In the years since his ascent to the papacy, we have allowed Pope Francis to turn the apostolic office into a joke. He has corroded the papal throne with his despicable actions.
Easily one of the most damaging decisions Francis has made has been recognizing the bishops appointed by the Chinese government; China had been appointing bishops without papal approval, but the Catholic Church had refused to accept them.
I’m sure the problems with allowing an authoritarian country with a single party system that demands total compliance and adherence to the government to select their bishops for an institution that preaches that God is more important and powerful than government are self-evident.
Pope Francis has essentially given communists control of the church in China. Now, the same organization that imprisons journalists for asking the wrong questions is selecting bishops for the Catholic Church. One of the most important outlets of resistance to authoritarianism, the Catholic Church, has now been assimilated into the government, with leaders of parishes becoming simply government props. All this has happened with approval from the pope.
Another act that the pope has taken over the years is to normalize people who hate the Catholic Church and have acted in adverse ways to it in the past. For example, after giving a speech in which he proclaimed capitalism to be “New Colonialism” and an “intolerable system,” he allowed Bolivian President Evo Morales to come speak. Morales wore a jacket with the face of Che Guevara on it, a man the Bolivian president openly idolizes.
Guevara served in the Castro regime in Cuba as secretary of state. According to Hawaii University Historian R.J. Rummel, upwards of 141,000 Cubans were killed by the regime in which Guevara served as a ranking official.
The fact that Francis was fraternizing with someone who worships a homicidal communist who brought nothing but death and corruption to his own country should not be considered OK. To add to this, Morales gave Francis a cross with a sickle, the most enduring symbol of communism, on it. It should be no surprise that Francis took the cross.
The Catholic Church should be an institution that condemns communism. Communist leaders have been responsible for untold amounts of death, and nations that have tried communism or are communist have always restricted freedom of expression.
It is the church’s place to defend people living under those regimes, not to make friends with people who idolize their oppressors.
Meeting with Michael Moore and Bernie Sanders doesn’t make the pope a left-wing socialist, nor is it alarming.
But when his policies are analyzed and the people with whom he surrounds himself are looked at, it is very clear that he believes in an ideology that is contrary to what the church holds.
Despite all of this, it isn’t the pope’s fault — it is ours for enabling him. The people in the parishes I have attended have always said the pope is acting in the best interest of the church. They always try to ignore or defend anything and everything the man does. At the end of the day, saying the Catholic Church will survive until the end of time is not an appropriate way to address the problem.
No matter how much Catholics, or any Christian for that matter, want to support the pope, they will eventually have to accept that his policies are a liability rather than an asset to Catholicism.
