A Pope From the People [Wall St. J. Opinion]

March 13, 2013 A Pope From the People The cardinals choose an Argentine pastor from a missionary tradition.

The Church of St. Peter, a mere 2,000 years old, certainly is capable of surprise. The now-retired Benedict XVI was the first pope in 600 years to resign, and on Wednesday the conclave of 115 cardinals in Rome chose the first non-European pope in a millennium, the first from Latin America, and the first Jesuit. To adapt a Biblical metaphor, perhaps the cardinals decided for a change to follow their flock.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio—now Pope Francis—has spent nearly his entire career in his native Argentina in the pastoral role as a priest and bishop. Though he knows the politics of the Vatican bureaucracy, he is not a creature of it. As an outsider he might thus be in a better position to shake up a Curia that has too often failed the church and recent popes. The church needs a hierarchy that disciplines priests who violate their vows and that cares more about spreading the gospel than gaining someone's ear.

As a pope from Latin America, Francis also represents something of a compromise between the fading Catholicism of Europe and North America and the dynamic church of the developing world. The Latin church is strong but has lost members to more evangelical Christian sects. (snip)

It's somehow appropriate that by choosing the name Francis, the new pope is echoing both the gentle, pastoral St. Francis of Assisi and St. Francis Xavier, the Catholic evangelical.

Notably, however, Pope Francis did not join those Jesuits who became enamored in the last century with "liberation theology," an attempt to do the impossible and blend Marxism with Christianity. His Christianity is less political than personal and theological, though he is not afraid to confront political malfeasance.

He cannot blend socialism into Christianity because Pope after Pope has condemned socialism as evil. If he does try, in a slick obama way with double-speak he may as well retire now:

PIUS IX (1846-1878):
“Overthrow [of] the entire order of human affairs”
“You are aware indeed, that the goal of this most iniquitous plot is to drive people to overthrow the entire order of human affairs and to draw them over to the wicked theories of this Socialism and Communism, by confusing them with perverted teachings.”

LEO XIII (1878-1903):
Hideous monster
“...communism, socialism, nihilism, hideous deformities of the civil society of men and almost its ruin.” (Encyclical Diuturnum, June 29, 1881)

Destructive sect
“...socialists and members of other seditious societies, who labor unceasingly to destroy the State even to its foundations.” (Encyclical Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888)

Socialists debase the natural union of man and woman and assail the right of property
“They [socialists, communists, or nihilists] debase the natural union of man and woman, which is held sacred even among barbarous peoples; and its bond, by which the family is chiefly held together, they weaken, or even deliver up to lust. Lured, in fine, by the greed of present goods, which is ‘the root of all evils, which some coveting have erred from the faith’ (1 Tim. 6:10.3), they assail the right of property sanctioned by natural law; and by a scheme of horrible wickedness, while they seem desirous of caring for the needs and satisfying the desires of all men, they strive to seize and hold in common whatever has been acquired either by title of lawful inheritance, or by labor of brain and hands, or by thrift in one’s mode of life.” (Encyclical Quod Apostolici Muneris, December 28, 1878, n. 1)

PIUS XII (1939-1958):
The Church will fight to the end, in defense of supreme values threatened by socialism
“[The Church undertook] the protection of the individual and the family against a current threatening to bring about a total socialization which in the end would make the specter of the ‘Leviathan’ become a shocking reality. The Church will fight this battle to the end, for it is a question of supreme values: the dignity of man and the salvation of souls.”

JOHN XXIII (1958-1963):
“No Catholic could subscribe even to moderate socialism”
“Pope Pius XI further emphasized the fundamental opposition between Communism and Christianity, and made it clear that no Catholic could subscribe even to moderate Socialism.”

JOHN PAUL II (1978-2005):
Fundamental error of socialism: A mistaken conception of the person
“Continuing our reflections, ... we have to add that the fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature. Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism.

BENEDICT XVI (2005 - present):
“We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything”

http://www.tfp.org/tfp-home/catholic-perspective/what-the-popes-have-to-say-about-socialism.html

The State or any individual cannot force good works.
If the State forces good works by confiscation,taking from one person and redistributes to another, then it is by logic not good works but theft.

Any Catholic who agrees with Statist forced good works is by definition, sinning.
He is being deceitful and a sloth by thinking he can absolve himself of his duty to personally help others on a one to one basis by allowing the State to do his work for him and trusting a socialist statist central govt. to do the right thing.

Such “Catholics” should be denied holy communion at mass at the very least.

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