BishopAccountability.org

Pope Francis: �son of the Church␝

By Betty Clermont
The Daily Kos
December 07, 2013

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/07/1260848/-Pope-Francis-Son-of-the-Church?detail=hide#

On the July 28 flight back to Rome from Rio de Janeiro’s World Youth Day and in a widely publicized interview in September with a Jesuit magazine, when asked for his opinion on abortion and same-sex marriage, Pope Francis said his position was identical to that of the Church. “I am a son of the Church,” he explained.

He is a son of the Church as restructured by his two predecessors, Pope John Paul II and his head of doctrine, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI.

Fr. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was promoted to bishop, archbishop and cardinal by Pope John Paul II who preached: “The globalized economy must be analyzed in the light of the principles of social justice, respecting the preferential option for the poor who must be allowed to take their place in such an economy, and the requirements of the international common good.” John Paul condemned, “Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide…whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind.”

Yet he backed Latin American dictators and worked with the CIA, Reagan and right-wing Catholic groups to counter the actions of progressive clerics in Latin America. The CIA thought Wojtyla would be "a perfect vehicle for U.S. foreign policy."

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope by a College of Cardinals comprised entirely of men appointed by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Benedict taught: “Democracy will attain its full actualization only when every person and each people have access to the primary goods (life, food, water, health care, education, work, and the certainty of their rights) through an ordering of internal and international relations that assures each person of the possibility of participating in them.” And “Commitment to promoting effective social justice in international relations demands of each one an awareness that the goods of creation are destined for all, and that in the world community economies must be oriented toward the sharing of these goods, their lasting use, and the fair division of the benefits that derive from them.”

Yet when polls showed a tie between Pres. George W. Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry in 2004, he sent a letter to the U.S. episcopate instructing the bishops to deny communion to Kerry. After favoring Gore in 2000, Catholics voted 52 percent for Bush versus 47 percent for Kerry. “Throughout the 2004 campaign, Rove maintained that, if Bush won the Catholic vote, he would be reelected. Rove was right.”

Since his election, Pope Francis has spoken about mercy and compassion. His first papal exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, has won enthusiastic praise for his “special concern for the poor and the need for state intervention to promote economic justice.”

Yet his first official act as pontiff was the appointment of a group of eight cardinals to help him govern the Church. Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriquez Maradiaga who, as head of Opus Dei in that country, helped overthrow the progressive and elected president, Manuel Zalaya, in 2009 is the group’s coordinator. Several other members are also close to Opus Dei.

Like his two predecessors, Pope Francis shielded pedophile priests and prelates and tried to deny justice for their victims.

In order to understand their actions, it is necessary to know why and how John Paul and Benedict appointed the current leadership of the Catholic Church.

Since the Emperor Constantine built the first basilica on Vatican Hill, the Catholic Church’s headquarters has been in Rome and, with few exceptions, had an Italian pope and an Italian Curia (bureaucracy). Even when Pope Pius XII died in 1958, jet travel was a rarity and most communication was by mail. Because of the restrictions of limited travel and communications, by necessity popes had a somewhat laissez faire attitude towards non-European national churches. The pope appointed a nuncio (ambassador) or delegate (when there is no formal diplomatic relations) and relied on their advice to select that country’s bishops in consultation with the local prelates.

Left to themselves, by the 20th century American prelates were mostly the working-class sons and grandsons of immigrants – Irish, Italian, Polish; their flock, pro-labor big-city Democrats.  

The cardinals who gathered to elect a new pope in 1958 were a diverse lot more interested in their own affairs than the Vatican’s. Like much of the world’s population, they worried about the U.S. and U.S.S.R. nuclear arsenals capable of destroying the planet in a matter of hours.

Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was elected and distanced himself from the virulent anti-communism of his predecessor. As Pope John XXIII, he and his successor Paul VI (Giovanni Montini) both favored ostpolitik, a normalization of relations with the Soviets.

Paul VI appointed the Belgian Archbishop Jean Jadot as his delegate to the U.S. in 1973 and at the pope’s direction, Jadot approved bishops who were anti-war, pro-civil-rights liberals. The hero of progressive U.S. Catholics, Jadot was responsible for naming 103 new bishops and 15 promotions to archbishop.

In the U.S., the 1960s was a tumultuous decade. Not only were Americans shaken by the Cuban Missile Crisis, but also we were losing a war, there were anti-war and civil rights demonstrations and three national leaders were assassinated. In 1969, Nixon coined the phrase “the silent majority” to describe the population who were experiencing angst that the good old days of the Father Knows Best-style society was being destroyed and many blamed the liberals.

The Northern white working class was as bitter about leaving their urban neighborhoods to avoid court-ordered busing to attain racial equality in their schools as Southern whites were afraid of African-American equality. Pat Buchanan later described how he and Nixon had discussed how it might be possible to unite these two demographics as staunch Republicans.

A group of intellectuals – Irving Kristol (often referred to as the “godfather of neoconservatism”), Allan Bloom, Francis Fukuyama and their followers - seized upon this discontent and alarm to formulate a new ideology. They equated liberty (which they defined in terms of divorce, the sexual revolution, children born out of wedlock, demonstrations) with licentiousness. What differentiated them from other conservatives was their emphasis on social issues. Initially they were able to promulgate their views through the many publications Kristol founded and/or edited.

These early neoconservatives were proponents of the philosophies of University of Chicago professor, Leo Strauss. Strauss taught that within societies “some were fit to lead and others to be led.” Strauss considered religion necessary to pacify the populace, a political tool used by rulers to control the masses. “Any religion, as long as it was monotheistic, patriarchal, hierarchal and authoritarian would serve the purpose,” according to academic and political commentator Shadia B. Drury (Leo Strauss and the American Right).

Other tyrants throughout history had reached the same conclusion about the role of religion. Egyptian pharaohs and Roman emperors declared themselves to be gods. Confucianism was considered essential to an orderly society. Even Napoleon reversed revolutionary anti-clericalism and made a concordat with the pope. Vladimir Putin aligned the Kremlin with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Kristol et al were joined by hawks who favored keeping the country in a constant state of war-readiness and engaged in small-scale conflicts. They profited from the military-industrial complex, wanted a Third World available for unfettered exploitation and included Zionists advocating the defense of Israel. These hardliners demanded a bellicose stance against any politician or country not actively engaged in insuring American domination.

The term “neoconservative” was first used by liberals to describe their associates who abandoned their domestic policy positions to assume an aggressive posture in foreign affairs. Ardent pro-Israel staffers of Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-Wash.), including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle (both later architects of the Iraq war), joined Republicans in opposition to the Democratic pro-peace 1972 nominee, George McGovern. When Kristol and others endorsed Nixon for re-election, any remaining ties to the Democratic Party were severed.

Both Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were influenced by Strauss protégé, Robert Godwin, and all three became advisers in the Ford White House. Kristol urged them to form a “Counter Establishment” to be funded by the Smith Richardson and Earhart Foundations and the Scaife Family Trust, all dedicated to the interests of big business. (Tevi Troy Intellectuals and the American Presidency)

As the nation celebrated its bicentennial, separation of church and state was such an established principle that there was virtually no public debate on the subject. The Founding Fathers and most colonists had considered the European religious wars and persecutions as sufficient warning against America becoming a confessional state.

The Southern Baptist Convention had reaffirmed its Resolution on Separation of Church and State:  “[T]he Church should not resort to the civil power to carry on its work….Christian ministries should be supported exclusively by the churches.”

Candidate John F. Kennedy had been accused of being subject to a foreign power – the pope - so the Catholic bishops gave a wide berth to anything which even hinted of direct interference in politics. Like the Baptists, they wanted no government handouts for their schools and ministries which they were sure would come with strings attached.

“Family values” meant discussions about the ease of obtaining a divorce and the media glamorization of casual sex and violence. The 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that the matter of abortion should be left between a woman and her physician was acceptable to most Americans who knew about the deaths and mutilations from illegal abortions. It was a subject avoided by the majority of politician’s. Gays were still in the closet so homosexuality was not a pressing issue. Defense of Israel based on Scripture was a subject few had even heard of.

Creation of the Religious Right

During the 1970s, the Republican establishment was being challenged by the amoral, take-no-prisoners, neoconservatives totally focused on shifting this country’s wealth into their own pockets by whatever means possible. Stephen Eric Bronner, professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, identified the neocons’ “brutal reliance on power and propaganda. They are counter-revolutionaries intent on undoing the progressive political achievements of the twentieth century.”

