Newsrooms are hyping Pope Francis’ first visit to the United States as a potential showdown between the pontiff and congressional Republicans, even though it is the Democratic lawmakers who may have reason to be more nervous, having just blocked or voted against bills aimed at curbing abortion.
Politico claimed in a report this week that the pope brings “hope for Dems, trepidation for GOP.”
Francis, a native Argentinean, may even “deepen Republicans’ Hispanic problem,” Reuters reported.
Mother Jones suggested this week that “Republicans in Congress Are Going to Hate What Pope Francis Has to Say.”
Washington Magazine columnist D.R. Tucker predicted in an article, titled “In the Presence of My Enemies,” that “Pope Francis will be heckled by right-wing Republicans when he addresses a joint session of Congress next month.”
Separately, CNN published a story headlined simply, “The Pope versus the GOP.”
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd also claimed this week that Republicans are “a little nervous.”
“Is [Francis] going to put them in a box on climate change? Is he going to make them feel uncomfortable on some economic issues? They’re nervous that … is he going to de-emphasize social issues, including same-sex marriage or abortion?” he asked.
Few if any in the press have explored whether pro-abortion Democrats are “nervous” about Francis’ visit, even though this group of lawmakers holds a position that is in direct conflict with Church teaching.
The Catholic Church holds that abortion is a grave evil, and Francis himself has repeated this point of doctrine on a number of occasions.
His recent encyclical “Laudato Sii,” which several reporters have praised for its mention of climate change, goes to great lengths to repudiate abortion as objectively wrong, declaring at one point that the world’s suffering is only heightened by humanity’s embrace of a “throwaway culture.”
Considering the Catholic Church’s absolute opposition to abortion, and the fact that Democratic lawmakers recently opposed both a bill to strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest providers of abortions, as well as a bill to ban abortive procedures performed at 20 weeks of pregnancy, a few on the right have noted the press’ curiously lopsided coverage.
“[T]he media don’t want to talk about the fact that today Senate Democrats stood virtually united in support of late-term abortion,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said this week in a Fox News interview. “Pope Francis has been an incredible voice for life … for marriage … for religious liberty, and on all three of them we’re seeing an assault that’s unprecedented in the history of our country.”
The press may have gotten the “Republicans are wary of Francis’ visit” line from irate right-leaning commentators, many of whom have griped recently that the pope is insufficiently pro-capitalism, and that he wastes too much time on issues like poverty, immigration and climate change.
Some pundits have noted that Republicans appear to be on the defensive because they have traditionally been able to lean on Rome’s positions to boost their own political views, and that Pope Francis is putting the GOP in a tighter spot.
One Republican lawmaker, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., even made a show last week of announcing that he’d boycott Francis’ joint address to Congress.
“If the pope wants to devote his life to fighting climate change then he can do so in his personal time,” Gosar wrote. “But to promote questionable science as Catholic dogma is ridiculous.”
Suggestions that Francis’ stay may irk Republicans are also likely based on early reports showing that he will focus his address to Congress on income inequality and climate change. However, as he is also likely to include the usual dosage of pro-life language, the absence of reports noting possible discomfort among Democrats is striking.
The result is this: By focusing on the “Republicans versus Francis” angle, while also largely ignoring that Democrats moved recently to protect a practice that is in total opposition to longstanding Church teaching, newsrooms have set up a seemingly false narrative that the pope is poised to challenge only conservatives in America.
These reports also fail to account for how it is Democrats, and not Republicans, who support a practice that is in direct opposition to a fundamental point of Catholic doctrine. For all the complaints some on the right have for Francis’ positions on immigration and climate change, these differences in opinion do not stand in conflict with Church teaching, as outlined by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the way support for abortion does.
Though the press has mostly stayed away from noting this issue, Pope Francis himself didn’t hesitate to make a pro-life declaration at the White House on Wednesday.
“I appreciate the unfailing commitment of the Church in America to the cause of life and that of family, which is the primary reason for my present visit,” he said.
