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3. Pope Francis called unfettered capitalism the “dung of the devil.”
You have to love Pope Francis’ way with words. On a July visit to Bolivia and its left-leaning leader, the Pope denounced the “new colonialism” in which richer countries and international banks impose austerity programs on developing nations. In a sweeping speech that sounded quasi-socialist, the Pope said the poor have the “sacred rights” to labor, lodging and land. He again called for a halt to the destruction of the earth before it is too late, destruction that disproportionately affects the world’s poor.
Needless to say, conservatives did not care for the Pope’s description of capitalism as Lucifer’s fecal material.
The integration of environmental, economic and moral issues puts the Pope on a par with some of the deeper and more radical thinkers of our time, like Naomi Klein, who recently gave a shout-out to Francis as a role model of the kind of transformational leader the world needs now.
4. Pope Francis rejected creationism.
For a man of the cloth, Pope Francis has a refreshing admiration for science. The world witnessed that with his encyclical on the environment, where he threw his lot in with science. We saw it again when he said one can be a good Catholic and believe in evolution and the Big Bang and that neither are incompatible with the existence of a creator.
Speaking at the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences recently, the Pope said, “When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so.”
It’s a tough communion wafer to swallow for Bobby Jindal and other right-wing creationism advocates.
5. Pope Francis made it easier and cheaper to get marriages annulled.
It was a small bureaucratic change in some ways, but it spoke volumes about forgiveness, the recognition that families have changed and making more people feel welcome in the Catholic church. On Sept. 8, the Vatican unveiled new rules to make it easier, faster and less costly to obtain an annulment. Both of Francis’ predecessor’s, John Paul II and Benedict XVI had gone in exactly the opposite direction, consigning the miserable in marriage to eternal togetherness or living in sin.
“This is a 180-degree change in direction,” James Bretzke, a professor of theology at Boston College, told the Guardian. “Pope Francis has shown us over and over again his [different approach], which is, let’s look at the people in the pews, in the barrios, in the field and let’s respond to them in their existential needs.”
An easier, less intimidating annulment process is one thing, but the even larger and more contentious issue is whether the Church will ease its stance on divorced Catholics and whether they can take communion. That and other issues affecting the modern family will be discussed at a meeting of the Synod of Bishops next month. But the annulment move makes it seem a lot more possible that communion for the divorced may be on its way.
American conservatives were pretty quiet about this change, probably because many of them have been divorced and remarried multiple times (Kim Davis), so that would be pretty hypocritical.
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