The creation of a Straussian “religion” promoting acceptance of the populace to rule by a “Christian” elite and tolerance of an economy in service to big business formed the ideational framework for the religious right. It was an audacious and brilliant decision to convince conservatives that they were actually choosing the “moral” alternative as they voted for our economic enslavement.

There were important factors favoring the success of their plan. Clergy, unlike politicians, are treated with deference by the media, a presumption of their sincerity so as not to offend their followers. As long as they promote issues – carefully constructed as abortion, gay rights and support for Israel - and not candidates, religious leaders are immune through their 501(c)(3) tax code from any requirement of financial disclosure or accountability. Donors are assured of complete anonymity and get a tax deduction to boot. Money spent on politicking is untaxed.

We’ll probably never have a complete history of the backroom plans and deals, but this is what we do know.

Both Protestant and Catholic conservative voters were needed to constitute an electorate large enough to determine election outcomes. Capturing the Catholic vote also had certain advantages.

The number of Catholics exceeded the membership of the next 12 denominations combined. They also voted in greater numbers – though 23 percent of the population, they constituted 30 percent of the national electorate. At the time, Catholics were concentrated in the states with the largest number of electoral votes: California, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan.

Unlike the independent evangelical pastors, the Catholic Church is a tightly controlled organization. The pope appoints the bishops. The bishops appoint the priests. The only way to change the Church is to change the pope. Another distinction - the pope is the dictator of his own country, immune from any law enforcement agency, legislature or court.

In the 1970s the U.S. was the richest and most powerful nation the world had ever known. Americans were/are the largest donors to the Vatican and the global Church. To establish an alliance between the wealthiest and most powerful religion and government would be not only an important step in the neocon plans to control America but also a great support for the global plutocracy. (In fact the pope’s influence covers only Europe, the Western Hemisphere, the Philippines and Australia, but I will continue to use the term “global” rather than recite this distinction every time.)

Other advantages to a neocon Church are that a pope receives more media coverage than any other religious leader, more than most other heads-of-state and certainly the most deferential.  The Church has worldwide media outlets and messaging second to none in sophistication due to Opus Dei’s Joaquin Navarro-Valls, John Paul’s head of communications – a position now held by Opus Dei’s Greg Burke and former Fox News correspondent under Francis.  

Considering all governments, the Catholic Church has, if not the largest, than the most tightly-controlled global organization with hundreds of thousands of agencies. The pope rules over 3000 dioceses each controlled by a Vatican-appointed bishop and each with a large number of organizations and groups controlled by that bishop. (There are over 40,000 bishop-controlled entities in the U.S. alone.)

No other religion has a global financial network capable of moving “dark money” wherever needed among hundreds of thousands of these organizations to serve its geopolitical goals. (Pope Francis was just named the fourth Most Powerful Person in the World by Forbes. In comparison, Charles and David Koch were No. 31 on Forbes’ list.)

As far as Strauss’ specifications - monotheistic, patriarchal, hierarchal and authoritarian - the Catholic Church is the closest match and has the historical expertise from past church/state alliances such as the Holy Roman Empire, Ancien Régime and with other monarchs, tyrants, and dictators. Additionally, there were already two organizations for international plutocrats, the Knights of Malta and Opus Dei.

Knights of Malta

The Knights or SMOM (Sovereign Military Order of Malta) traces its history back to the Crusades. Its modern form took shape when aristocrats banded together to protect their wealth and ancestral privileges by maintaining Catholic monarchies and royal houses during the 19th century democratic and nation-building movements sweeping across Europe.

Originally requiring a noble pedigree, the Knights agreed to accept America’s nouveau riche in 1907. John J. Raskob, Chairman of the Board of General Motors and leader of a fascist plot to overthrow FDR, was an early invitee.

World War II-era European SMOM members were allied with the Falangist groups in Spain, the Catholic integralist-Vichy French, Italian fascists and the German-Austrian supporters of Adolf Hitler. Some American Knights were among those who conducted commerce with the Nazis.

Post-war members belonged to many of the militant anti-communist organizations.

CIA directors John McCone, William Colby and William J. Casey were Knights of Malta.

Several Knights were members of the Nixon administration but Chief of Staff Gen. Alexander M. Haig and William Simon (Citicorp), who served as both treasury secretary and “Energy Czar” - having both launched and administered the Federal Energy Administration – are the most notable.

During the grooming of Ronald Reagan as a neocon presidential candidate, Knights Henry Salvatori, one of the founders of the National Review, and Patrick J. Frawley Jr., who founded the National Catholic Register, a reactionary weekly promoting Roman Catholic hegemony, were members of the “Businessman’s Taskforce” to elect Reagan. Salvatori and Frawley were also members of the American Security Council, an organization for leaders of the military-industrial complex.

In the Reagan administration, SMOM members included William Casey, reported to have planned the “October Surprise” resulting in Reagan’s election; Vernon Walters, ambassador at large; Dame of Malta, Clare Boothe Luce, member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board which oversees covert operations; James Buckley, undersecretary of state for security assistance (and his more illustrious brother, William Buckley, Jr., editor of the National Review); and both of Reagan’s ambassadors to the Holy See, William Wilson and Frank Shakespeare.

Knights of Malta and members of Opus Dei were instrumental in providing money and materials to pro-American Latin American military dictators.  

The power of the Knights of Malta seems to have waned in the last several decades as Opus Dei has ascended as the more powerful group of international plutocrats. But their presence in the military has been confirmed by veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. Hersh stated that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Vice Admiral William McRaven and others in the Joint Special Operations Command (the group responsible for the assassination of Osama Bin Laden) were members of the Knights of Malta and Opus Dei. “They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- as a crusade, literally,” Hersh stated. "They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function." He added that members of these societies have developed a secret set of insignias that represent "the whole notion that this is a culture war" between religions.

A German noble and Knight of Malta, Ernst Von Freyburg, was named president of the Vatican Bank by Pope Benedict XVI and has kept the job under Pope Francis so far.

Opus Dei

“The Work” was founded in Spain in 1928 by Fr. Josemaria Escriva. He recruited followers among male university students and graduates in order to form an organization attracting who he considered to be the best and the brightest. Held back by the disruptions of the Spanish Civil War and WWII, Escriva’s intentions become clear in the post-war period.

The Spanish journal, Tempo, outlined the steps taken by Escriva in the 1950s and 60s to achieve a “Catholic nationalism” in Spain, a unity of church and state under the control of Opus Dei. The pattern should be familiar to Americans knowledgeable about the neocon takeover and may even have been a template for U.S. neocons in constructing their own “Christian nationalism.”


•    Escriva blamed liberals for the growing secularization of Spain, portrayed as damaging the morals of the nation.


•    Opus Dei professors created new research institutes.


•    Escriva founded his own publishing house for his multiple publications. “We must wrap the world in printed paper,” he wrote.


•    Members of “The Way” were given government appointments starting with the Ministry of Propaganda by the fascist Francisco Franco who appreciated their zeal for his dictatorship. Franco went on to give members’ financial authority and they steered the Spanish economy into dependence on international financial interests. As Martin A. Lee noted, by 1983 ten of 19 Franco cabinet positions were held by men affiliated with Opus Dei.


•    Opus Dei created their own schools (independent of the government Catholic school system) including colleges and universities.

Escriva always intended for his organization to be global and it has branches in at least 80 countries and is generally reported to have 83,000 members. The top echelon is now mostly transnational financiers, bankers and businessmen. (Robert Hutchison Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei)

“What give Opus Dei its importance is the influence it wields and also that it deploys its immense financial resources…Opus Dei knows very well that money rules the world and that religious hegemony of a country or a continent is dependent upon obtaining financial hegemony,” noted Javier Sainz Moreno, professor of Law at Madrid University. (Hutchinson pp 261-262)

Unlike the Knights of Malta, membership in Opus Dei is secret unless the member admits to it. SMOM in composed entirely of lay men. The names of priests and prelates ordained into the Opus Dei religious order are public.

