I cannot encourage the National Review enough to continue to compare Pope Francis to Benito Mussolini and Juan Perón. It would make me ecstatic if that magazine would finally drop the pretense that they are the more-Catholic-than-thou moral arbiter of American politics and just make open war on the Holy See.
They really did think that the papacy would be controlled by conservatives forever, although the demographic changes in the makeup of Catholicism pretty much guaranteed that they would lose their grip sooner rather than later. Most of the growth in the Church is below the equator and there aren’t too many people below the equator who look at the world like white European missionaries and colonialists.
Frankly, the conservative Catholics at the notoriously racist National Revlew are just lucky that the cardinals selected a white pope. I cannot even imagine how much worse their sense of dislocation and loss would be if the pope was from Zimbabwe.
Still, most Catholics respect the hierarchical structure of the Church and won’t openly criticize Pope Francis. They have the good sense not to compare him to fascist dictators.
Because everyone knows that only fascists ever criticize the excesses of capitalism or believe in climate change.
He’s quoting someone named Malarkey! that’s a help. thanx for posting, needed some late night laughter. though it’s hard to beat Ken Langone warning the Pope he should be nicer to rich people otherwise they won’t donate to the renovation of St Pat’s – but somehow they have managed it.
Yeah, that threat from Langone was hilarious. It expressed a wonderful combination of impotent malevolence, religious faithlessness, and worship of Mammon. “Nice chalice you have there, shame if something happened to it.”
Right? Like only rich people donate to the Church.
and even in numbers rich give less than middle class and poor [at least a few years back when I took some foundation orientation workshops]. they don’t give unless there’s some profit to be made, tax writeoffs or maybe for Ken Langone Get Into Heaven Free
At a minimum, they should consider why this pope chose the name Francis.
Just read the linked piece. Good Lord, these people really have sailed off the Earth with their worldview and their rhetoric. I learned that a “somewhat sinister rally” raising attention to the dangers of climate change was “attended by a disreputable crew that included Archbishop Sorondo…”.
What was “sinister” about the rally? What is disreputable” about this “crew” of Catholic leaders? These characterizations are reached by the collective work of three conservative writers offering the ultra-maximum in bad faith. Here’s a nice bit of racist dogma from one of the writers that helps us understand where they’re coming from:
“As the veils drop from this pontificate, it looks increasingly like the Second Coming of peronismo.”
Republican/Conservative outreach in action.
Perhaps my favorite moment is when this same writer quotes the Pope urging the people of the world “not to yield to an economic model which is idolatrous, which needs to sacrifice human lives on the altar of money and profit” and proceeds to tell us how awful Francis’ rhetoric is.
It’s refreshing to see these conservative movement writers arguing on behalf of sacrificing human lives on the altar of money and profit. Points for honesty.
I could be accused of offering my own bad faith interpretation here, but their interpretations are so poorly supported, they’re essentially asserting their ideologies as fact. Given that none of the writers consider any limit to capitalistic aggressiveness in ravaging the Earth’s resources, my interpretations are operating in better faith than theirs are.
Well, I read the piece too, and I don’t see where your comments are in bad faith.
What struck me most, actually, is that the bulk of the post is a fairly detailed discussion of Perón, whose crimes and failures Francis is somehow responsible for due to some vague rhetorical similarities and the fact that Francis is from Argentina. Guilt by association, and not much of an association at that.
After all, Francis’s rhetoric echoes Theodore Roosevelt’s at least as much as it does Juan Perón’s:
Oh, well, the TEA Party likes the images they carry of their macho, macho men like Teddy and Reagan much more than they like everything those leaders actually said and did. Their collective history shows Reagan as having shrank the size of government, slashed the deficit, and cleaned up the Middle East.
And yes, I noticed the conservative writers’ poorly supported association of Pope Francis with what they identified as the worst outcomes from Peron’s leadership of Argentina. It’s telling that the outcomes they identify are Juan Peron’s popularity (called Peronist cult of personality in their telling) and his government’s “redistribution of wealth.” Left uncommented on were his uses of military and media to control the population. Given these conservative’s views that the people need to have moral and ideological rigor placed upon them, they probably see Peron’s uses of the military and media desirable when they are used to secure dominance for unlimited conservative/capitalist leaders and policies.
