HABEMUS PAPAM

We have a Pope! With these simple Latin words the Proto Deacon, French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran last week, emerged on the balcony outside the Papal apartments and announced to a crowd of over 100,000 in St. Peter’s Square and billions more watching on television, that the Roman Catholic Church of 1.2 billion souls had a new leader and his name was Francis.

Pope Francis was Cardinal Arch Bishop of Buenos Aries Argentina Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a humble Jesuit who is the first Pontiff from the “new world”, the first Jesuit to be Pope, the first to take the name of St. Francis of Assisi, and the first Pope in over a thousand years not to come from Europe. 

By all accounts he is a man devoted to the poor who actually works with them and does not just talk about them, he is a traditionalist, a believer in the sanctity of life and traditional marriage. He appears to be an ascetic man who eschews the pomp and the bling that has become unfortunately associated with the magisterium. This makes him dangerous. It did not take long for the secular progressives to begin their attack.

The attack in reality however had begun prior to the conclave with the leftwing press bellowing about how the church had to change to become in effect more like the Democratic Party. Many of these commentators were self proclaimed Catholics.

After the selection former Governor of New York Mario Cuomo opined to Crain’s New York that his background “had not taught him how to deal with the high pressure of huge problems in the church.” this was a reference to the scandals of the church and the need to resolve them. His daughter Madeline said to the New York Times “I don’t think he’s what we need right now in the Catholic Church. We’re looking to move the church forward, with gay marriage and women priests.” However, current Governor Andrew Cuomo who has proposed vastly liberalized abortion rights as well as same sex marriage, was mostly praise worthy of the humility of the new Pope and his devotion to the poor.

Now the new Pope is under attack for either complicity with the military junta in Argentina during the “Dirty War” from 1976 to 1983 where left wing Priests and laity were murdered, tortured and made to disappear or for failure to denounce these atrocities. Already the whispering has begun about the similarities to what went on then when he headed the Jesuit Order there and how Pope Pius XII allegedly behaved during and before WW II with regard to Nazi war crimes. The Vatican has denied any involvement on the part of Pope Francis with crimes committed by the Junta against citizens with left wing political views despite evidence that other high ranking clergy seemed to side with the military against them, and has stated that he worked diligently behind the scene to stop the arrests and murders.

This is reminiscent of the convenient deposition of Timothy Cardinal Dolan right before the conclave on February 20th over how he handled or mishandled the allegations against pedophile Priests when he was the head of the Milwaukee Archdiocese. At that time, the dynamic Dolan was being mentioned as an outside possibility to become the next Pontiff. After a lifetime in politics it is hard to believe that the negative news coverage this generated about him was unrelated to this fact.

The secular progressive left is at war with not just people of faith but with God himself. If the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes of Matthew and Luke are left as the pillar of not just our laws but of our society and civilization, then moral relativism, political correctness, multiculturalism and class, race and gender warfare cannot win. In this war for our hearts and minds and souls they have to defeat the word of God and the institution that is the most ancient guardian of this and its connection to our western moral and political values.

Judaism and Christianity taught the world that all individuals have rights under God because they are given by God. This is the essence of our exceptionalism and our strength. We are not only a nation of laws protecting each individual soul but we are a nations of individual souls protecting those laws. And if one does not believe in God then surely a decent person can believe in the philosophy of the laws of God and support the values transmitted from those laws to our founding documents. 

This essay began with the election of a new Pope and ends with our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Many will say what is the connection to this new Pope and American politics? I say everything… because my religious convictions as an American Catholic are under assault by my government and the secular progressive “kulturesmog” that envelops the Political / Educational / Media / Entertainment axis that attempts to separate our children from their parents and our values from our history. So it matters to me who the new Pope is and what he stands for and that those who would silence me are afraid of him and hence attack both of us. That fact if nothing else prompts me to stand in the public square, a space for too long denied to people of faith, and yell for all to hear…HABEMUS PAPEM FRANCISCUM!

ERLANDSSON