Changing the Pope

The grooming of Karol Wojtyla might have been the first concrete step in creating an American religious right. An obscure hierarch of no great distinction from an impoverished country began making public appearances in the U.S. and across Europe. Who sponsored Wojtyla? Martin A. Lee tells us Opus Dei invited him to give addresses at their centers throughout Western Europe. Did they also pay for and plan his U.S. tours? On his last official trip to the U.S. as cardinal in 1976 – which included appearances in New York, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, San Francisco and Los Angeles - Wojtyla was introduced at Harvard as “the future pope” by one of Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers, Hendrik S. Houthakker. (Bernstein & Politi His Holiness pp147-149)

When Montini died in 1978, Cardinal Albino Luciani was elected. The “Smiling Pope,” the kindly, pastoral Pope John Paul I died after only 33 days into his pontificate. The Vatican refused an autopsy and to allow his hurriedly embalmed remains to be exhumed and tested for poison.

The cardinals who gathered to elect Popes John Paul I and II, although still parochial, were an even more diverse group since they included liberals appointed by Roncalli and Montini as well as the old guard still around from the Pius XII papacy. However, as I described in Chapter 5 of my book, The Neo-Catholics, a contrived dispute between the frontrunner candidates for pope, Cardinals Siri and Benelli, designed to embarrass them both, appeared in a newspaper just before the conclave began. Inside the conclave, Siri’s and Benelli’s supporters took sides; Wojtyla – who had been hyped by Opus Dei - was introduced as the compromise candidate and elected.

The CIA, which knew that another John XXIII could spell disaster for U.S. foreign policy, doubtless brought its influence to bear on the election [of Cardinal Wojtyla] through Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta. Thus far it seems likely that the agency is, on balance, fairly pleased with the pope's performance,” wrote Martin A. Lee in 1983.

“The pope's deeds often do not reflect his words,” is how Lee began relating how Pope John Paul II, with the help of the CIA, Opus Dei and Knights of Malta, secretly supported Pres. Reagan’s slaughter of Latin American freedom fighters in order to keep U.S.-backed military dictators in power.

The CIA Connection

From World War II to at least the end of the Cold War, the American intelligence community worked closely with right-wing members of the Vatican Curia in executing their shared geopolitical objectives.

The alliance began during World War II with Allen Dulles, OSS (precursor of the CIA) station chief in Bern, Switzerland, who shared business interests with the U.S. Eastern Establishment moguls who had continued trading with the Third Reich throughout the war. When an Allied victory seemed likely, the Nazi businessmen with U.S. contacts made plans to protect their assets with Dulles’s help. The Vatican, also heavily invested in Nazi companies and Swiss banks, (John F. Pollard Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy) contributed its diplomatic immunity “to ensure absolute secrecy in moving foreign currency and ownership documents out of Switzerland.” Dulles's accomplice was James Jesus Angleton, member of the OSS counterintelligence branch in Italy. (Aarons and Loftus Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and The Swiss Banks)

Dulles became director of the CIA in 1953 and Angleton chief of the CIA’s counterintelligence staff in 1954. As already mentioned, several CIA directors were Knights of Malta.

CIA dirty tricks and secret funding helped elect the Vatican-supported Christian Democrats in the 1948 Italian election. The agency founded and maintained Operation Gladio, a secret paramilitary army including saboteurs in post-war Italy supposedly to resist a Soviet invasion but whose members were used in the 1970s “strategy of tension.” Italian civilian targets like the Bologna train station were bombed and made to appear to be the work of communists. The CIA also worked with the Vatican in installing Catholic Pres. Ngo Dinh Diem in Buddhist-majority South Vietnam as well as money and “black ops” for military dictatorships in Latin America.

Coors and Weyrich

Beer magnate, Joseph Coors, was looking for a way to commit his fortune to the neoconservative cause. Paul Weyrich, an aide to a Colorado Republican senator, met with Coors and then invited fellow-Catholic, Edwin J. Fuelner, Jr., chief of staff to a Republican congressman, to join what would become the Heritage Foundation. Established in 1973, it would become the prototype for the neoconservative think-tank and is still among its most influential. The Heritage Foundation was initially funded by Coors and Richard Mellon Scaife.

Weyrich founded, co-founded, or held prominent roles in a number of other notable conservative organizations. Per Wikipedia, he was founder of the Free Congress Foundation (FCF), an organization that trained and mobilized conservative activists, recruited conservative candidates, and raised funds for conservative causes; founder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization of state legislators; co-founder of the Council for National Policy, a strategy-formulating organization for social conservatives; co-publisher of the magazine Conservative Digest; and national chairman of Coalitions for America, an association of conservative activist organizations.

Funding

In 1976, Nixon’s former treasury secretary, Knight of Malta William Simon, was appointed head of the John M. Olin Foundation. Along with the Sarah Scaife and Smith Richards foundations (both conduits for CIA money), it became a “clearinghouse” for corporate donations.



The plan was straightforward and simple. Wealthy conservatives would support foundations that would in turn cultivate conservative voices in universities, in the media and of course, religious politics. The goal was to change not only the message, but the entire political landscape by disguising the message to make it appear more centrist than it actually is.  A unified message on any given subject would descend intact from the think tank, complete with talking points, directly to the pundit whose job is to get that message into the daily discourse and finally to the political candidate who campaigns on it as an issue. Repetition and unity has become the hallmark of their success even if the facts are incorrect. (Penny Lernoux, “Who’s Who? Knights of Malta Know” National Catholic Reporter May 5, 1989)


The Evangelicals

Conservative Protestants are equally necessary to neoconservative success in order to make an effective voting bloc.

The first intentionally religious right organization, Christian Voice, was founded in 1978 nominally by Robert Grant. It was an “issues” advocacy group funded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon (a Korean who combined Christianity and anti-communism in his Unification Church) and operated out of the Heritage Foundation headquarters. In a 1979 news conference, the disillusioned Grant claimed the organization was a “sham…controlled by three Catholics and a Jew” - Weyrich, Terry Dolan, Richard Viguerie and Howard Phillips, a Jew who had converted to evangelical Christianity. (Weyrich later left the Roman rite and became a Melkite Catholic, one of several Eastern rites in total unity with the pope.) Weyrich is considered the architect of the religious right.

During a 1979 meeting, they urged televangelist (“Old Time Gospel Hour”) Jerry Falwell to found the Moral Majority, a phrase coined by Weyrich reminiscent of Nixon’s “silent majority.” Although southern-oriented, by 1980 it had chapters in 18 states and was also partially funded by Moon.  Falwell announced the goal of his new group: “To defend the free enterprise system, the family, Bible morality and fundamental values.” (“The New Right Takes Aim” TIME August 20, 1979)

Frederick Clarkson, senior fellow at Political Research Associates, provides a great summation of the formation of the religious right during this period:



The “New” Christian Right that emerged in the late 1970s was defined by a wave of institution building that targeted multiple realms of American society, especially education, broadcasting, and politics. Dobson, for example, founded Focus on the Family in 1977 for the purpose of promoting conservative, “family-friendly” ideologies and public policies. The same year, Pat Robertson founded Christian Broadcasting Network University (now Regent University). In 1979, Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority with the goal of mobilizing conservative Christians into a voting bloc to advance a rightward shift in American politics, most immediately by supporting Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign. Falwell went on to found Liberty University, now the largest Christian university in the world.


The 1980 Election

"I don't want everybody to vote," Weyrich told a gathering of evangelical leaders in that election year. "As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."  His idea was to energize conservative Christians into greater political activism and, most importantly, to get out the vote.

As governor of California, Ronald Reagan had signed one of the most liberal abortion laws in 1967. But at the National Affairs Briefing held in the summer of 1980, sponsored by the Religious Roundtable (formed in1979 to bring religious and political leaders together), candidate Reagan was introduced by a Southern Baptist pastor as “God’s man.” Other speakers included evangelists James Robison and Pat Robertson.

The Moral Majority “played a significant role in the 1980 electionsthrough its strong support of conservative candidates. It lobbied for prayer and the teaching of creationism in public schools, while opposing the Equal Rights Amendment, homosexual rights, abortion, and the U.S.-Soviet SALT disarmament treaties. Falwell led the group until 1987. The Moral Majority was dissolved in 1989.”

The 1980 election of Ronald Reagan gave the religious right their first taste of success and appetite for greater power.

Reagan and Wojtyla

Why each man was selected for preparation as president and pope is too lengthy to examine here, but both were naturally charismatic leaders. While the “Great Communicator” conned Americans into trusting him, Reagan began the “epochal shift of wealth upward.” Deregulation under his Federal Communications Commission chairman created the mega-corporate-owned media to take the neocon messaging mainstream and also helped to create the image of the “superstar” pope.  

