s softening the demands. So far, he’s not done much to clear up the confusion.
The Pope has repeatedly affirmed Church teaching in its entirety. Everything about his life and witness indicates that he is a true and faithful Catholic. And yet conservatives suspect and resent him, why? For not sounding more like us? For not denouncing sin more? For not emphasizing the things we want him to emphasize? It reminds me, I have to say, of the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son.
Here (speaking of both/and) is Pope Francis in his closing address to the Synod fathers last year:
I recognize in myself the former tendency. Mea culpa. This Pope has opened my heart.
Speaking as a non-Catholic here, I suspect and resent his politics, not him. People and the gifts they give the world are more than their politics. Most of us have met at least one wonderful person doing wonderful things whose politics are nonetheless horrifying. It happens. The Pope, being a centralized figure, is inevitably more politicized than, say, a parish priest with the same politics, which renders papal politics rather more worrisome. But lousy political opinions is hardly an absolute bar to doing saintly things.
One of my favorite saints, Gregory of Nyssa, also happened to have a lousy understanding of economics. Great understanding of the dignity of the human person, slaves included, and was the first person I know of in Christian history to advocate not only that slaveowners free their slaves, but that the very institution of slavery be abolished. But he also unfortunately believed something like financial transactions were inherently evil. So on economics he was quite mistaken. What that tells me is economics is non-obvious enough that even saints can be wrong about it.
My hope is that Francis’s mistaken notions of highly nonobvious disciplines he doesn’t specialize in won’t undermine his ministry. But of course his ministry is far more than his opinions on these matters.
I’d say rather they resent what they imagine his politics to be. They project political thinking onto him, all unfittingly, in my view.
Conrad Black at NRO today:
Conservatives who trash the Pope are hurting their cause.
Conrad Black at NRO yesterday:
That deserves another quote:
I always want to ask people like Black if they think observant Catholics are having joyless sex… and then laugh!
— Psalm 119:97
As a convert, maybe Mr. Black needs to meditate on chastity within marriage a little more.
Pope-trashing is also a form of cafeteria Catholicism, isn’t it?
I think he’s making his political ideas pretty clear, though. Sure, the popular press picks up on some of his statements, not others. But just because the press repeats it doesn’t mean he didn’t say it.
Still, being a great political thinker is not a necessary component of being an outstanding, virtuous person – thank God! Claiming, “The Pope’s politics are bad, therefore he is bad,” is just as mistaken as claiming, “The Pope’s politics are good, therefore he is good.” There’s far more to goodness than having the right political opinions.
I respectfully disagree, Midge. I think politically-minded Americans project politics onto him.
For instance, he says “social justice” and they read, “leftism.” Which is bogus. Social justice in Catholic Social Teaching is moral category, not a political one, and it challenges the left and right both.
Contra the left: It grants private property rights; it priorities the individual over the collective; it trumpets subsidiarity over centralization of state power; it aims at establishing conditions not outcomes, etc.
The Pope says “re-distrubtion,” and they read, “state imposed re-distrubtion.” Which is bogus. CST grants that free markets are the best means of a just distribution of wealth.
Contra the right: CST affirms that there is such a thing as social justice, for which we are collectively responsible.
The Pope affirms CST in its entirety. He has studied it; he believes in it; he preaches it. Conservatives and leftists misconstrue the Pope because we’re projecting our political categories onto him.
An Italian priest friend of ours (utterly orthodox and deeply devout), who has been a missionary in South America and who has just spent 2 years in the US, told us he was truly shocked by the politicization of Catholicism he found in our country. He almost thinks we’re a lost cause (in terms of the renewal of the Church.)
He has much more hope for Africa and Asia, where martyrdom is happening.
Here are ways we, in our country, can work toward a more just distribution of wealth that are perfectly consistent with conservatism:
– Through monetary policy
– Through tax policy
– Through tax incentives for charitable organizations
– Through treaties and tariffs, etc.
– Through de-regulation
– By curbing crony capitalism
– By fighting crime and corruption
– By strengthening marriage
– By working to phase out welfare dependency
– Through judicious education and prison reforms
A person can reject leftist solutions to social injustice without pretending social injustice doesn’t exist.
One of the social justices issue Bergoglio raised when he was primate in Argentina is that while masses of Argentinians were practically starving and living in slum conditions, the wealthy elite were earning billions through their labor, sending it to foreign banks, and spending it foreign countries.
(You could say the same thing about the oil rulers of the middle east. They treat the natural riches of their country as a private family fortune. They and their cronies live lives of obscene luxury, while most of their countrymen are stuck in poverty, illiteracy and unemployment.)
Now, what the best way to address these problems within the context of the respective countries and their laws, culture and politics is, I don’t know.
But you don’t have to be an economist to look at the situations and deem them seriously out of whack. Something is profoundly wrong—economically and morally.
A good system of law and culture leads to much better outcomes for the general population.
In the special case of the phrase “social justice”, I believe you have a point. Catholic teaching really does mean something specific by that phrase, and not necessarily what your average leftie might mean.
But in other cases, what Francis has been quoted as saying about, say, ecology or economics, seems innately problematic, and not something that can be dismissed by saying there is a more nuanced, “Catholic” interpretation. He can be right on the Catholic teaching, but nonetheless wrong on the “secular facts” that are informing it.
If I believed that pears contained a chemical that biologically inhibited our self-control, then, given this belief, my counseling that Christians should not eat pears would be consistent with Christian teaching: after all, one fruit of the Spirit is self-control, and we should not knowingly do things proven to impair the Spirit’s fruits. Yet I would still be factually wrong about the “secular fact” of pears actually doing this.
It’s no biggie to me. We’re all undoubtedly wrong about many secular facts. Just happening to be right about them benefits Christian teaching, but it’s not the point of Christian teaching.
It’s hard to answer this without specific examples.
But being wrong on scientific facts (say) is not the same as having particular political views.
It’s not strange or scandalous for a Pope (who, though he taught chemistry, so he’s far more scientifically-minded than most) is not a professional scientist to accept the apparent consensus on climate change. There’s nothing politically leftist about that, though it may look leftist to us.
Nor is it leftist to call for international action on what is clearly an international problem (if it is a problem, which I doubt.)
Same goes for problems like human trafficking and the drug trade. They’re global problems that call for global cooperation.
Sure, they’re not the same. But they influence each other. For example, mandatory vaccination either is or is not totalitarian, but most of those who complain the hardest about it are also those who doubt the safety of vaccines (most – there are some who believe anti-vaxxers are being stupid who nonetheless oppose mandatory vaccination). Likewise, climate change, as you mentioned, and – if you’re willing to call economics a science (I am, though I agree it’s not a hard science) – economics: different beliefs about how humans function economically tends to nudge people into differing politics, and vice-versa.
But all of this is part of why I feel free to disagree with the Pope’s politics without needing to claim that his politics are a scandal.
Well, there’s no doubt: different beliefs and concerns tend to nudge people toward different politics.
But, 1) the Pope is not an American and he isn’t speaking within the American political context, and 2) from the fact that Americans who are “into climate change” tend to vote Democrat in the US, we can’t assume that since the Pope is into climate change, he must therefore have leftist politics.
This is all the more the case considering his strong stands against gay marriage and abortion, and his strong stand in favor of religious liberty against the leftist downgrade to freedom of worship.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that he was a staunch opponent of liberation theology in Argentina.
That, on top of staunch doctrinal orthodoxy, gave him a distinct reputation for conservatism down there.