The Meaning of Pope Francis

[TBF]

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower " Works of Karl Marx 1843 - A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right - Written: December 1843-January 1844

A force for both reaction and social justice, Pope Francis embodies the ambiguities of the Catholic Church.
by Colin Wilson 9-26-15

What do we think of Pope Francis? It all seems a bit complicated. One minute he’s telling the US Congress that “we, the people of this continent, are not fearful of foreigners, because most of us were once foreigners” and that they have to take climate change seriously. Speaking in Bolivia in July, he called unfettered capitalism “the dung of the devil.” Since he arrived in America, right-wingers have described him as “anticapitalist pope.”

On the other hand, the Catholic Church still continues to oppose marriage equality at every opportunity. Back in February, Francis compared any account of gender which “does not recognize the order of creation” — such as those which validate the lives of trans people — to the use of nuclear weapons. On Thursday, the pope canonized the missionary Junípero Serra, who oversaw a regime of horrific brutality against Native Americans in California, where colonization and conversion went, as so often, hand in hand.

It was so much easier to have an opinion about Francis’s predecessor — Benedict XVI was simply, everyone could agree, a reactionary, and not even a very effective reactionary. Doing nothing much about such issues as priestly child sex abuse, he seemed much more concerned about reviving the more obscure bits of the papal costume — a fluffy little shawl called the mozetta, a Santa-Claus-style hat called the camauro, and hand-made red leather shoes ...

Much more here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/pope-francis-united-states-visit-congress-united-nations/

[Demeter]

1. the Catholic Church has nowhere to go but Up

and Francis is a step in the right direction.

That said, there's a long, long way to go.