Before Pope John Paul II, the Holy See (the juridical name for the Vatican) had diplomatic ties with 85 states. After Reagan established full diplomatic relations with the Vatican as did Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, the rest of the world, aware of this pope’s political power, took notice. The Vatican now has official diplomatic relations with 176 nations and less formal ties with several others.

A month after Reagan’s election, Wojtyla - as he told the world, “The more just exercise of power…prepares the ground for peace” - appointed Archbishop Pio Laghi as delegate to the U.S. direct from his posting as nuncio to the Argentine military junta. Laghi and the Argentine hierarchs were confirmed as accomplices in the Dirty War (1976-1983) against leftists by former military dictator, Jorge Videla.

Laghi’s was upgraded to full ambassador status when Reagan became the first U.S. president to grant diplomatic recognition to the Holy See. Laghi became good friends with former CIA director and vice president, George H.W. Bush, thereby giving both the agency and the administration direct input into the selection of U.S. bishops as those priests most committed to the neocon agenda. At the time, bishops were appointed for life. Even though John Paul II signed the change in the Church’s Canon Law in 1983 requiring bishops to submit their resignations at age 75, it took nearly two decades for Wojtyla to change the U.S. episcopate into a solid adjunct of the Republican Party.


So it would be up to the evangelicals to make the religious right into an effective political machine.

The Religious Right Consolidates Its Power

As Clarkson tells us:  



By the mid-1990s, with the Moral Majority long gone, Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition became the established power broker that Falwell’s organization had aspired to be, and Christian conservatives dominated the Republican National Convention in 1996. Their influence was so strong that two prochoice Republican governors - William Weld of Massachusetts and Pete Wilson of California - declined to speak because of content restrictions.


[The Christian Coalition’s] successes at political mobilization - pushing apolitical religious conservatives to become voters, voters to become activists, and activists to become candidates -have become woven into the fabric of our national political life, particularly within the GOP.


Pat Robertson hired Ralph Reed as its first executive director. Reed was young (27), photogenic and a powerhouse of energy and ideas. At age 33, he made the cover of TIME magazine as “The Right Hand of God” for the power he wielded. The group had considerable success in training and electing local and state officials as well as national politicians and mobilizing voters. Reed’s fall from grace came when his ties to convicted felon, Jack Abramoff were revealed.  

By 1993, the National Conference of Catholic Bishop’s (forerunner of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the USCCB) Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities was the highest funded of the bishops’ 13 committees, more than three times larger than the next highest.

During the 1990s there were attempts by Chuck Colson, Pat Robertson and Fr. R. J. Neuhaus to make alliances between evangelical and Catholic right-wing leaders. They were never too successful but it did help them to stay on-message with a common purpose. Ralph Reed was invited to address the first national conference in 1995 of the Catholic Campaign for America formed to elect Republicans.

In 1998, Karl Rove was directing the presidential campaign of Gov. George W. Bush and building “a lasting Republican majority…He came upon ‘The Catholic Voter Project,’ a study of voting behavior in national elections since the Kennedy-Nixon contest of 1960” commissioned by Crisis magazine, a journal for neocon Catholics. “The Crisis project compared the voting behaviors of those who regularly attended Mass and inactive Catholics and found a clear distinction. Active Catholics characterized themselves as being more conservative than Catholics as a whole, and, although they did not necessarily identify with Republicans, they were in the vanguard of the thirty-year Catholic march out of the Democratic Party.”

Henceforth, political polling no longer asked for only religious affiliation but also frequency of church attendance. More importantly, Republicans increasingly focused their “issues” campaigns to those sitting in the pews through mailings to registered congregants, distributing pamphlets after services and sending “talking points” to priests and pastors.  

Additionally, more political operatives became aware of Princeton Professor Robert George who had designed “The Catholic Voter Project.” George was founding director of the university’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The group, which studies constitutional law and politics, was funded by Opus Dei and the John Olin and Lynde and Harry Bradley foundations.

Crisis editors admitted “if there is a vast right-wing conspiracy, its leaders probably meet in George’s basement.” George would become an adviser to Pres. George W. Bush on Supreme Court nominations and both of Bush appointees, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Samuel Alito, Jr., as associate justice are right-wing Catholics.

The 2000 Election

“In 2000, the Christian Coalition launched what they claim was their biggest election year campaign ever, distributing 70 million voter guides to their members and conservative churches in every state. Robertson is given credit for throwing his support behind Bush very early in his candidacy, and helping Bush gain the support of the Religious Right. The coalition is credited with assisting Bush with winning the South Carolina presidential primary through their strong get-out-the-vote activities. Pat Robertson taped a telephone message criticizing presidential candidate John McCain on the eve of the February Michigan primary.”  

While the Northeast remained Democrat and the Southern states Republican:



The Christian Coalition and other groups worked hard for the Republican ticket….The Christian right became more active in Midwestern Republican parties. Bush won a majority of these states, but Gore carried some of the most populated, including Michigan and Illinois….Christian conservatives have always been active in the West, despite the strong liberal -- and libertarian -- tendencies of these states. It may be, however, that these very tendencies have brought moral traditionalists into Republican Party politics in force….In this sense, the Christian right has been "spreading out" across the states, especially in the South, Midwest and West.


The Catholic Task Force, an assembly of the wealthy and influential, advised the Bush campaign how to target devout Catholics. Gov. Bush had photo ops with prelates, visited churches and talked about the “sanctity of life” although he had the worst record for executions of any U.S. governor. This required only minor tweaking changing the bishops’ “pro-life” mantra into pro-innocent-life or pro-unborn-life. Bush’s Catholic outreach campaign focused on the heavily-Catholic swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois. Later, Florida, New Jersey and Louisiana were added.

To help decide many uncommitted Christians, Bush presented himself as the standard bearer of “compassionate conservatism.”

On Election Day, exit polls revealed “79% of the self-described religious conservatives said they voted for George W. Bush. Absent that vote, Al Gore wins the election with a 52% majority. I think there’s little question that Christian conservatives - white Christian conservatives - are a permanent part of the Republican base,” Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press concluded.

The three Catholic Supreme Court justices (Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas) voted with the majority in Gore v. Bush.

The Big Payoff

Five days after his inauguration, Pres. Bush attended a dinner in the home of Washington D.C. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. The president of the USCCB and other hierarchs also were present. “The event came on the eve of the unveiling of a Bush-administration plan to allow public funding of religious organizations engaged in assistance, volunteer work and humanitarian aid.”  

Bush created the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiative (FBCI) by executive order, often called the greatest breach in the separation of church and state to date. No one is so naïve as to believe that charitable work doesn’t generate good will towards the giver or that some workers involved wouldn’t use the opportunity to proselytize.

Daniel Zwerdling, who produced two programs on the faith-based initiative for Bill Moyers TV show NOW in September 2003, "found that religious groups could apply to more than a hundred federal programs that gave out more than $65 billion.” H. James Towey, director of the FBCI said an additional $40 billion in federal money was given out by state governments.

Taxpayers wound up funding “abstinence only” and youth programs building the next generation of Christian nationalists since no substantiation or accountability was required by the government from any of the FBCI recipients. “Faith-based” agencies – which mushroomed into a new growth industry - were also free to discriminate in hiring. Politicians created “community” charities which paid their campaign employees.

To this day, the Catholic bishops’ charities receive close to 2/3 of their funding from government grants. The dollar amount contributed by the prelates themselves totals far less than one tenth of one percent of U.S. charitable giving. (see footnote) Yet they still threaten to shut down “their” charities if their efforts to block women and gay rights are denied. (The over-inflated view of Catholic Charities is due in large part to the corporate media’s penchant for providing two sides in their articles no matter how wrong one of them may be. Therefore, when reporting on clerical sex-abuse, most commercial journalists began with a tip-of-the-had to Catholic charities.)    

Preparing for 2004

“The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement” was a call to action for Republicans published in 2001 by the Free Congress Foundation, written by Eric Heubeck with guidance from Weyrich.



Notice that the manual begins with the adoption of the fundamental fact of Machiavellianism: "This essay is based on the belief that the truth of an idea is not the primary reason for its acceptance. Far more important is the energy and dedication of the idea's promoters - in other words, the individuals composing a social or political movement. It urges conservatives to reassess their position in American society and to consolidate their position by focusing on building conservative institutions with the goal of "taking over political structures."


