Wherein the Pope who lives behind walls condemns walls, gives another thumbs-up to contraception, folds on “gay marriage” and blatantly contradicts himself—as usual.
Another day, another blabbering press conference on the return flight from another useless, blabber-filled papal voyage.
And, as is so often the case, Francis has condemned others for precisely what he himself is guilty of. Speaking of Donald Trump’s vow to build a wall along the entire US border with Mexico, Francis declared:
“He who thinks only of building walls and not bridges is not Christian. This is not the Gospel. Vote for him or not vote for him? I say only that if that is what he said, this man is not Christian.”
That’s rich. Last time I was there, the Pope’s entire city-state was surrounded by this:
I doubt that any wall Trump could build at the Mexican border would be as impressive as these fortifications. Ah, but the neo-Catholic defenders of the indefensible have a way out! You see, Francis did not actually build the Vatican walls himself. They were already there, having been built in the days when the Pope was under attack by barbarians, Muslims and other enemies—with whom the Church now dialogues as they destroy our civilization without firing a shot. Francis merely benefits from the walls that were already there. Big difference.
Also already there when Francis arrived were the heavily armed Swiss guards keeping everyone out, along with one of the world’s strictest immigration policies, according to which only “a very select few, who meet strict criteria, [are] admitted as residents or citizens” of the Vatican, so that “only about 450 of its 800 or so residents actually hold citizenship…”
Ah, but the Vatican is so small. There is no room for any needy immigrants to be granted citizenship. Really? Not even one? No, not even one. But what about the Muslim “refugees” Francis insists must be allowed to invade Europe in unlimited numbers? Is there no room in the Vatican for, say, a dozen or two Muslims in special housing that might be built for them amidst all those splendid gardens? Be serious! We are talking about the Vatican, not a regular country or anything.
Responding to Trump’s suggestion that the Pope is too “political,” Francis offered this clever riposte: “Thank God he said that I am political, because Aristotle defined the human person as a political animal, and this means that at least I am a human person.” Wow. Devastating. Except that when Aristotle says that man is by nature a zôion politikòn, he is not referring to politics in the modern sense, but rather man’s natural inclination to life in the polis or city-state emerging from a community of families.
Funny, isn’t it, how the same Pope who refuses involve himself in political affairs when it comes to the mass murder of unborn children or the legalization of “unions” based on sodomy—precisely where he should be involved—not only wants to talk politics but also to suggest how Catholics in America should vote when it comes to ending all state barriers to illegal immigration (except in the Vatican State, of course).
Concerning Francis and politics, something good did come out of this press conference. Only one question later, Francis was finally smoked out on “gay marriage.” Asked for his position on the movement for approval of “civil unions” for sodomites in Italy, where a bill legalizing this abomination is now moving through parliament, Francis refused to comment because “the Pope does not place himself into the concrete politics of a country. Italy is not the first country to have this experience.” This from a Pope who, only a moment earlier, had boasted of being “a political animal” and who is constantly meddling in concrete political issues concerning the environment, wealth distribution, immigration, housing, education, clean water, prison conditions, the death penalty, the Scottish independence movement, and anything else that arouses his always politically correct ire. The duplicity was stunningly shameless.
Francis refused to take a stand even when the next questioner confronted him with the 2003 document of Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, specifically approved and ordered to be published by the very Pope he canonized, which declares: “When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favour of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral.”
Backed into a corner, Francis pleaded a lack of memory: “I don’t remember that document well…” The most he would say is that “a Catholic parliamentarian must vote according to a well-formed conscience, this I would say, only this, and I speak of a well formed conscience, not what I think or want.” Having reduced to a mere matter of conscience the Catholic legislator’s positive duty, under pain of sin, to vote against the diabolical scheme of “civil unions” for homosexuals, Francis has essentially given the Italian parliament a green light.
During the same press conference Francis also condoned contraception—again. The first time, Remnant readers will recall, was during the return flight from Africa last year. This time he suggested quite clearly that women may use contraception to avoid contracting the Zika virus (last time it was the AIDs virus). According to Francis, contraception, being “the lesser evil, that of avoiding pregnancy,” can be justified when there is “a conflict between the Fifth and the Sixth Commandment.” According to Francis’s muddled moral theology, not to protect against the Zika virus by means of contraception would violate the commandment “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” which is the greater evil, and therefore the commandment “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,” the lesser evil, must yield to this imaginary conflict.
First of all,Francis seems unaware that the Zika virus, while it may be implicated in the birth defect of microcephaly, does not kill or even permanently disable infected women, but either causes no symptoms at all or produces an illness that “is usually mild with symptoms lasting for several days to a week.”
At any rate, neither a risk of death nor a potential for birth defects can justify contraception because contraception is intrinsically evil and thus can never be justified under any circumstances. Francis does not seem to have a handle on this basic principle of moral theology. Rather, he told the press that “avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil” like abortion, thus conflating the terms intrinsic and absolute. Cardinal Sarah and the African bishops, on the other hand, who understand what “intrinsically evil” means, have condemned as “immoral and misguided”’ the use of condoms even to stop the spread of the potentially deadly AIDS virus, noting that the proffered motive of “defense of life” does not justify the use of an inherently immoral means to defend it.
Here Francis appears to have fallen prey to the error of consequentialism, which seeks to justify an evil act by the supposed greater good its consequences will entail. My erstwhile debate opponent Mark Shea has rightly described this error as “the most popular moral heresy in the world.” Well, Francis is nothing if not popular. But any well-catechized child knows that it is never permissible to violate one Commandment on the pretense of following another, and that such “conflicts” in reality do not exist. We may never “do evil that good may come (Romans 3:7-8).” Francis, alarmingly enough, appears not to recognize that the ends of an action can never justify the means, but rather both means and ends must always conform to the moral law.
Francis, whose divinely imposed duty is to defend the Church’s moral teaching without compromise, even during press conferences, continues to display his disdain for such “rigorism.” But at this juncture, really, whatever. Does any observant Catholic still take Francis’s prattling seriously? All we need to know is that whenever we see this—
we must brace ourselves for yet another barrage of exploding blunders. Meanwhile, we can only pray for deliverance from this absurd pontificate and the manic cult that surrounds it, surely one of the greatest debacles in Church history.
