Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome VII: Anna March unmasks pope’s brilliant disguise.

efore she pub­lished her major new essay on Pope Fran­cis this past Sun­day, I had nev­er heard of Ms. Anna March. I con­fess it to my shame. Here is one of the great writ­ers of our gen­er­a­tion, who has penned a full sev­en arti­cles now for Salon. Her titles alone con­vey the range and depth of her vision: “My Bad Sex Was­n’t Rape”; “My Shaz­am Boobs.” In the lat­ter fine essay, Ms. March teach­es us how hard-won is the les­son that “I can cel­e­brate my tits with­out mourn­ing their poten­tial loss.” Hers tru­ly is a voice for the ages.

Nor have I yet men­tioned her pro­lif­ic out­put. Though she is yet but 44, her Web site lists the fol­low­ing vita: 2 poems; 17 essays on lit­er­ary top­ics for a Web site called The Rum­pus (among its sub­ti­tles, “Tran­si­tions Are For Punks,” “Fan­ta­sy foot­ball with a touch of the erot­ic,” and “Hyp­ocrites have more options”); 4 more book reviews; 1 short sto­ry; 12 more essays for a few more sites; and 15 whole months’ worth of writ­ing for 2 Major Sites: Style, Sub­stance, Soul and Rehoboth Food­ie. Her first nov­el is in the works; and after all this, she is (as one might expect) writ­ing her mem­oirs. One of her essays was nominated—actually nom­i­nat­ed!—for a Push­cart Prize.

That such a major lit­er­ary tal­ent has until now escaped my atten­tion lacks excuse; though it may also reflect how great is Ms. March’s humil­i­ty about her own gifts.

The Eyes of March

Hence, with such obvi­ous exper­tise in the mat­ter, Ms. March is the very per­son for Salon to go to for an exposé of the pope’s hypocrisy and the ongo­ing, recidi­vist evil of the Catholic Church. Her match­less knowl­edge and depth, and of course brav­ery (for lib­er­als are always brave), is in top form here.

Here she begins:

The image of Pope Fran­cis is that he is a breath of fresh air, more pro­gres­sive on social issues than his pre­de­ces­sor and a kinder, gen­tler pope. But when the facts are exam­ined, you see that he is none of these things. There is an enor­mous dis­con­nect between who the pope real­ly is in terms of his poli­cies and his pub­lic rela­tions image, as craft­ed by the Vatican’s PR man, pre­vi­ous­ly with Fox News.

See how she frames the point: To be “more pro­gres­sive on social issues” is to be “kinder” and “gen­tler.” But to be con­ser­v­a­tive (like Bene­dict XVI, the Evil One) is, by the nec­es­sary log­ic of con­trast, to be mean and harsh. In truth, it is is not every lib­er­al who will speak such deceit to pow­er; but Ms. March is fear­less. She wants it to be known, and known well, that Church teach­ing is is no dif­fer­ent than a polit­i­cal stance, and a very mean dog one at that. So she names it in polit­i­cal terms, as though it is but “pol­i­cy” that could pos­si­bly change to suit the idols of the age. (Or at least one of the age’s fac­tions.) Note that she speaks of the pope as though what he says is not Church teach­ing, but rather his own pol­i­cy.

What con­fronts us—brilliantly, like a thou­sand points of light, at the very start of this essay—is a recon­struc­tion of what the Church in fact is (i.e., a vehi­cle for the prop­a­ga­tion of Truth and the sal­va­tion of souls) into what Ms. March wants it to be (a vehi­cle for the prop­a­ga­tion of ideology—specifically, her own). Who, I ask you, if you can answer, has dared that before? None dare call it unrea­son.

But note again, for empha­sis:

Pope Fran­cis has made any num­ber of state­ments that seem to indi­cate change and progress that are not reflect­ed in pol­i­cy. In fact, in the wake of such com­ments from Pope Fran­cis, the Vat­i­can often makes a point to explic­it­ly state that no church pol­i­cy has changed.