Heubeck makes a number of pragmatic arguments, such as "Good Results Are More Important than Good Intentions." Also:


1) Falsehoods are not only acceptable, they are a necessity. The corollary is: The masses will accept any lie if it is spoken with vigor, energy and dedication.


2) It is necessary to be cast under the cloak of "goodness" whereas all opponents and their ideas must be cast as "evil."


3) Complete destruction of every opponent must be accomplished through unrelenting personal attacks.


4) The creation of the appearance of overwhelming power and brutality is necessary in order to destroy the will of opponents to launch opposition of any kind.


 


In 2002, leaders from ten conservative Christian organizations formed the “Arlington Group,” an alliance of more than 50 of the most prominent conservative Christian leaders and organizations. Weyrich of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation described it this way: “For the first time, virtually all of the social issues groups are singing off the same sheet of music… when we are working together, we are a mighty force that can’t be ignored.”



If their agenda was hidden 15 years ago, today it is in full public view. Just take a look at their Web sites, where they document in considerable detail an agenda on a wide range of issues: judicial nominations, same-sex marriage, and faith-based issues – and an agenda that, let us be clear, goes well beyond legitimate engagement in controversial social and political issues to a fundamental usurpation of all that America represents.


Excerpts from an address by Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League


March 22, 2002:



No president in recent American history has taken such a strong interest in the “Catholic vote” as Bush. Advisers believe that in several swing states, socially conservative Catholic voters hold the key to reelection in 2004. Hence, Bush has reached out to the American bishops, and in July 2001 he went to Castle Gandolfo to meet the pope.


“We increased the Catholic vote by 10 percent in the election of 2000 compared to 1996,” Bush’s ambassador to the Holy See, James Nicholson, said. “We did it the old-fashioned way, by going after it. We got lists of Catholics and mailed to them, telephoned them. I think President Bush’s positions are appealing to Catholics.”





The Iraq War

Few Americans were aware of the extraordinary efforts on the part of Pope John Paul II and the Holy See to avert the impending war. Debilitated by his once-secret Parkinson’s disease, the mighty anti-communist warrior Wojtyla now tried to keep the peace. In numerous speeches and at the UN, the pope and his officials (including U.S. Bishop Wilton Gregory), spoke out against the invasion of Iraq as a legitimate response to 9/11.

Neocon apologist, George Weigel, who had formulated much of the justification of neoconservatism as a “Christian” ideology, responded that only secular leaders had “competency” to make such decisions.

The pope was put away by his handlers and was never again accessible to the press. Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who had directed much of John Paul II’s strategy in defending Latin American dictators against their “leftist” opposition, took charge. Wojtyla’s Opus Dei head of communications, Joaquin Navarro-Vals kept everyone on message.

The 2004 Election

Catholic Sen. John F. Kerry (D - Mass.) won both the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries in January. Vice Pres. Dick Cheney went to the Vatican on January 27 to confer with Sodano. What both the Vatican and GOP feared was a show of Catholic support for Kerry similar to what Kennedy had received.

Polls continued to show Kerry and Bush in a very close race. So Bush went to Rome on June 4 to present the U.S. Medal of Freedom to the pope – another demonstration that he was “more Catholic” than Kerry. Later that month, when the U.S. episcopate met for their semi-annual meeting, they received instructions from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, second in power to Sodano and formulator of Wojtyla’s theologically explicated opposition to Latin American freedom movements. Ratzinger told the bishops “no communion for John F. Kerry.”

The U.S. prelates began a campaign against Kerry unprecedented in scope, vitriol and direct interference by clergy in politics. They approved a statement on June 18 on "Catholics in Political Life" that politicians who support legal abortion are "cooperating in evil." The message went out to all Catholics in multi-media format and in technically non-partisan words that voting Democratic would jeopardize one’s immortal soul.

The Sunday before Election Day, Pres. and Mrs. Bush attended Catholic mass in Miami.

Initiatives banning same-sex marriage were on the ballot in 11 states and passed in every one, overwhelmingly in almost every case.

Bush won the popular vote by a little over 3 million. He carried 56% (approx. 7.9 million votes) of Catholics who said they attended Mass at least once a week while losing to Kerry among less observant Catholics. (“Sixty-three Percent of Catholics Voted in the 2004 Presidential Election” Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Georgetown University November 22, 2004)



Bush strategist Karl Rove identified the Catholic vote as central to his long-term plan to convert swathes of traditional Democratic voters, thereby transforming the Republicans into the majority party. Throughout the 2004 campaign, Rove maintained that, if Bush won the Catholic vote, he would be reelected. Rove was right.


Rove sought to turn out several million additional Catholic voters. Catholic turnout was 63 percent, up from 57 percent four years earlier, and constituted more than one-in-four voters nationwide, voters disproportionately distributed in key battleground states such as Ohio and Florida. Bush, a Methodist, impressively won 52 percent of the Catholic vote versus 47 percent for John Kerry, only the third Catholic to win a major party's presidential nomination. Only one Democrat since 1952 (Walter Mondale in 1984) had previously lost the Catholic vote by such a margin…..


As a result, it is unquestionably clear that this tactic is not going away, but will only intensify.


The 2008 Campaign

Pope Benedict XVI made his only trip to the U.S. signaling his approval of a Republican White House (and by extension, the entire GOP) during a presidential election year. Bush drove out to Andrews AFB to greet the pope, the only foreign dignitary ever accorded such an honor. Cheney led the farewell ceremony for the pope at JFK International Airport. The visit was a success in that it put a brief halt to the headlines the sex abuse scandal continued to generate.

Richard Moux, president of Fuller Theological Seminary and a supporter of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, wrote of the closeness evangelicals have with the pope. “He was a big hit, not only with grassroots Catholics, but also with the larger American population, even with the non-religious” he noted.

Later that year in Rome, Bush had his sixth meeting with a pope and his third in a little over a year with Benedict.

During the primaries, the Catholic/plutocracy alliance favored Mitt Romney, the evangelicals Mike Huckabee. With the religious right split, John McCain won the Republican nomination. With no Catholics in the Democratic primary, the bishops could only wait until the party’s nominee appointed Kathleen Sebelius as the future Secretary of Health and Human Services and Joe Biden as Vice President to launch a full-scale attack against Barack Obama. Since both Sebelius and Biden favored legal abortion, Archbishop Joseph Naumann, the archbishop of Kansas City declared Sebelius could not receive communion and within hours after the Biden announcement, a website named “Catholics Against Joe Biden” appeared and Archbishop Chaput announced that Biden should not receive communion.

The religious right labeled Obama as the “most pro-abortion candidate” in the nation’s history but their lack of enthusiasm for McCain was a source of real concern. The selection of Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate was initially everything the GOP could have hoped for: star power, intellectually and ethnically challenged, someone who would – they assumed – do and speak as instructed. Towards the end of the campaign, however, Palin was doing more to promote her own 2012 presidential campaign than the election of McCain.

Nonetheless, the religious right had found their true champion. Any unfavorable reporting of Palin was seen as proof the media was “anti-Christian.”

Rev. Howard Bess, a retired American Baptist minister who pastured a small congregation in nearby Palmer, Wasilla’s twin town in Alaska’s Matanuska Valley related how: “Things got very intense around here in the ’90s - the culture war was very hot here…. And Sarah Palin was in the direct center of all these culture battles, along with the churches she belonged to.”

Bess, in his 1995 book Pastor, I Am Gay, had come to the conclusion that “gay people were not sick, nor were they special sinners.” The only book store in the valley brave enough to sell it was forced to drop it. “The Frontiersman, the local newspaper that ran a column by Bess for seven years, fired him and ran a vicious cartoon that suggested even drooling child molesters would be welcomed by Bess’ church.” Palin tried to have the book removed from the Wasilla Public Library when she was mayor.

In 1996, evangelical churches succeeded in taking over the local hospital’s community board and ban abortion from the valley, a decision later overturned by the Alaska Supreme Court.

Another valley activist, Philip Munger, said that Palin also helped push the evangelical drive to take over the Mat-Su Borough school board. “She wanted to get people who believed in creationism on the board,” said Munger, a music composer and teacher.

