December 31, 2014 By Greg Campbell
Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, has emerged as a somewhat controversial figure. While maintaining semblances of the Catholic stance on social issues, Pope Francis seems to be more-malleable on these issues than any other Pope in history.
The Pope has struck a liberal tone on certain key issues and has even agreed to address the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics on the importance of combating climate change- a catch-all term favored by liberals to encompass any slight variance in weather.
The Pope is expected to address the United Nations in 2015 on the issue and call for a summit of world religious leaders from many different faiths to discuss the issue.
Further, the Pope was reportedly involved in the recent thawing of relations with Cuba, a nation that has been on-the-outs with the U.S. for a half-century due to the Communist dictatorship that infests the imprisoned island.
The Pontiff has also spoken-out against trickle-down economics, the economic policy that serves as a generator of economic growth and is aimed more at providing opportunities for the poor rather than mere handouts and government dependency.
As Pope Francis crusades for liberal political issues, it seems clear that Obama, who has served as arguably the most-hostile president to religion in history, has found a true ally and a way to help mend fences with Catholics who have taken issue with his extreme secular agenda.
The Washington Times reports:
Of course, helping the poor is a very Christian message; however, the kind of policies pushed by Obama and other leftist zealots only bind the poor to government dependency and President Obama’s radically-secular agenda and war on religion should be enough to spook the Pope from associating too-closely with a man who serves as one of the most-hostile leaders to religious freedom in the civilized world.
The Pope has struck a liberal tone on certain key issues and has even agreed to address the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics on the importance of combating climate change- a catch-all term favored by liberals to encompass any slight variance in weather.
The Pope is expected to address the United Nations in 2015 on the issue and call for a summit of world religious leaders from many different faiths to discuss the issue.
Further, the Pope was reportedly involved in the recent thawing of relations with Cuba, a nation that has been on-the-outs with the U.S. for a half-century due to the Communist dictatorship that infests the imprisoned island.
The Pontiff has also spoken-out against trickle-down economics, the economic policy that serves as a generator of economic growth and is aimed more at providing opportunities for the poor rather than mere handouts and government dependency.
As Pope Francis crusades for liberal political issues, it seems clear that Obama, who has served as arguably the most-hostile president to religion in history, has found a true ally and a way to help mend fences with Catholics who have taken issue with his extreme secular agenda.
The Washington Times reports:
President Obama increasingly is finding a key policy ally in the Vatican, with Pope Francis standing virtually shoulder to shoulder with the White House on income inequality and a historic diplomatic reboot with communist Cuba. The pontiff next year also appears poised to offer greater support to the president on climate change initiatives and reportedly wants to be a leading voice at a U.N. global warming summit next year, where the American president will make perhaps his greatest pitch to date for more dramatic action on the environment.
But in the long term, analysts say, Democrats may pay something of a political price.
To soothe American Catholics, who may have grown suspicious of the church’s partnership with a liberal White House, the pope in the coming months and years is likely to zero in on fundamental disagreements with the Democratic Party on issues such as abortion and religious liberty, said Joseph Prud’homme, a political science professor and the director of the Institute for the Study of Religion, Politics, and Culture at Washington College.
“I believe Francis will remind the faithful in his position as supreme pastor about what he has consistently said about life and religious liberty. I hope, and I expect, that he will, after these initiatives [on Cuba and climate change], remind the faithful of the unending position of the church with respect to the sanctity of human life, the importance of religious liberty,” Mr. Prud’homme said
He added that Francis could create a deeper, almost irreparable rift between the church and the Democratic Party and create further headaches for liberal Catholics in electoral politics unless the Democratic Party “changes and recalibrates its center of gravity away from these issues which, from the position of the church, represent grave and serious moral error.”
While abortion and other moral issues represent a philosophical chasm between the Catholic Church and the Democratic Party, the past several years have proved the two can work together.
The White House praised the pope this month for playing a critical role in a landmark deal with Cuba, one in which the U.S. will re-establish formal diplomatic ties and open an embassy in Havana for the first time in more than five decades.
Francis invited administration officials and representatives of Cuban President Raul Castro’s government to the Vatican for a series of meetings this fall. The first Latin American pope also sent letters to Mr. Obama and Mr. Castro, urging the two leaders to change course and end the isolation of the past 50 years.
“He played a very important role,” Mr. Obama said of the pontiff in an interview with ABC News this month. “The pope doesn’t wield armies. He can’t impose sanctions. But he can speak with great moral authority, and it makes a difference. And it certainly made a difference in this case.”…
The pope also has become one of the Democrats’ biggest allies on income inequality, which Mr. Obama has cast as perhaps the biggest challenge facing the U.S. economy today.
Last year, Francis offered a clear rejection of “trickle-down economics,” seemingly embracing Democratic policies of greater redistribution of wealth to struggling Americans.
“Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories, which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,” he said. “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.”
High-profile Democrats, such as Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, cited the pope’s words when arguing for more government spending on programs to aid low-income Americans and to shrink the wage gap between the rich and the poor.
“Those of us in America should pay heed” to the pontiff’s words, he said after Francis’ comments on income inequality.
Of course, helping the poor is a very Christian message; however, the kind of policies pushed by Obama and other leftist zealots only bind the poor to government dependency and President Obama’s radically-secular agenda and war on religion should be enough to spook the Pope from associating too-closely with a man who serves as one of the most-hostile leaders to religious freedom in the civilized world.
.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment