Columnist for The Independent Liz O’Donnell hearts Pope Francis. She thinks he’s really shaking up the Church, so much so that she feels the need to warn the pope that “conservative” Catholics might just kill the pope.
On the economy and the “modern tyranny” of unfettered capitalism, he decries “the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose”.
Given such radical views and desire to be accessible I would have concerns for his personal safety. Such reforms will inevitably upset many conservatives and his celebrity status could make him a target for assassination. Unique people like Pope Francis come along once in a generation, and they can be taken away in a second of madness or evil. What a tragedy if his safety was compromised by any relaxation in his security detail . . .
This kind of thing doesn’t even really bug me. It’s too stupid to get all fired up about but it does highlight how “conservative” Catholics are viewed by many, which is to say not as Catholics at all but frothing at the mouth, money hungry Neanderthals who don’t like banjos at Mass, love babies, and hate women. That pretty much sums it up, right?
December 5, 2013 at 4:29 am
If you have nothing of substance to say…no value to add to information..it's just so darn convenient to sling some filth. This person must have been tht kid in school who walked up to someone and said, hey tht boy over there just called you a jerk. Then sit back and watch.
December 5, 2013 at 5:02 am
Except it has always been Communists and reactionaries and other kinds of fascists who have done all the assassinating.
December 5, 2013 at 5:08 am
Hard to take seriously when 'relaxation of his security detail' is referenced. There's a reason Pope Francis consecrated Vatican City to St. Michael.
December 5, 2013 at 7:41 am
Oh yes we're truly back to the silly season of the 1970s. Look for a return of felt banners soon. Francis needs to give one example of where "unfettered capitalism" exists. Certainly not in the United States. And maybe all Catholics should stop shelling out any money to the Vatican and just give it directly to the poor now. For that matter, why does Francis need the expensive, flowing robes when Jesus dressed more simply??
December 5, 2013 at 11:56 am
The Pope did not mention "unfettered capitalism" but he did mention "unfettered consumerism". I don't think anyone can deny that exists in the United States.
December 5, 2013 at 12:05 pm
Robert, "unfettered consumerism" is freedom. Who should decide what YOU are allowed to buy or sell. To make things simpler and less expensive, maybe we should all wear the same green clothes (the red star would be the double plus good bonus). Less choice by decree is less freedom. Everywhere and every when it has been tried people die.
BTW, I don't like banjos at Mass too.
December 5, 2013 at 12:20 pm
The Bishop of Rome is indeed the shepherd of our common heritage. President Bibi of Israel gets it; not everyone in our own government (democratically elected by the people) does. Nor does Mr. Limbaugh.
Papa Francis has said nothing new, and certainly has not promoted socialism. Regardless of the wish-fulfillment fantasies of what may perhaps be called the Left and the fears of what might perhaps be called the Right, the Holy Father teaches what all other bishops of Rome have taught for 2,000 years, and which may be found in, among other primary sources, the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed, the Our Father, the Magnificat, the Hail Mary, and the Bible (the entire canon, not the post-16th-century digests passively accepted by many in this country). That these teachings are often ignored by frail and sometimes evil humans does not invalidate them.
December 5, 2013 at 8:44 pm
Freedom is not the supreme good. Anyone who thinks it is is a slave, just as anyone who thinks health the supreme good is an invalid. A good economic system is not a guarantee of happiness; even when capitalism does work as it's supposed to and increase the wealth of everyone (which it quite often does not—its preferability is a matter of statistical averages, not absolute guarantees), they're not actually going to be better people.
Christianity is a radical, horrifying religion, where your wealth—and for that matter your political liberty—has absolutely no spiritual significance, except in so far as they tend to blind you to your true condition. What part of "easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle" confused you? Material wealth is indeed a good—but so are bodily health, physical pleasure, and civil peace, and all of those are, at least as often as not, occasions of sin, and of sin that is a scandal to the Gospel. Nobody desires evil; they desire a good too much, so much that they will do evil to acquire it.
To assume that a better economic system will bring about human happiness is fundamentally the error of the Marxists. Saying that the true source of human happiness is the system Marxists hate is simply to let Marxism define your entire worldview, to be, in the literal sense of the word, a reactionary, and a very unintelligent one.
December 6, 2013 at 11:36 am
No conservatives are not going to kill him but conservative Catholics are not happy with his Exhortation and the decentralization that he and his gang of eight are planning at the Vatican and of course the very first Congregation there are looking at is the CDW yes the Pope is solidly conservative and orthodox. I see already concerns about this and him at the NOR as well as Lifetime News But I guess we are just SOURPUSSES not looking at the signs of the times. The Pope is definitely a liberal progressive not matter how you look at it. Forget about his words on the economy he is a radical Jesuit.
December 7, 2013 at 3:05 am
@Katalina: "Gang of eight"? Please.
Applying the terminology of your tribal moots to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church is tantamount to formally renouncing your right to talk about the subject. See also "liberal", "conservative", and "progressive". Those words have no more applicability to the Catholic Church than Friendlies and Hostiles or Sonnô Jôi.
Show me where he's actually planning to decentralize anything. He certainly did sign off on a crackdown on Austrian bishops' soft-pedaling divorce and remarriage; if anything he's just making it be the bishops, not the Vatican, that take responsibility for enforcing discipline, rather than letting the central authority be the "heavy".
December 7, 2013 at 7:15 pm
I just thought about this story at length about a group that could kill Pope Francis and it is real. It is not the conservatives like the Independent claims but really it is none other than then the notorious Mafia. Because The Pope recently called them out for their violence this seems to have been forgotten.
December 8, 2013 at 12:55 pm
Well, it WAS an arch-Conservative – and now schismatic – French Archbishop Lefebvre associated assassin who killed Pope John-Paul II. The Vatican Secretary of State, French Cardinal Villot, a sympathizer of Lefebvre, was arrested and died six months later while still under house arrest inside the Vatican. Villot gave John-Paul I a glass of wine laced with a sedative before bedtime to make him sleep, and the assassin shot him up with air bubbles between his toes to cause the cerebral anuerysm that was the cause of death. Do you think Francis sleeps in the hotel just to show his political style?
December 8, 2013 at 12:56 pm
John-Paul I