“It’s truly frightening that someone like Sarah has risen to the national level,” Bess said. “Like all religious fundamentalists - Christian, Jewish, Muslim - she is a dualist. They view life as an ongoing struggle to the finish between good and evil. Their mind-set is that you do not do business with evil - you destroy it. Talking with the enemy is not part of their plan. That puts someone like Obama on the side of evil.” …She gave some indication of that thinking in her ABC interview, when she suggested how willing she would be to go to war with Russia.

Bess said that he and fellow valley residents have long been charmed by the Sarah Palin who is now dazzling the American public. Despite their strong political differences, “she always has a warm greeting for me when we bump into each other. She’s the most charming person you’ll ever know.”

As they had in previous elections, the Republican strategy was to put as many anti-abortion, anti-gay proposals on the state ballots as possible to impel “moral values” voters to the polls.

But Americans – sick of the Iraq war, the horrifyingly slow response to Hurricane Katrina and especially, concern for the tanking economy – elected Barack Obama. Exit polls showed that demographics increasingly favored Democrats. Women, minorities and voters 29 and younger voted for Obama by wide margins. 52% of white Catholics voted for McCain, but Latinos made the total Catholic vote 54% for Obama. 73% of evangelicals favored McCain. 55% of voters who said they attended church services at least once a week chose McCain.

Preparing for 2012 Election

Like their Republican donors, the U.S. bishops launched a campaign of obstruction against Obama by provoking loathing for the president among their followers. Within days after the election, the USCCB "pledged the resources of the Church to mobilize the Catholic community to...reject the abortion extremism of the Freedom of Choice Act," a long-dead, unsuccessful attempt to introduce a bill in 1993 falsely attributed to Obama.


In referring to the President of the United States, American bishops used words such as “apocalyptic,” “messiah,” “totalitarianism,” “despotism,” “truly obscene,” “fundamentally immoral,” “unwilling to hold life as sacred,” implementing a “culture of death” and a “create to kill” policy as regards stem-cell research.

In 2010, some anti-choice Democrats tried working with the USCCB to make sure the Affordable Care Act sufficiently repeated the numerous federal regulations already in place insuring that the government could never fund nor promote abortions. As Rep. Bart Stupak (D – Mich.) said later about his experience: “Ultimately, what stings the most…is that people [USCCB included] tried to use abortion as a tool to stop health-care reform, even after protections were added.”

The 2012 religious right campaign had been planned, according to the New York Times, in September 2009 when “about 60 prominent Christians” met. Attendees included the born-again Watergate felon Chuck Colson, who helped initiate the meeting and “more than half a dozen of this country’s most influential Roman Catholic bishops….At the center of the event was Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence and a Roman Catholic who is this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker.”  

“In the past few years, many of the evangelical Protestants who once defined the religious right have turned inward after their disappointment with President George W. Bush. In their place, George’s friends among the Catholic bishops have stepped to the fore, hammering Obama for his pro-choice Catholic cabinet nominees, for being invited to speak at Notre Dame’s commencement, for his stem-cell research policies and most recently for his health care proposals.”

George said he had no objections to bishops' talking about poverty and injustice as long as they didn’t suggest detailed economic policies such as progressive tax rates and higher minimum wage which might suggest a support for the Democratic Party. “Stalin famously asked, ‘How many divisions has the pope?’” George wrote after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi allowed a vote on an amendment demanded by the bishops. “I guess Pelosi now knows.”

Two months later, Cardinal Rigali introduced the group’s “Manhattan Declaration” at a press conference, “an accurate description of the battle and a strategy for war” which promised resistance to the point of civil disobedience. The issues of abortion and same-sex marriage had not been enough to win in 2008, so the Declaration - signed by over 150 Christian leaders - in addition to the usual “pro-life” and “pro-marriage” rhetoric, stated that the signers “affirm religious liberty.”



We see [the struggle for religious liberty] in the use of antidiscrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral....


We view [restrictions on the free exercise of religion] as an ominous development, the overweening authority of the state.





The 2012 Election

Five former U.S. ambassadors to the Vatican endorsed Mitt Romney for president on January 7, signaling that regardless of any domestic U.S. support for Catholics Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, the plutocracy had made its choice. Romney would now have the benefit of the Catholic Church’s global media and financial empire.

When a group of American bishops were in Rome less than two weeks later, Pope Benedict – who had issued numerous papers against unbridled capitalism and favoring economic justice - launched their 2012 presidential campaign. He warned of the “grave threat” to “religious liberty” in the U.S. “which finds increasing expression in the political [i.e. Democratic Party] sphere.” The pope said he was particularly concerned with “certain attempts being made [i.e. by President Obama] to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion.”

Birth control was never on the religious right’s radar until the bishops decided to oppose Obamacare because of the HHS mandate that health insurers provide coverage. They ignored the fact that they had never opposed the same mandate already in effect in 28 states, some for more than a decade, and instead, counted on the willing ignorance of voters and cover from the corporate media.

The U.S. bishops developed a set of church bulletin inserts and a website so that parishioners would be aware that contraception was “intrinsically evil” just like abortion. In addition, dioceses across the country carried articles in their newspapers and websitesreminding Catholics that “the illicitness of contraception is an infallible doctrine” or some similar dire warning.  

The media campaign by Catholic bishops resulted in two Congressional hearings, legislation introduced in the House with 190 cosponsors and the Senate with 29, a lawsuit by seven state attorneys general and the support of three of the four GOP presidential candidates, over the Affordable Care Act’s mandate of health insurance coverage for contraceptives.

Again, the religious right vote was divided during the primaries. The decision had already been made by his campaign team in 2010 that Romney would “abandon his 2008 strategy of seeking to win over evangelical or born-again Christians for whom his Mormonism is a major deterrent.” The majority of Republican Catholics chose Romney. The Catholic bishops didn’t indicate any preference for Santorum on Gingrich.  

Once Rick Santorum became Romney’s primary opponent, evangelicals – who made up half of Republican primary voters - favored Santorum (perhaps because only 29% of GOP voters knew he is Catholic.)

When Romney had the nomination, however,



Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed, launched what he described as the "largest voter registration, voter mobilization and get-out-the-vote effort ever targeted at evangelical voters," specifically those who would be new additions to the voter rolls…. Romney staff also made sure that the former Massachusetts governor's meeting last week with the Rev. Billy Graham and his son, Franklin, was well-circulated. "Romney had to work harder because of his Mormon faith," Southern Baptist leader Richard Land said. "Ryan, they love the guy," particularly for his anti-abortion record.


The prelate of Wall Street, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, “applauded [Paul Ryan’s] obvious solicitude for the poor,” calling him “a great public servant” whom he “admires immensely.” Dolan said he “bristles when any Catholic politician who dares to suggest that we need to get our fiscal house in order, that we need to balance the budget, that we need to show some frugality and restraint, is automatically branded as anti-poor....Nobody suffers more from runaway deficits and a poor economy than the poor.”

Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison, Wisonsin, also defended Ryan: “The preferential option for the poor, which is one of the primary tenets of Catholic social teaching, means don’t keep people poor, don’t make people dependent on governmentso that they stay stuck at their station in life; help people get out of poverty, out onto life of independence.”

Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver: “Claims that Paul Ryan’s plan run deeply counter to Catholic social teaching are unfounded and unreasonable…. Christian stewardship cares for the poor by prudently planning, responsibly spending what is in the realm of the possible, while recognizing the limitations of our resources.”

Romney echoed the pope and bishops on the campaign trail in railing against the president’s “attack on religious freedom.” After a trip to Poland, Romney issued a new TV ad using an image of, and a quote by, Pope John Paul II to charge Obama with declaring a “war on religion.”

Progressives staged a brilliant counter-campaign against the religious right. They turned the anti-abortion and contraception issues into a “war against women” and defeated the anti-same-sex marriage bills by framing it as a human rights issue.

RNC Growth and Opportunity Project

Pastors and prelates admitted concern about their dwindling number of congregants. The Catholic Church was losing influence even in traditionally-Catholic countries such as Ireland which legalized limited abortion and the Philippines which enacted a Reproductive Health bill bitterly opposed by the Church. The British and French passed laws legalizing same-sex marriage after hard-fought campaigns waged by the bishops. The Australian government’s Special Commission of Inquiry into child sex abuse, prompted by the same sickening reports of widespread clerical crimes and episcopal cover-ups as the rest of the world, began its public hearings.

