Pope Francis waves to the crowd during his inauguration mass.
Photograph: Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images
Not so long ago, the Roman Catholic Church made a Pope disappear overnight. I fear Pope Francis risks a similar fate.
What is it with this Pope Francis? He dares to bring to life the message of Jesus before a world that is bent on making the rich richer and the poor disappear. He dares to voice the truth about dogma - the red herrings that the "religious" use to keep the multitudes in their place, focused away from reality - hocus-pocus - and silent about injustice and foolishness. Ah! such a leader!
Who speaks truth anymore? It is so rare as to have become unrecognizable. Everyone lies. Everyone manipulates to get what they want. And here is a man chosen to represent the most powerful government on earth, the Vatican, who dares to speak the obvious truths that no one in power has dared to speak for a very long time.
"Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth." What kind of earth? The one being messed up by the ultra rich and the endlessly greedy? When the poor inherit the earth, where will those pigs be living? On Mars?
I will not become a Catholic, but I am amazed and warmed by this new "Prince of the Church" who chooses to live, as much as possible, like an ordinary human being, and who dares to speak truth for all to hear.
May God protect Pope Francis from the Roman Catholic Church and from Big Bucks and other tyrants who hold power everywhere in our time, and from the lone lunatics who go about freely these days destroying the innocent.
Pope Francis will not be able to change the Church as much as the world needs the change - to recognize women as full human beings - equal, if not better and wiser than many men. He will not dare to acknowledge that abortion is sometimes kinder than bringing a child into the world to suffer for years. He may not be able to use the Vatican's enormous wealth to feed the millions of hungry children in the world. But, at least, he is trying to do what is right. Like Jesus, he is trying.
In his first Papal exhortation, Pope Francis writes:
New idols. Pope Francis writes that "worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose. The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings."
The world has created new idols through the worship of money, free-markets and consumer-based capitalism to the point where "human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded." We are currently witnessing "a globalization of indifference" where the poor are intentionally ignored.
Trickle-down economics. The term trickle-down economics has been used by financial conservatives to mean allowing the wealthy to do business without obligation of regulation or taxation. The profits made by big business then supposedly trickle down to lower levels of the economic ladder.
"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," the Pope writes. "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."
Greed. Pope Francis points out that today's economy sustains greed. "While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. The thirst for power and possessions know no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule."
Indifference. Francis also points out that today's economy creates a globalization of indifference. "To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed."
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