Pope's Visit and the Complicated Politics of the Papacy

The official reason for the Pope's visit was the canonization of Junipero Serra, a Spanish missionary who was central to the colonization of California 250 years ago. But the visit, which ran Tuesday through Sunday and included stops in New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, clearly had much deeper meaning and intent.

Francis is without question the most-high profile Pope of the modern age, mostly because his message is strikingly different than that of his more recent predecessors. It might seem absurd to categorize a leader of a billion-plus member Christian religion as radical because he addresses issues like drastic income equality and institutionalized poverty, but that is the world we live in and Pope Francis’ message has struck a chord with many Christians and non-Christians alike, which makes him dangerous to the status quo.

Perhaps the best proof of the collective discomfort with Francis in certain circles is the way that the right wing media covered his visit (see video montage at bottom of page). It did seem rather ironic to watch so-called Christian conservatives bashing a leader of Christianity, but what that might reveal more than anything else, is how difficult it is to cloak yourself in a religion based on principles that are so often at odds with your political platform.

Regardless of your political ideology or religious beliefs, from a scholarly viewpoint there is very little in the New Testament to suggest that Jesus Christ would have been a fan of modern capitalism. In fact, it seems quite clear that the figure described in the Gospels would have leaned toward Socialism, were he to point toward a preferred economic ideology. How to square that with conservative politics has always been a difficult trick, one that has mostly been handled by doggedly focusing on a small handful of divisive social issues like abortion and gay rights, while ignoring the more obvious contradictions between scripture and political positions.

The attack on Pope Francis began before he even arrived. Earlier this year, the Pope issued an encyclical on climate change and inequality, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise when he broached those subjects before both Congress and the U.N. But all he had to do was (while addressing President Obama) mutter the fairly benign and exceedingly rational statement that "climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation“ and things got nasty quick.

Francis’ position on climate change is definitely mainstream. He points out that the overwhelming scientific evidence suggests that it has been influenced by human activity. He also notes that wealthier nations have contributed in vast disproportion to poor ones, while the latter will bear the overwhelming majority of negative consequences it brings. He speaks not only of the need for preserving a viable ecosystem in which our future generations can sustain themselves, but tells his audience that the land and all of its life are also God’s creation and therefore worthy of good stewardship.

That seems like a reasonable and indeed responsible message from a world leader with an audience of around 1.2 billion. His detractors, including Catholic Presidential contenders Jeb Bush and Rick Santorum, along with nearly the entire conservative media establishment, have pretty much summed up their opposition to the vague argument that it’s not a subject he’s qualified to discuss.

His supporters counter that he actually studied science in Argentina’s secondary school system (similar to our technical colleges) and worked as a chemist before entering the seminary (he was not of the social class that would have likely been able to achieve a doctorate degree in their system at the time). Moreover, the Pope can lean on the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, whose modern body of work includes the study of global climate change.

Yet, Popes minister to their followers and prescribe values and choices that reflect the teachings of their religion–something the right has no problem with when it comes to pet issues like abortion and gay marriage. Why should good stewardship of the Earth, as prescribed in the Book of Psalms and elsewhere in the Bible, be off the table other than because it contradicts rather than supports a political platform?

The whole thing stinks of hypocrisy and seems to explain why there is such a large audience among conservatives in the United States for the multi-millionaire "non-denominational pastors“ with capped teeth and well-manicured hair, skilled at cherry-picking scripture to suit political purposes. The God Wants You to Be Rich! set, who manage to craft something as laughable as Prosperity Theology from a book that tells us it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to pass the gates of heaven.

This isn’t class warfare or an indictment of people who have wealth. There’s nothing that suggests one cannot be a good Christian just because they file in the highest tax bracket. I am just pointing out the simple fact that it is not so easy for the Republican establishment to square supporting policies that have disproportionately aided the most wealthy while attacking a social safety net for those who have less, while portraying themselves as defenders of Christian ideals. The Pope has reminded people of that, and he’s been attacked for it.

Pope Francis was endlessly slandered with the Marxist tag this week (one conservative radio show host and best-selling author went so far as to compare him to the Anti-Christ) and was said to "hate capitalism,“ for which no proof seems to exist (there was a time when decrying extreme inequality did not mean a conversion to Marxism). Most tellingly, Francis, who grew up in Argentina at a time when it was very common to adopt Liberation Theology, did not.

None of this is to say I agree with the Pope on all accords. For starters, while I’m happy to see such issues being discussed, I think it’s close to laughable for someone to tackle climate change and inequality without embracing birth control and encouraging family planning. The brute reality is that without a lot of attention given to population control, we’re unlikely to even put a dent in the problem on both fronts.

Nothing is as effective in terms of raising the standard of living in a developing-world nation (or preventing someone from becoming impoverished in a developed nation) as providing women with access to effective birth control, educating citizens on economically responsible family planning and allowing women to fully contribute to the economy on an equal basis with men. Perhaps even more importantly, with world population headed toward 9 billion and our inhabitants becoming increasingly first-world in terms of technology, diet and general consumption, the slowdown in population growth that results is essential to curbing the factors that promote climate change.

If Pope Francis really wanted to be progressive and break with orthodoxy, he could have blazed a trail regarding the church’s approach to women’s reproductive rights and coupled it with a call for better environmental stewardship, a message that would have had real legs. However, anyone who thinks that there are no politics within religions should look up how Catholics wound up getting to eat fish on Fridays.

In fact, the Papal Conclave that produced Pope Francis may indeed have had its eyes on the fact that Spanish-speaking countries represented one of the church’s few growth markets and that choosing a Spanish-speaking Pope would not be bad for business. As evidence, consider the given reason for his trip–canonizing the first Spanish-American saint in both a state and country where Spanish-speaking citizens are headed toward an eventual majority.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the Pope’s visit should have been the new saint chosen, a priest who served as an Inquisitor during the Spanish Inquisition and was later the primary overseer of an ambitious missionary project that included the brutal enslavement and severe treatment of "converted“ Native Americans, with the goal of destroying indigenous culture, language and religious beliefs by assimilating them for the benefit of Spain. The church’s line on this front is that the missions at least treated the natives better than the Spanish military would have, which seems like a bit of a hollow defense, especially since the missions ultimately led to the death of as many as 90 percent of California’s Native Americans, who survived less than 10 years on average laboring in them.

Francis dispensed with the whole two-miracle requirement to fast-track the Franciscan Friar’s path to Sainthood, which was announced in January of this year. He implored us to consider that it was a different time and place, but I think that serves to do little more than further water down a practice–sainthood–that already seems quite antiquated in the modern age. Was the whole thing orchestrated in order to set up the spectacle we saw this week? It doesn’t seem too far fetched. Nonetheless, it got us talking about real problems for a few days and gave us a break from the Donald Trump show, neither of which can be a bad thing.