Pope Francis: His Own Man

(Politico photo)

Pope Francis has inveighed so often against capitalism and Western values that the Catholic Church appeared to be another institution conquered by the Gramscian Marxists' long march through history.

Not so fast.[bold added]

Pope Francis is a complicated man who doesn’t fit neatly into American left-right political paradigms. He made a fair number of decisions early in his papacy that exasperated conservative American Catholics, so he got tagged in the public mind as a liberal. Many progressive American priests cheered his reforms, but some went a step further. They began to portray their own revisionist agendas as the pope’s. Some even came to believe it.

Pope Francis hasn’t done all the things those progressives hoped he would. He was widely expected to allow married men to become priests in the Amazon region. Instead he called celibacy a “gift.” He was “supposed to” move forward on the ordination of women as deacons. Instead he has shut down the idea at least twice. While some progressives expected him to change Catholic teaching on sexual morality, he instead forbade priests to offer liturgical blessings to same-sex couples.

The "left-right political paradigm" is far too simplistic: for example, there are many Republicans who support gay marriage and many Democrats who support law enforcement.

It's good to see that the Pope--who ignores the existential threat of Marxism to the Catholic Church--is his own man.