The Left’s Advice to Pope Francis:
Crush Your Enemies!
Are you aware that Cardinal Burke is conspiring to bring down Western liberal democracy? Did you know that he shares with Steve Bannon, Breitbart News, President Trump, Vladimir Putin and other dark forces an “evil desire” for the reassertion of “white Christian dominance”? Did you know that he harbors an intense hatred of Muslims, that he encourages Mussolini-loving politicians in Italy, and that he presides over “a far-right, neo-fascist-normalizing cheer squad out of the Holy See.”
If all of this has escaped you, then you have not been attentive to the sort of journalism now practiced by the Washington Post (see: “How Pope Francis can cleanse the far-right rot from the Catholic Church”). In a Post opinion piece written by Emma-Kate Symons we learn many things about Cardinal Burke and about the opportunity presented to Pope Francis at this crucial moment in Church history.
According to Symons, whose credentials include publications in the Wall Street Journal and Atlantic, among others, Francis has an opportunity to save the Church from a capitulation to racism such as that which Symons alleges marked her collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. (For Symons, as for many on the Left, Islam has somehow become a race instead of a religion.)
There is little in the way of argument in Symons’ piece, which relies almost entirely on piled-up invective, along with unsupported assertions. Symons has a seeming desire to see the “reformist, compassionate papacy” of Francis succeed in applying “Gospel teaching” to “refugees and Muslims.” (You will recall the Gospel passage: “Blessed are the Muslims, for they shall deny Christ and wage war against His Church.”) But she also threatens Francis towards the end of her malicious rant. The warning needs to be quoted:
“If the pope doesn’t put the reactionary elements such as Burke and his cronies back in their place, they could force a real schism during his papacy and leave the church open to justifiable accusations it failed to stand up to enablers of extremism and neo-fascism within its ranks.”
Symons is saying, “So, dear Pope, you are one of us now, because you want more Muslims and Third-World immigrants in the West and you’re trying to ditch Church teaching on marriage and sex, but if you don’t ax the people on our hit list, you’ll join them there. Get with the program – NOW!”
Symons is also generous with her advice to the Pope. She first suggests firing Cardinal Burke from his already diminished post with the Knights of Malta and privately reprimanding him for his political activities. She then recommends that a major public slap-down of Burke and his racist, Islamaphobe neo-fascist allies in the Vatican should be preceded by an encyclical denouncing nationalism and populism, with specific reference to “migrants, Muslims and Jews,” “….so priests including Burke know they are in breach of church teaching when they try to act as power brokers for the international extreme right.”
In other words, read Burke and company the Riot Act before you bust their skulls. The effrontery of a hack reporter suggesting encyclicals to the Pope would be laughable were the Pope anyone other than an Argentinian Leftist with an animus against “the international extreme right,” both within and without his Church.
Those within the Catholic Church include Burke, the Cardinals who question whether the divorced and “remarried” should be allowed to receive Communion, and those Catholics who oppose anything Francis decides is wanted by the “God of surprises,” Who apparently has little interest in the continuity of the magisterial teaching of the Church He founded. Those without Francis’ “Church” include, first and foremost, President Trump, and any leader who would protect his or her nation’s borders from mass incursions of immigrants from dangerous places. Francis has already said that Trump is not a Christian (see: “Pushing Mexico to Pay for Border Wall Is ‘Not Christian’, Says Pope”) and he has likened the populism to which Trump’s victory is ascribed to that which brought Hitler to power (see: “Pope Warns That Rising Populism Could Produce a New Hitler”).
It is conceivable that Francis would take action along the lines that Symons lays out. Her threat that the Pope would stop receiving Valentines from the Left-wing media and be treated to poison-pen letters instead might have its effect. Francis has been hailed as the new leader of the Global Left (see: “How Pope Francis Became the Leader of the Global Left”) and he might be reluctant to lose the accolades he now enjoys. If he falls into disfavor with the Left, which is his natural base, he would become a man without a party. The Pope apparently regards those who practice the Catholic Faith as it has always been taught with contempt (see: “An Anti-Catholic Pope?”). Like most people who style themselves “progressive,” he cannot retreat, for he has denigrated or vilified most everything and everyone that has preceded him. Having torn down what remained of the structures that he inherited, he needs to shelter somewhere else. The Left knows this. They recognize their own.
But the Left has a habit of eating their own, for raw power — not principle — rules in their world. And for Francis, it is not just a case of his remaining in lockstep with the open-borders, LGBT, pro-Muslim advocates; he is expected to enforce his policies on the recalcitrant in the hierarchy and the larger Church. If he does not, he has been warned; he will be rebuked and reviled.
Francis has shown himself quite willing, even persistently eager, to chastise any member of the hierarchy or any group within the Catholic Church that stands in the way of his “mercy.” Cardinal Burke has been a prime target of the Pope for some time. The Cardinal has been demoted, banished to the periphery and, now, even hobbled in the exercise of what little power remains to him. Symons, like the media shark she is, smells blood in the water. The Pope has been put on notice by the Washington Post. He knows what is expected of him. And, if his history tells us anything, it indicates he needs little if any inducement to complete the evisceration of Cardinal Burke and to leave his head on a spike outside the Vatican as a warning to others.
What we are witnessing is a complete politicization of every aspect of life, even within the Roman Catholic Church. The battle that is taking place is the final battle Sister Lucy spoke of. This is total war between Our Lady and satan. The only thing that can bring this war to an end is the defeat of satan, and that will only happen when Our Lady of Fatima is at long last obeyed. Pray for the Pope. Pray for the Church. And have courage, for it may grow darker before the dawn of grace.