“Evangelize with honey, not vinegar,” Cardinal Dolan said. “If they fall in love with Jesus and the Church, then we can begin to do a lot of the conversion and the tough moral teaching,” he continued. “If we come across as negative and crabby and mean and judgmental, we’ll turn people away. If we come across as embracing, engaging, warm and inviting, we’re going to get them in.”

In Europe, “Much ofthe radical right has broken with its bellicose past. Today’s far-right parties are more polished and articulate, more welcoming of mainstream agenda points (like same-sex marriage and welfare assistance) and more committed to playing by democratic rules.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus announced in December 2012 a Growth and Opportunity Project to study why the GOP lost so badly in last year’s presidential election.

In January, “dozens of Republican National Committee members argued in interviews over three days this week” about the reasons for their 2012 defeat. There was consensus that “The party’s main problem is who delivers its message and how, not the message itself” and that substantive policy changes weren’t needed.  “It’s not the platform of the party that’s the issue,” Priebus said. “In many cases, it’s how we communicate about it.”

During the next two months before the final Growth and Opportunity Project report was issued in March, no national Republican leader mentioned birth control, religious freedom, abortion or same-sex marriage.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor “hopes to put a kinder face on Republican policiesin a major policy address” on Feb. 5. Cantor used his speech “to show that Republicans want to improve life for everyday Americans.”  “We will advance proposals aimed at producing results in areas like education, healthcare, innovation, and job growth. Our solutions will be based on the conservative principles of self reliance, faith in the individual, trust in the family, and accountability in government,” Cantor said.  

“In other words, same elephant, different costume,” Daily Kos diarist jamess concluded in a post titled “The Stupid Party is looking for an Image Makeover.”

Benedict XVI became the first pope to resign in 600 years and Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected on March 13.

On March 18, the RNC released the results of the Growth and Opportunity Project dubbed its “autopsy” report: “When it comes to social issues, the party must in fact and deed be inclusive and welcoming….If we are not, we will limit our ability to attract young people and others, including many women, who agree with us on some but not all issues.”

The Faith and Freedom Coalition, “Ralph Reed’s latest attempt at political relevance,” held a conference in June bringing together Republicans leaders with evangelical activists. “Facing lingering tensions in his party, [Priebus] urged religious conservatives Saturday to support the GOP's plans to expand…The RNC's call for tolerance was not popular.”  Attendees preferred the message, "We lost because Obama won crushing, lopsided majorities among Americans who are single, poor, irreligious," according to Michael Medved, conservative radio talk show host.

Perhaps some evangelicals rejected the message, but it was embraced by Pope Francis with spectacularly favorable results. The adoration by even progressive websites and publications has not gone unnoticed.

GOP Eyes Pope Francis for Divine Inspiration” wrote Ron Fournier for the National Journal. “For top Republicans…the pontiff's headline-seizing efforts to reverse negative stereotypes of one of the world's oldest and most ossified institutions – almost exclusively through symbolic gestures – stands as an example for the GOP.” Fournier noted that the GOP “is viewed by many in the United States as insular, intolerant and lacking compassion for the poor while consorting with the rich,” while “the Catholic Church has the same ‘brand problem’ – and since his election in March, Pope Francis has ruthlessly tackled it.”



For his party to survive, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich believes the GOP needs to broaden its appeal beyond "the infamous 47 percent." Conservative activist Ralph Reed would rebrand the Republican Party as a force of compassion – feed the poor and clothe the naked. Republican strategist John Feehery says the GOP craves a populist leader – "a happy warrior."


"What Francis is doing," Reed said, "is rebalancing the Catholic Church's message to stress the pastoral mission of good works and service to people before getting to ideology. What he's not doing is jettisoning the Catholic doctrine. What about that is not a model for the Republican Party?”


Paul Ryan declared that he wants to fight poverty “with kinder, gentler policiesto encourage work and upward mobility.”



The Wisconsin Republican confided to a Post reporter that he has been “quietly visiting inner-city neighbourhoods”...and consulting with all the usual suspects in the capital's right-wing think tanks. He wants everyone to understand that he is seeking to figure out the problems faced by poor folks and how he can help.


As a 2016 presidential hopeful, Ryan evidently intends to rebrand himself as a “compassionate conservative” - the same propaganda meme deployed by former President George W. Bush and Karl Rove during the prelude to the 2000 campaign for president - at a moment when the Republican Party badly needs appealing new images and ideas  


More Frank Capra, Less Ayn Rand” as the “general prescription for Republican recovery” urged Michael Gerson in an opinion piece for the Washington Post. As co-founder of the congressional Tea Party Caucus and supporter of a government shut-down, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has solid tea party credentials. Yet, “setting aside the policy details, Lee makes strikingly sane observations about the Republican future. Populist energy is useful only when channeled into an appealing public agenda. That agenda must address economic conditions faced by the poor and working class. The obviousness of these points has not prevented many Republicans from missing them. Lee’s recognition of political reality has distinguished him.”



In a recent speech, Lee called for “a new, bold and heroic offensive in the war on poverty” - hardly the language of your average tea party rally….


Lee has been proselytizing for a “comprehensive anti-poverty, upward-mobility agenda” -making him one of the few Republican politicians talking in any sustained way about stalled economic mobility, stagnant middle-class wages and economic inequality. To this, Lee has added a dollop of populist “anti-cronyism,” proposing to simplify the tax code and rein in the big banks…..


“American conservatism, at its core, is about gratitude and cooperation, and trust, and above all, hope. It is also about inclusion. Successful political movements are about identifying converts, not heretics.” he recently told a Heritage Foundation audience.


Opportunity

In strategizing our defense against “kinder, gentler” populist-sounding Republican candidates, Democrats may find it useful to analyze our response to Pope Francis. Hope is a powerful emotion and words that appeal to our better angels are inspiring. How will we respond to the 2014 and 2016 messaging with the same subtexts?

Even though we knew that the leadership of the Catholic Church in the U.S. and internationally is an effective voice for the plutocracy and that Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was selected by these same leaders, why did we choose to ignore information about Bergoglio’s background and the choices he has made as pope? Why did we choose to believe slanted and carefully crafted news from the corporate media because the articles were telling us nice stuff?

Here’s what we remained so incurious about.

Cardinal Bergoglio was not popular in Argentina.

He has been criticized for his silence while he was provincial of the Argentine Jesuit province during the Dirty War and while other priests, nuns and bishops were being tortured and murdered for opposing military dictatorships not only in Argentina but in other Latin American countries as well. Not only helping the poor, but struggling with them to change the economic structures causing their poverty (i.e. Liberation Theology which Bergoglio has opposed to this day) was considered to be “leftist” activism and punished.

Much has already been written about whether Bergoglio could have done more to prevent his Jesuit subordinates, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics, who were working in the slums, from being arrested and tortured before their release. Very little has been written about Mónica María Candelaria Mignone and her friendswho also worked in shantytowns and were arrested along with the priests, tortured and murdered.

His official biography claims that Bergoglio “actually took major risks to save so-called subversives including giving his own Argentine identity papers to a wanted man so he could escape over the border to Brazil and sheltering many people inside church properties before they were safely delivered into exile,” but that this was unknown to the public.

When 18 officers of the dictatorship finally came to trial in 2010, Bergoglio was asked to testify about his own role including the kidnapping of the two priests. He took clerical privilege in order to not have to appear in court and the proceedings were held in his office. There has also been controversy about his testimony.

As Argentina pursues investigations aimed at exposing those responsible for the Dirty War, some activists are angry over the positions Bergoglio has taken in recent years. “Some say he’s beenmore concerned about preserving the Church’s imagethan providing evidence for Argentina’s many human rights trials.”

In July 2012, General Jorge Videla, dictator from 1976 to 1981 who recently died, was sentenced to 50 years imprisonment for orchestrating the theft of babies born in captivity to women subsequently murdered by their military captors. In a series of interviews conducted in 2010 but not published until after his sentencing, Videla explained in front of the video camera, "We had to remove a large set of people who could not be brought to justice nor shot…Each disappearance can be understood as masking, the concealment of a death.” Videla said this was necessary to install a market economy.

Videla also confirmed what Argentina’s leading investigative journalist and human rights activist, Horacio Verbitsky, wrote in his book, El Silencio (The Silence), was absolutely accurate. The papal nuncio, Pio Laghi and the Argentine hierarchs were accomplices in the Dirty War against the leftists.

