Pope Francis spoke to Congress this morning and Ross Douthat had an observation which helps a great deal in understanding the man:
The Holy Father’s politics, as w/his predecessors, defy easy right-left categorization. Not sure that’s true of his political *priorities.*
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) September 24, 2015
That’s a pretty good lens through which to view the pope’s remarks. He mentioned religious freedom, but only in an oblique way:
What Francis either does not understand, or is not willing to say, is that the forces of aggressive secularism in America are no longer working to change the culture into something the Catholic Church finds disagreeable. That ship sailed 30 years ago. No, these days the goal is to push the Catholic Church itself out of the public square and force it to stop performing its mission. (Again, see the case of the Catholic Charities adoption services in Boston.)
As Ben Domenech observed this morning at the Federalist:
The Pope is expressing his views on harshness and division coming from the church in a vague manner – I would like him to be more specific, in part because defending the things Christians believe in the context of the current American culture war is increasingly divisive, not because those beliefs have changed, but because the beliefs of the people have changed. Namely: one side is thoroughly done debating the issues, and believes the other side needs to be banished from polite society and the public square. It’s all well and good for the Pope to stress the need for dialogue – but stressing this fails to recognize how much that dialogue, particularly on divisive issues, has been crushed by the modern American priorities of political correctness.
The issue of the Catholic Church’s place in America will ultimately be decided without the Holy Father’s input—so it’s not as if Francis is denying Catholics an important tool in the fight to preserve their religious liberty. Still, it would be nice to know that he understands their plight.
On immigration and climate change, Francis left no doubt about his beliefs and preferred courses of action. Indeed, the logic of Francis’s remarks to Congress would seem to suggest a Christian duty to support open borders:
This Rule points us in a clear direction. Let us treat others with the same passion and compassion with which we want to be treated. Let us seek for others the same possibilities which we seek for ourselves. Let us help others to grow, as we would like to be helped ourselves. In a word, if we want security, let us give security; if we want life, let us give life; if we want opportunities, let us provide opportunities. The yardstick we use for others will be the yardstick which time will use for us.
Again, as Douthat suggests, there’s little doubt about the pope’s political priorities. This was made even more clear by what Francis said when he decided to talk about life. Francis mentioned “life” in the abstract just once, saying, “The Golden Rule also reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development.”
And he then chose to expand at length on just one particular aspect of it—abolition of the death penalty:
Now, I’m all in favor of abolishing capital punishment in America. But Francis choosing to make capital punishment his subject, rather than abortion, is stunning for two reasons. (1) Over the next week or so, we’re going to have a large-scale fight about abortion in the very chamber where Francis stood this morning. There is no immediate push to abolish the death penalty. (2) Over the last decade, about 40 people per year have been executed in America. Since 1976, we’ve never had even a hundred people executed in a single year. There have been 57 million abortions in the United States since 1973.
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The last serious topic of the pope’s address to Congress concerned family. Here’s what he said:
Francis keeps saying that “family” is the main reason he has come to America. At the White House he said, “I will also travel to Philadelphia for the Eighth World Meeting of Families, to celebrate and support the institutions of marriage and the family at this, a critical moment in the history of our civilization.” In front of the bishops he said, “I appreciate the unfailing commitment of the Church in America to the cause of life and that of the family, which is the primary reason for my present visit.”
Yet he never actually says anything about the family. Only that it is, in some vague way, important. And that it is, in some vague way, in trouble. Possibly because of “forces”—though he declines to elaborate as to what these might be.
The Holy Father will address the United Nations tomorrow. Maybe he’ll flesh this all out then.
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But maybe not. Daniel Henninger has a bracing column today about Francis. It’s worth reading in full. But two bits stand out in particular:
And:
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One final thought: Toward the end of his remarks to Congress, Francis praised President Lincoln, saying that “A nation can be considered great when it defends liberty as Lincoln did.”
It is difficult to square this opinion with his prior insistence that “Never has the use of violence brought peace in its wake.”
But then, dissonance is the least of this pope’s problems.
