OPINION:
While I was growing up in a small town in upstate New York, most of my friends were Catholics.
When I wrote a column in Boston, I devoted so much space to defending the Catholic Church on moral questions that some thought I was a Catholic.
I once got a letter from a reader who insisted, “Mr. Feder, Rome speaks through your mouth.” I replied that, if so, I must be the first Jew since St. Peter to hold that distinction.
Now, the Catholic Church is threatened more from within than without. Take the late Pope Francis.
As befits a Jesuit from Argentina, the home of liberation theology, the worldview of Francis was more Marxist than Catholic. Argentina’s free market president, Javier Milei, once accused him of “pushing communism.”
Pope Francis said he knew Marxists who were “good people.” Would they be the architects of the Cultural Revolution or the Killing Fields?
The pontiff rarely met a leftist cause he didn’t embrace, including climate change and open borders. When he met with Vice President J.D. Vance shortly before his death, Pope Francis called mass deportations of illegal aliens “a disgrace.”
The pope’s predecessors were critical of socialism. Pope John Paul II, who lived under communism, said socialism “subordinates the good of individuals” to society. Pope Benedict XVI said that under socialism, “the state would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself.”
Pope Francis focused his criticism on the free market. He condemned what he called “the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature.” Capitalism is an “idolatrous system which excludes, debases and kills,” the Pope said.
It’s an “idolatrous system” that has lifted millions out of poverty and created the modern world. Did Pope Francis ever wonder why so many fled an economic system he revered to participate in one he despised? Venezuela doesn’t have a problem with illegal immigration.
The pope never spoke against Chinese atrocities, including the arrest of Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen. One-third of Chinese dioceses are without a bishop because of a 2018 deal with the Vatican, which allows the appointment only of bishops approved by the Communist Party.
Even more than socialism, Pope Francis had a deep and abiding affection for Islam.
He had a “pledge of fraternity” with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque, Pope Francis disclosed. When the sheikh visited the pope in Rome, the Vatican newspaper complained that he made an antisemitic remark “every two minutes.” Pope Francis was unperturbed.
The pontiff was incensed by Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip. The Jewish state, which rose from the ashes of the Holocaust, should be investigated for committing genocide, Pope Francis said. When he visited Israel, he prayed at a barricade defaced with anti-Israel graffiti as if it were a shrine.
At Christmas last year, Pope Francis prayed at a creche set up in the Vatican and carved on the West Bank. The creche had the baby Jesus lying on a Palestinian kaffiyeh. A representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization was on hand to express “deep gratitude for the pope’s unwavering support for the Palestinian cause.”
It’s a shame Pope Francis wasn’t as supportive of Catholic teachings.
In this regard, he gave great lip service. Abortion was “murder” and abortionists “hit men,” Pope Francis said before a 45-minute private meeting with President Biden, the most pro-abortion president in history. When he emerged, Mr. Biden said the pope assured him that he was “a good Catholic.”
Pope Francis reiterated the church’s traditional position on marriage. Still, he supported civil unions and said that although priests could not bless these unions, individual participants could be blessed singly or together. In 2013, The Advocate, a gay magazine, named Pope Francis its person of the year.
Of the cardinals who will choose the next pope, 80% were appointed by Pope Francis. Still, they might reflect on the fact that Catholicism is dying in Europe, where Pope Francis’ brand of Christianity is in vogue. On Sundays, churches with mostly empty pews resemble old-age homes.
Evangelical Christianity is the fastest-growing religion in Latin America. The Catholic Church is strongest in Africa, a bastion of traditionalism.
Under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the papacy was a strong voice for biblical morality. It could be again.
The world needs religious leaders who will stand against the moral anarchy of the age as the first popes stood against pagan Rome.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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