From our Bureau of Fear. Dysfunction, and Loathing at the Vatican
No layman in the world knows more about Vatican affairs than George Weigel, who, among many other achievements, authored a superb biography of Saint John Paul II.
On the tenth anniversary of the election of Pope Francis, Weigel has written a very perceptive essay in First Things that sums up Papa Che’s legacy. In this essay, Weigel examines various troubling aspects of this papacy, including that of Papa Che’s cozy relationships with communist totalitarian dictators.
Never mind the recent outburst in which Papa Che denounced Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship in Nicaragua as “obscene, vile, and reprehensible.” This was only a bit of Kabuki theater. At the very same time he issued this condemnation, Papa Che and his Vatican assistants were busy paving the way for another Obamaesque “reconciliation” between the U.S. and Castro, Inc. that will strengthen the Cuban dictatorship’s hold on power.
Below is the introductory paragraph to this essay and the section that deals with Papa Che’s political legacy. Professor Tres Fotutos highly recommends that you read the entire essay HERE to better understand the full context of Bergoglio’s papacy.
March 13 ought to have been a happy day in Rome. But the mood in and around Vatican City before, during, and after the tenth anniversary of Pope Francis’s election was more somber than festive—and not because the anniversary fell during Lent. Rather, the melancholy reflected the current atmosphere in the Holy See, which has gone unremarked for too long and deserves candid description.
The prevailing mood in today’s Vatican is one of trepidation.
The somber mood in Rome these days also reflects embarrassment over the dramatic decline of the Vatican’s moral authority in world affairs: the result of both inept papal commentary and Vatican policies that create the impression that the Church is abandoning her own. Very few senior churchmen are enthusiastic about the Holy See’s kowtow to the Marxist mandarins of the People’s Republic of China, whose Communist Party now plays a prominent role in naming bishops. The Holy See’s accommodating approach to the brutal thugocracies in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela breeds more embarrassment. When opposition leaders plead for the Holy See to vigorously defend the persecuted Church and imprisoned Catholic dissidents in those countries, their requests often go unanswered—or they’re told by a (very) senior Vatican official that, while he is personally sympathetic, the pope insists on a different approach.
“The pope insists on a different approach.” Yes, but that is his approach, as opposed to a truly Catholic or rather Christian approach, which should have NOTHING to do with “liberation theology” or the leftist delusions of a none-too-bright but dangerously self-satisfied, not to say absurdly arrogant, “true believer.”
It is not just his Cuba policy, which is not only scandalous but disrespectful, insensitive and, at best, woefully ignorant regarding Cubans–and I don’t mean Cuba’s rulers, with whose “supreme” figure he boasts of having a “human relationship” (which has worse connotations in Spanish than in English).
His Cuba policy is just one example of his ineptitude and malpractice, which is willful because he’s convinced he’s in the right–as is characteristic of heretics, and if he isn’t one, he’s far too close. Alas, he did not elect himself, and those responsible are still around, still scheming and still toxic. Lord have mercy.