The Church, as Ms. March under­stands, alone among the stars, does not have truths; nor does it have teach­ings. Rather, it has poli­cies. From the start, her lib­er­al agen­da is to politi­cize the Church—to some­how posit that a good pope will advance, not right doc­trine, but cor­rect “poli­cies.”

March Winds

For too long, lib­er­als in the media have dreamed that Pope Fran­cis is going to put an easy stamp on their policies—women priests, abor­tion on demand, free con­tra­cep­tion, gay mar­riage, com­mu­nion for the remar­ried. One would have thought that a new pope who talked the talk about “who am I to judge?” would sign the dot­ted line to these rea­son­able demands of his bet­ters, these nat­ur­al out­growths of the freer think­ing of our time.

In one of the more hope­ful expres­sions of this think­ing (now trag­i­cal­ly rebuffed), the UK Dai­ly Mail report­ed in Novem­ber that Irish pro­fes­sor and fem­i­nist Lin­da Hogan “is being tipped as a con­tender” to be the first female car­di­nal:

A woman has nev­er held the title, and while cur­rent prece­dence states only ordained men can be appoint­ed to the role, Pope Fran­cis could be poised to make his­to­ry.

The leader of the Catholic church, elect­ed eight months ago, has emerged as a lib­er­al prompt­ing spec­u­la­tion he will invite a woman to don the red hat and wel­come the first female car­di­nal into the Vat­i­can’s fold.

The reformist Argen­tin­ian pope has made no secret of the fact he aims to increase the role of women in the church, call­ing for “a tru­ly deep the­ol­o­gy of women.”

Now, as lib­er­als, we know in pri­vate that this is all noth­ing but sheer wind. We know—no one need tell us—that the fact that Fran­cis is “reformist” or “Argen­tin­ian” has no per­ti­nent mean­ing at all; that when he speaks of “a tru­ly deep the­ol­o­gy of women,” he has some­thing far dif­fer­ent in mind than female car­di­nals, les­bian mar­riages, and abort­ed babies. We do not ask what that is; for it need not vex us. But what we do is, we find some wild Jesuit priest (or we make one up), we goad him to spec­u­late that impos­si­ble fan­tasies are even at the door, we peer over the land­scape for a like­ly “first female car­di­nal,” and we run like mad to tick­le the dupes who read us.

Thus we can plant our agen­da in the pub­lic think­ing; we hope to get lucky with a dod­der­ing, well-mean­ing, geri­atric of a pope (as long as he’s not an ass­hole like Bene­dict); and we have fun in the mean­time dri­ving cred­u­lous Tra­di­tion­al­ists into a mad pan­ic.

But now I fear I have giv­en too much away.

The Odes of March

It is a rare and spe­cial genius who knows when to admit mis­placed hope and failed decep­tion and to bring out the sweet odes of betray­al and anger. Ms. March is that genius of the hour. Her pyrrhic ode to the Fran­cis Who Was (before the jilt­ing) is long and bit­ter­sweet, and I have time to look at but one of its main thrusts. It comes in Ms. March’s argu­ment (and it is the key one) that the pope’s claim to be for the poor is lit­tle more than a mean sham. The world, and espe­cial­ly the Church, is filled with deceit. But let Ms. March tell it us:

It is ludi­crous to take either Pope Fran­cis or the Catholic Church seri­ous­ly on their com­mit­ment to end pover­ty. Even the Nation­al Catholic Reporter calls out the hypocrisy of the Vat­i­can on this issue. Lack of access to birth con­trol and com­pre­hen­sive fam­i­ly plan­ning traps peo­ple in a cycle of pover­ty.

This is com­mon pro­pa­gan­da, but it falls to Ms. March to speak it at a time (beset by the scan­dal of truth) when com­mon pro­pa­gan­da is under grave threat. Amaz­ing­ly, an arch-con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic com­men­ta­tor (who I will not name or link to for fear of giv­ing him more pub­lic­i­ty than he deserves) offered the fol­low­ing tripe as his response. Hav­ing the gall to address Ms. March direct­ly (as though he were in the very room with her grace), he says:

Do you real­ly think, Ms. March, that the only solu­tion to pover­ty is the mur­der of babies by dis­mem­ber­ment or poi­son? Do you real­ly think that good ends can­not be achieved by good means? That absti­nence (gasp!) might help? That if only we fol­low Church teach­ing in our fight against pover­ty, God can­not direct it? I find your lack of faith dis­turb­ing.