OT: UH HUH
UH HUH
Christie bridge scandal investigation ripples lead to airline resignations
Rachel Maddow explains how the resignation of the United Airlines CEO and two other senior officials is connected to Chris Christie’s George Washington Bridge scandal and the investigation into a special flight route nicknamed “the chairman’s flight” for the David Samson, the chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and appointee of Chris Christie.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/christie-bridge-scandal-still-making-waves-521701443991
And The Bully’s campaign was going so great ’til now! My favorite part of that reporting is where United cancled the route three days after Samson left the Point Authority.
I think Lehmann and Odets gave us the right response to info like this:
http://www.quotes.net/quote/94061
And things were going so well with The Bully’s campaign before now!! The details of that story are great. My favorite: the route was canceled three days after Samson left the Port Authority.
I think Lehmann and Odets gave us the right response to this news:
http://www.quotes.net/mquote/94061
The day the Catholic Church gets a non-white Pope is the day white protestantism in the US gets a huge spike in membership.
That, and they’ll prove that he isn’t really Catholic by analyzing the kerning in his baptism certificate.
Today’s foray into sad delusion. But it makes for lively reading in Faux News sort of way.
Hmm, arent Southern Hemisphere catholics stereotyped as very socially conservative?
Perhaps, but this post and the writing BooMan links to are entirely about economic issues, not social issues. For example, it’s possible to be anti-abortion and pro-socialism.
you both make good points, and together you arrived at the truth. Good commenting.
It may be important for us to recognize that there is nothing new about this. This form of paranoid lunacy in its recent incarnation was hatched in the 1950s by the John Birch Society that flowed from there to the nomination of Goldwater in 1964. This was after the Red Scare (McCarthy, etc) fever had broken.
True. The difference is that the Republican establishment and their cultural supporters made great efforts to marginalize the Birchers in the ’50’s and ’60’s. Now the GOP establishment is dealing with the fact that their more recent willingness to extend rhetorical support to the Birchers and their crosspollinated pals the Dominionists and Fundamentalists has given these decidedly immoderate forces the keys to the GOP car. They won’t be ignored, and they’ll no longer be satisfied until their desires are fully satisfied in new and radical Federal laws and policies.
Organizational marginalization and if within the GOP fold, some limitations on the stridency of public speak. However, wrt to worldviews and political positions and goals, there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Phyllis Schlafly, the “commie under the bed” warriors, etc. and JBS.
It is correct that the fundies hadn’t been politicized into rank partisanship back then. They had adopted an apolitical posture. In the short run, this served the GOP well because it reduced DEM votes by a sector that was too poor to reject New Deal economic programs but their hearts were with authoritarians. The “in your heart you know …” Goldwater slogan was an attempt to get them to vote. Over the subsequent sixteen years, using a variety of changes and issues (civil rights, women’s rights, pro-war, etc.) they got all of them. And once they did, they easily embraced the pre-existing RWNJ conspiratorial lunacy.
This is what makes the National Review position even more ridiculous:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/06/pope-mussolini-secret-history-rise-fascism-david-kertze
r-review
It would be wrong to equate the Catholic Church of the 1930s-1940s with fascism, but it’s impossible to deny that very powerful elements of the Catholic Church were on board.
Also, I think it is a mistake to understand the “progressivism” of the Pope as progressive in the sense that the Left would see it, even if it coincides in some of its practical effects. On economic issues, he is reviving a deep current of Catholic thought critical of the excesses capitalism and oppression of the poor, that has been submerged since the Reagan/Thatcher era. On social issues, he is only showing compassion. The lack of compassion has cost the church millions of adherents over the last several decades.
Mostly correct. The attitude that rights are better worried about when all are fed has been a dividing point between classical Liberalism and Progressivism for centuries. The lack of concern for “rights” of specific groups (women for example) was a hallmark of the IWW.
This pope is not concerned with social rights of disparate groups (gays, divorcees, abortion, …). He is pretty much middle of the road (in the Catholic Church): God loves people, not actions. He is very concerned with survival above the starvation level of all people, catholic or not
Wrong to equate the Catholic Church with Fascism in Europe in the ’30s/’40s? Well, I guess its “wrong” to equate any large, hierarchical organization with Fascism unless they claim Fasicism. Doesn’t mean they didn’t think Mussolini and Hitler were right.
The operative word here is “equate”. There were plenty of anti-fascist catholics. But unfortunately, plenty of fascist catholics.
Here’s something else along these lines y’all might find interesting:
http://www.catholicnews.com/services/englishnews/2014/debate-emerges-on-st-john-paul-ii-s-early-writ
ings-on-social-ethics-cns-1404139.cfm