Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome VIII: More liberal denial and despair.

iber­al­ism, as it exists today, is a fairy tale that occa­sion­al­ly bumps up against truth, gets per­plexed and angry for a spell, then returns to Nev­er­land. In few places is this more true than in the lib­er­al medi­a’s cov­er­age of Pope Fran­cis. I have writ­ten about this sad phe­nom­e­non here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Their delu­sions about Fran­cis, and their igno­rance of the Church they write about, nev­er ends. And they seem to be woe­ful­ly incu­ri­ous about get­ting it right.

In the lat­est episode of this saga, an anony­mous author (AA) for inquisitr.com writes an arti­cle titled “Pope Fran­cis Might Not Be As Awe­some As We Thought He Was.” Oh, no! Does that sound to you like it was writ­ten by some­one in high school?

It is, thank­ful­ly, a short arti­cle, so let us get our red fisk­ing pens out and begin:

Pope Fran­cis con­tin­ues to get so much love from the world for this sim­ple rea­son: he is not ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive Pope Bene­dict.

That’s the lead. Yes, I know, we’re meant to think here that every­one hat­ed poor B16—a claim that is so demon­stra­bly untrue you won­der how any­one could write such words and not instant­ly combust—unless by “the world” AA means “the lib­er­al media.”

Now, it is true enough that Fran­cis has dif­fer­ent emphases, and a dif­fer­ent style, than Bene­dict did; that is true of any pope. But he is nei­ther more nor less “con­ser­v­a­tive.” This is a fic­tion that has tak­en root. Already we see that poor AA (I would­n’t have put my name to this piece, either) is unable not to see the world, and con­se­quent­ly the pope and the Church, through a polit­i­cal glass. That is why what we read here is so strange and sil­ly.

Pope Fran­cis has since shown us a very con­vinc­ing image of a bold, refresh­ing deviant who has adamant­ly defied the church’s typ­i­cal­ly iron-fist­ed con­ser­vatism.

Deviant? That’s just an … odd word choice. One gets the sense that poor AA does­n’t have much of a feel for usage.

At any rate, AA now presents us with the stan­dard list of all the top­ics on which Pope Fran­cis has dis­played an “adamant” and “refresh­ing” devian­cy: “LGBT, wom­en’s rights, athe­ism, and evo­lu­tion.” Now, any­one who will do half a min­ute’s worth of Google search­ing on these top­ics as dis­cussed by Catholic blog­gers, who know a thing or two about the Church, will dis­cov­er that Pope Fran­cis has said noth­ing all that shock­ing. We’ve heard these same things before, from oth­er popes, incud­ing the evil Bene­dict.

On the top­ic of evo­lu­tion, for exam­ple, AA links to a source—one source—which hap­pens to be the very same news site AA writes for! Talk about liv­ing in an echo cham­ber.

And yet AA, if he or she had thought to both­er with such triv­ia as research, could have looked into the mat­ter and found this arti­cle by Mark Shea (Catholic author) show­ing how Fran­cis has said noth­ing that had­n’t already been said by both John Paul II and Bene­dict XVI, as well as no less an author­i­ty than St. Thomas Aquinas, 500 years before Dar­win. Imag­ine that! Fran­cis is not giv­ing us some rad­i­cal break with the past here. Or, AA could have found this arti­cle by Mike Fly­nn (Catholic author) explain­ing why, in stan­dard Catholic think­ing, cre­ation and evo­lu­tion are per­fect­ly com­pat­i­ble. Or, if AA felt it beneath his or her dig­ni­ty to read unclean Catholic sources, he or she could have found the very same infor­ma­tion at Newsweek, here.

Indeed, any­one who shows the least amount of curios­i­ty about these issues will soon dis­cov­er that, in every case, when Fran­cis speaks, he says noth­ing that has not already been said by John Paul II and Bene­dict XVI and the Cat­e­chism. I’ll go fur­ther. Not only has Bene­dict XVI often said the very same thing Fran­cis has, on issue after issue, but he has done so in even stronger words. Nowhere is this more true than on the top­ic of cap­i­tal­ism, as I explain here.

AA con­tin­ues: “Pope Fran­cis, the first pope to hail out­side Europe, was an instant fan favorite for being so evi­dent­ly anti-pover­ty.”

Now, the idea that Bene­dict was some­how pro-pover­ty is so igno­rant it is insult­ing to any­one who knows what they’re talk­ing about. Has AA not read Car­i­tatis in Ver­i­tate? It’s right here, on the Vat­i­can’s Web site—a good place to go if you want to know what the Church has, you know, said. Or what about Bene­dic­t’s mes­sage for the World Day of Peace in 2009 (here), the very title of which is “Fight­ing Pover­ty to Build Peace”? Search and you will find that the Church has been against pover­ty for a long time now. Maybe AA should read this, or this, or this, or this, or this. Does AA want to know what he or she is talk­ing about? Does AA care?

But, dear read­er, did you catch the oth­er error that AA made in this pas­sage? You know, the claim that Fran­cis is “the first pope to hail from out­side Europe”? Uh … no. The first pope from out­side Europe was the first pope. Per­haps AA has heard of St. Peter. Or per­haps not. Peter was from Israel—that’s in Asia, if you did not know. Here’s a list of eight oth­er popes who were not from Europe: Evaris­tus (ca. 99–107, from Israel); Vic­tor I (189–199, from Africa); Mil­ti­ades (311–314, from Africa); Theodore I (642–649, from Jerusalem); John V (685–686, from Syr­ia); Sisin­nius (708, from Syr­ia); Con­stan­tine (708–715, from Syr­ia); and Gre­go­ry III (731–741, from Syr­ia).

