Francis the Talking Fool, aka That Crazy Pontiff

Pope Francis, apparently envious of all the youth-baiting appeal of international Marxism’s prop du jour, teenage communist mouthpiece Greta Thunberg, is out there riding Greta’s coattails, declaring that the Catholic Church, of which he is ostensibly still a member, is actively considering changing the catechism to include “the sin against ecology,” or “ecological sin,” or — my favorite phrasing — “ecocide” as part of the official Church teaching on good and evil.

Needless to say, Francis ties this sudden revelation of a new form of sin to modern man’s “market idolatry” or “divinized market,” which he conveniently equates with nebulous “global financial capital,” aka corporations, and then cites as the cause of “serious crimes not only against property but also against people and the environment.”

Where to begin?

First of all, equating global corporate fascism — the tyrannical insiders club of state regulatory agencies and corporate money-men — with the free market (i.e., the profit motive) is like equating Donald Trump with American conservatism. In fact, it is exactly like that.

Secondly, the typical modern Catholic hatred of economic liberty, and the accompanying jeremiad against the profit motive, is, as usual, paired with a big black hole where alternative solutions to practical human well-being ought to be. That is, Pope Francis, like most popes stretching all the way back to Pope Leo XIII, who first steered the Church onto this path of quasi-Marxist rhetoric (which I examined in detail years ago), loves to embrace the latest trends in progressive propaganda, partly as a means of seeming “relevant” to the young generation, and partly because the Church’s intellectual leadership has a thick strain of extreme Marxism in it — although until Francis, previous popes were restrained from actually espousing Marxism as Marxism, due to that whole “atheism” bugaboo, which seems not to bother today’s super-hip pope in the least. But where the Church comes up blank is in proposing its own social model to replace the alleged evils of free market inequality. The real reason Catholic leaders are hopeless in the realm of positive proposals, of course, is that what they generally want is precisely what they are doctrinally forbidden from espousing or directly praising, namely communism — and again, Francis seems to be solving that doctrinal problem by gradually raising the rose-colored curtain on a more naked form of Marxist rhetoric.

Third, it is typical of the Vatican’s pathetic efforts to mask its real motives that Francis, in the process of condemning freedom and self-determination in the name of “ecology,” throws in “property” among the victims of the global market forces he so despises: “serious crimes not only against property but also against people and the environment.”

That bifurcation and careful separation of “property” from “people” is a sure sign that the mention of property is nothing but a diversion to put non-Marxist Catholics off his scent, or should I say stench. In short, a crime against property makes no sense except as a crime against people, since without property owners — i.e., humans who possess wealth or land — there is no property. By treating property and people as separate and unrelated issues, Francis gives the game away: He is singing the same old Marxist “people before profits” tune, and “property” is merely an empty abstraction inserted to avoid revealing too much too soon.

Stated differently, progressive environmental policy is incompatible with respect for and protection of property on the deepest level. No one advocating radical environmentalism, such as one who refers to capitalism as the cause of “ecocide,” can simultaneously claim to be defending property. Whose property? 

I am also amused, in the sense of being sickened, by Francis’ assault on “market idolatry” and the “divinized market.” Those notions might have a place in a Catholic discussion of spiritual priorities were the speaker not employing them in the context of espousing and promoting our moment’s most ubiquitous pagan pseudo-religion — radical environmentalist progressivism. Even worse, Francis is proposing to incorporate this heretical paganism directly into the catechism itself, as though eco-idolatry were not as incompatible with Catholic doctrine as market idolatry.

The Holy Father (hmm, where are all these flies coming from suddenly?) carried his load of baloney all the way to the top of the Tower of Babel — which, in case you are rusty, indicates an act of supreme hubris — with his subsequent “everything but the kitchen sink” diatribe.

He also said that the culture of waste, combined with other widespread phenomena in welfare societies, is showing the “serious tendency to degenerate into a culture of hatred.”

“It is no coincidence that in these times, emblems and actions typical of Nazism reappear, which, with its persecutions against Jews, gypsies and people of homosexual orientation, represents the negative model par excellence of a culture of waste and hatred,” Francis said.

He also said that upon hearing some speeches from certain governments, although he didn’t give any examples, he’s “reminded of Hitler’s speeches in 1934, in 1936, [heard] today.”

There is a hint of unintended truth in this statement, the kind of truth progressives never realize they are revealing, so mired are they in their ideological idealism. Yes, welfare states do tend to deteriorate into “cultures of waste and hatred.” But, contrary to the pope’s presupposition, the relationship between progressive socio-economic policy and the rise of wastefulness and hatred is not due to any contradictory winds within such societies. Rather, the relationship is causal. For one thing, progressivism breeds and rewards oligarchical elitism and nefarious “public-private partnerships,” which is to say impious alliances of the self-important and self-promoting, formed in the name of maintaining social control and “stability.” In addition, the infantilism and dependency, along with the fundamental disrespect for private property and individual self-determination, that are inherently promoted and rationalized by long-term immersion in progressive economic policy, naturally and inevitably disintegrate a proper society — i.e., a community of self-governing individuals co-existing with a shared sense of purpose — into an atomistic, amoral social cacophony of weak-willed, self-absorbed babies. And that is the source of your “culture of waste and hatred.”

Beyond that hidden self-revelation, however, this anti-Nazism spiel from the Vicar of Christ (dang, that buzzing is really getting annoying!) is yet another example of Vatican projection, smearing others with the Church’s own sins. For among the emblems and actions visible today that are most typical of Nazism are the endless and radical progressive paeans to Gaia — the paganism of eco-worship and the mysticism of humanity’s demanded sacrifice and self-immolation to “The Earth.”

The Catholic Church, under the stewardship of Pope Francis, is not only veering more recklessly into the extremes of old-fashioned socialist egalitarianism and redistributive justice than ever before. It is now, just as eerily, flirting with the ascendant “green” ideology that has its (carefully concealed) roots in the post-idealist German mysticism that lent so much ersatz gravity and emotional plausibility to the drumbeat of the National Socialists.

The Church, put simply, is living through its nadir moment of shamefully trading piety for power. It is far from certain that she can ever recover from this wreckage.

The root of the problem

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