Star Wars humor is a low form of wit. It is like some­one who puts on a clown nose and pre­tends (for our more bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment) that he is a lib­er­al.

Deaf, dumb, and mad wingnuts like the one quot­ed above are fond of telling us that per­son­al holi­ness and char­i­ty are the best way to meet the poor and lift them up and bring them to Christ. But when, cen­tu­ry after cen­tu­ry, the poor are always with us, why should we believe those who vain­ly cite Jesus, as though to impose on our brave minds a sti­fling and lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bible?

In her essay, sure to be sem­i­nal, Ms. March reveals the stark­er truth that lies in the black heart of the Church and the new pope:

The new sex­ist, nun-hat­ing, pover­ty-per­pet­u­at­ing, pedophile-pro­tect­ing homo­phobe is the same as the old sex­ist, nun-hat­ing, pover­ty-per­pet­u­at­ing, pedophile-pro­tect­ing homo­phobe, but gosh how the media loves him.

Bril­liant: She excels at a lit­tle-known form of rhetoric called the unjust asper­sion. Descend­ed as it is from the Shake­speare­an insult, it is as though Ms. March had said, “Thou vile, scurvy beast of night! Thou wert ever a homo­pho­bic das­tard!” But she says it in the pecu­liar and exalt­ed lan­guage of our own age, with an admirable min­i­mum of con­trol and excess of just and mad­dened rage. Sen­si­tive souls—the very lights that twin­kle in our pro­gres­sive firmament—will say that there is too lit­tle slan­der in our lit­er­ary cul­ture; but rare gems require rare writ­ers to shine as they ought. In Ms. March’s skilled hand, asper­sion shines.

March Madness

And what but rav­ing asper­sion do lib­er­als have left now that the pope has turned Pen­ny­wise on us and beat down all our hopes for jus­tice? It is but well to arouse us all from our delu­sion and our slum­ber. It is a hard but brave task, and Ms. March does it well, and with the pierc­ing depth of a true writer.

Con­ser­v­a­tives will want to dig their heels in at this newest oppor­tu­ni­ty to lec­ture us that it is not “pol­i­cy” but truth and God’s eter­nal law that are at the heart of the mat­ter. These things, they wild­ly believe, do not change with the age. They will say that we are con­fused about the nature of truth. They will say that we do not under­stand the Church because we inter­pret every­thing through the fil­ter of “pol­i­cy”; and they inter­pret every­thing through the light of eter­nal, unchang­ing truth. They will say it is no Church at all that mere­ly has “poli­cies.”

And while, deep down, we fear that all this may be true, why should we have to give up our pret­ty dreams? Why not rebel with just out­rage and right­eous anger, as does this March hare?

There is more there, much more, and too much to describe in my own hum­ble piece of appre­ci­a­tion; for mere work­man­ship bows down at genius. I may note but one exam­ple, and that is her stun­ning tale (she is a nov­el­ist, dear read­er) of how a Fox News shill became the PR genius behind the pope’s blithe mask, which he wears only to spur cash out of the hips of Amer­i­cans and into the clink­ing cof­fers of the Vat­i­can. (But once the coin in the cof­fer clings, the mask from Pen­ny­wise springs.) That it was Ms. March who was able to rip off the mask will be told and retold down the ages.

How­beit, in hum­ble admi­ra­tion, I would like to make a sug­ges­tion to my new hero Ms. March. Since the Catholic Church shows no sign that it will change with the age—it is too attached to truth, where­as wis­er souls (like you and I) admire our own will—I would ask that you leave it to rot with the brack­ish weight of its own 2000 years. It is sure to. Trust me when I say the gates of Hell will pre­vail. They must, in the end. But for now, there are 50,000 oth­er church­es; or none at all. I request you please to choose. And con­tin­ued good luck in your amaz­ing career.