So Fran­cis is, in fact, the tenth pope from out­side Europe. He is mere­ly the first in a long time. If AA does not like Catholic sources, he or she could have found this out from CNN. They must be real­ly un-inquir­ing over at Inquisitr, to not check up on even the most basic of facts. But one won­ders: if Ray­mond Car­di­nal Burke had been elect­ed pope, would AA be say­ing that he was the first pope from out­side Europe? Some­how I doubt that any­one would be doing som­er­saults over this.

Now comes the real point of the arti­cle. AA scolds Fran­cis for some remarks he made in the Philip­pines uphold­ing the Church’s teach­ing on birth con­trol, despite “his­toric promis­es” that the “hard­ened objec­tion” would be eased “once and for all.” In oth­er words, AA is shocked and dis­mayed to dis­cov­er that the pope is Catholic. Who knew? No one, but no one, ever sus­pect­ed this, let alone wrote about it.

And what does AA cite as evi­dence of these “his­toric promis­es” that the Church is on the verge of chang­ing its teach­ing about con­tra­cep­tion? Why, this arti­cle in the UK Dai­ly Mail, which comes right out and says that the only con­ces­sion the Octo­ber syn­od made was that Church teach­ing on this point was (note my empha­sis) “com­mon­ly per­ceived today as an intru­sion in the inti­mate life of the cou­ple.” Well, that’s just a state­ment of fact—a mere obser­va­tion about things that are. “Church doc­trine,” the arti­cle goes on to state plain­ly, “is not expect­ed to change as a result of the debate.”

In oth­er words, what­ev­er the per­cep­tions may be, it ain’t gonna hap­pen, can’t hap­pen, but we will con­tin­ue to delude our­selves into think­ing that it’s at the very door. This is what AA means by “his­toric promise.”

He or she con­tin­ues:

Here’s the thing: If Pope Fran­cis real­ly is for the poor, he should be the first to see the over­whelm­ing sci­en­tif­ic con­nec­tion between mod­ern birth con­trol and reduc­tion in pover­ty. Unin­tend­ed preg­nan­cies occur the most in places where pover­ty is rife.

This is stan­dard lib­er­al pro­pa­gan­da: you can’t be for the poor and also against con­tra­cep­tion. AA links to two stud­ies (this one and this one), both from lib­er­al advo­ca­cy sites, to try to back up the claim. But—go and take a look at them yourself—they are clas­sic exam­ple of the cor­re­la­tion-is-cau­sa­tion fal­la­cy. Lib­er­als want there to be a con­nec­tion; that does­n’t mean there is one.

But what we are asked to believe, in all this, is that, until the Church gives up its teach­ing on birth con­trol and sup­ports the lib­er­al sex­u­al agen­da, it’s not real­ly anti-pover­ty; that’s all just a cha­rade. Lib­er­als can not seem to under­stand that being pro-life and anti-pover­ty are posi­tions in response to inde­pen­dent real­i­ties. To try to link them means only that you care more about birth con­trol than you do about pover­ty; you are using pover­ty to try to pro­mote an agen­da about sex. It is birth con­trol that is sup­posed to come first, as though it were a vac­cine, and then pover­ty will mag­i­cal­ly van­ish.

AA con­tin­ues with some para­graphs about Pope Fran­cis punch­ing any­one who insults his moth­er, which aren’t all that rel­e­vant and don’t tell us much of any­thing except that AA thinks that Jesus would nev­er punch any­body. Of course, Jesus did whip a few peo­ple, but AA does not men­tion this. He or she then con­cludes with this para­graph:

Despite these crit­i­cisms, I still main­tain my opin­ion that Pope Fran­cis remains to be one of the great­est lead­ers of this cen­tu­ry. He is still the change the Catholic church dire­ly needs.

Well, if all this promise of hope and change has turned out to be illu­so­ry, how can he be “the change we need”? (This is not writ­ing, by the way; this is lift­ing slo­gans from Oba­ma ral­lies.)

Many of his state­ments might still be a reflec­tion of the same, old-fash­ioned pon­tif­i­cal atti­tudes, but if not for Pope Fran­cis, the church wouldn’t have been this [much] clos­er to a more open-mind­ed, more accept­ing Catholic soci­ety.

Oh. Now, let’s ask our­selves what this may mean, or if it makes sense at all. In spite of all these blight­ed promis­es and “old-fash­ioned” mores, Pope Fran­cis is still some­how “open-mind­ed” and “accept­ing” (in the lib­er­al view of these words)? No. You can only say that if that is what you want to believe. You can only say that if you insist on liv­ing in your fairy tale.

I have said before that these bursts of real­i­ty about Pope Fran­cis will be short-lived. Lib­er­als will return to their day­dreams, refuse to admit that the pope is Catholic, that Church teach­ing is not going to change, that it can not change, that no pope can change it. Every so often they will see this, and they will rise up and wail, and beat their breasts. Then they will drug them­selves again. The irony here is that, for AA, all this hap­pened with­in the very same arti­cle. Fran­cis is “not as awe­some as we thought he was,” the title screams, but then the last para­graph tells us that Fran­cis is “the change we need.”

Yes, he’s the change we need, even though there has been no change. That is called delu­sion.

What is worse, if it were pos­si­ble, is how much AA gets just plain wrong about Fran­cis and what the Church teach­es. And more than that, he or she seems to have no desire what­ev­er to learn the truth. This is incu­ri­ous and slop­py jour­nal­ism at its worst, but the real sad thing is that this is what near­ly all of the main­stream media has become with respect to the Catholic Church. It needs to be always exposed.