After Videla’s interview was broadcast, Church leaders had little choicebut to respond. Under Bergoglio’s leadership, the Argentine bishops’ conference issued an apology. The statement, Los Obispos de la República Argentina, 104º Asamblea Plenaria, 9 de noviembre de 2012, “acknowledged the Church’s failure to protect its flock during the 1970s.”  

Argentines were angered when the bishops put the brutality of the military junta with a small and ineffective resistance on equal footing: “We know the suffering…because of state terrorism; as we know of the death and devastation caused by guerrilla violence.”

The episcopate tried to absolve the Church from any guilt: “We have the word and testimony of our elder brothers, the bishops who preceded us about whom we cannot know how much they personally knew of what was happening. They tried to do everything in their power for the good of all, according to their conscience and considered judgment….” As proof, the bishops offer statements by the bishops conference in 1972, 1977 and 1981 denouncing violence.

The bishops refer to Videla’s charges that prelates were complicit as being “completely divorced from the truth of what the bishops were involved in at that time."

Some Argentines responded that not only did the bishops wait far too long to apologize for the Church’s human rights failures, but they also objected to their equating the junta’s opposition with the dictatorship and their self-righteous and inaccurate defense of the Church. “They also have yet to identify those responsible for the many human rights violations that the Church was aware of at the time.”

The following month, in December 2012, a provincial tribunal denounced not only the “complicity” of the Church with the dictatorship but regretted that there also “remains…a reluctant attitude of Church authorities and even members of the clergy to solve the crimes now being judged." In their ruling, the three judges stated: "Surely the members of God's people, and the generality of Argentina society, expect from an institution of such importance as the Catholic Church more crisp and clear repudiations and who, in one way or another, allowed and consented to the commission of serious events such as those now judged.”  

Former judge Baltasar Garzon, advisor to the Human Rights Commission of the Chamber of Deputies of Argentina, said that if Pope Francis wants to cooperate with the victims of the Dirty War, he can open the Vatican archives on Argentina during that period.

In April, Estela de Carlotto, the president of a group known as the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who are searching for grandchildren who they think were born while their “disappeared” children were in military custody, delivered a letter to the pope in which she asked him to take “the necessary measures to help us in the search of almost 400 grandchildren who today still have not recovered their true identity.” Her letter has gone unanswered.

Latin Americans Warned Us

The day after the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as pope, Horatio Verbitsky wrote: “His biography is that of a conservative populist...adamant on doctrinal issues but with an openness to the world, especially toward the dispossessed masses….But at the same time he attempted to unify the opposition against the first government in many years which adopted a policy favorable to those groups.”

Ernesto Semán, a historian at New York University and former reporter for two Argentine newspapers, told us that the majority of Latin American nations are now governed by left-leaning parties but that the election of this “very conservative cardinal from the region might help bolster forces that are opposed to continuing this enormous change that’s occurring in Latin America.” Bergoglio was a strong opponent of the liberal progressive administrations of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner during “a decade in which Argentina lived the largest and fastest reduction of poverty and inequality.”  

Theologian and defrocked priest because he supported same-sex marriage in Argentina, Nicolás Alessio said the election of Bergoglio as “is a masterstroke of Vatican diplomacy. The Catholic Church, about to sink between the financial and sexual scandals, urgently needed another ‘image’ in the face of public opinion in the world and more so in Latin America. The profile of Benedict XVI, a German, hard, rigid, an Inquisitor, failed to float the ‘barque of Peter,’” explained Alessio. “In Argentina and on the continent, the right-wing sectors, both political and religious, will be strengthened.” the theologian stated.

Andrea D’Atri, founder of Bread and Roses, an Argentine human rights group, agrees that, “In Argentina, his naming as pope has been received with the warmest enthusiasm by the rightist opposition.”

Brazilian theologian, Ivone Gebara, wrote that what Bergoglio intends “for the poor” is “paternalistic handouts.”



To go out into the streets and give food to the poor and pray with prisoners is somewhat humanitarian, but it does not solve the problem of social exclusion that afflicts many of the world’s countries.


Nor does it solve the problem of governments which create poverty and injustice. In this light it becomes clear that his election was, beyond doubt, part of a geopolitical offensive involving competing interests and a balance of forces within the Catholic world.


The See of Peter and the Vatican State are positioning their pieces in the world game of chess in order to empower political projects championed by the North and its allies in the South. In a certain sense, the South is being co-opted by the North. A Church leader who comes from the South will help balance the forces in the world chess game, which have been displaced a good deal in recent years by left-leaning governments in Latin America and by the struggles of many movements -- among them Latin America's feminist movements, whose demands annoy the Vatican


.


Even a Vatican reporter warned against “the pseudo-Franciscan and pauperist mythology that in these days so many are applying to the new pope [where] imagination runs to a Church that would renounce power, structures, and wealth and make itself purely spiritual.”

American Prelates Successfully Campaigned for Their Candidate

Fully aware of Bergoglio’s background, the American cardinals and their media experts focused the pre-conclave topics and discussions in exactly the manner favoring the Argentine’s election. More than any other national episcopate, they have the funding, know-how and experience to launch a subtle yet persuasive campaign.  

Cardinal Dolan said it helps to have a popular pope “’because the reputation and the credibility of the Church are much higher now…. I've said before that we bishops lack a lot of credibility in many areas, and it's clear that the goodwill Francis enjoys right now makes things easier for bishops’to move the ball on many fronts.”

Pope Francis Appoints Plutocrats

As already mentioned, Cardinal Rodriquez Maradiaga is Opus Dei and three other cardinals that we know of on the pope’s “group of eight” advisers also are close to the “The Work”: Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, Australian Cardinal George Pell and German Cardinal Reinhard Marx.

Francis put a Spanish Opus Dei bishop as head of a commission given special authority to collect confidential information about the Vatican Bank. Included on this commission is Mary Ann Glendon, token female on the board of a dozen or more neocon think tanks, publications and foundations. The pope named a Spanish Opus Dei monsignor as coordinator of another financial oversight commission and a Legion of Christ bishop has head of the government of the Vatican City State. The status of Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of Columbus, grows in proportion to the massive funding received from his group.

The pope has brought in outside consultants McKinsey & Co., the Promontory Group and Ernst and Young – and not Interpol forensic accountants – to help “manage” financial affairs. Most importantly, he set up Banco Santander, an international financial giant with ties to Opus Dei as a “shadow” bank while he “cleans up” the image of the rest.

Francis as a World Leader

German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a special trip to the Vatican to receive a blessing from the man Forbes named the “4th Most Powerful Person in the World” before her re-election in September. Although Pres. Assad has been committing atrocities against the Syrian people since the beginning of his papacy, Francis decided to hold a “prayer vigil for peace” in St. Peter’s Square only after Pres. Obama proposed a limited airstrike against military targets. And then Bergoglio met with Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu to position himself as an alternative world power in the Middle East.

Sex Abuse

The Vatican announced the formation of another commission, this one on clerical sex abuse, immediately after the pope refused to give a United Nations panel the information it requested on the subject. As the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests responded:



These crimes and cover ups have gone on for centuries quietly and decades publicly. Only decisive action can help, not more studies and committees and promises. No institution can police itself, especially not an ancient, secretive, rigid, all-male monarchy….Like his predecessors, the pope knows precisely what must be done to protect kids and expose the truth. Like his predecessors, he lacks the strength of character to do it. Clergy sex crimes should be dealt with by secular authorities. And more could be done if the pope punished bishops who conceal these crimes and ordered bishops to publicly disclose their child molesting clerics.


In fact, I inferred from the lack of the normal enthusiasm in all-things-Francis in the mainstream media on reporting the new commission that even they had a difficult time treating Pope Francis’ latest headline as something other than another PR gesture.

And unless Democrats can come up with a way to cut through and expose empty rhetoric and the best public relations we’ve even seen, we can start now wondering how this country or our world can survive another Bush-like administration.

_____

Footnote about the bishops' "charity": Figuring out what the U.S. bishops actually contribute to charity is an inexact process since no total figures are available. So I looked at the Boston archdiocese financial statement since Cardinal O’Malley is the only American on Pope Francis’ “G8” group of cardinal/advisers. (Keep in mind, however, that auditors can only report on the information given to them. Only forensic auditors look for what’s not been revealed by the principal.) I will give all the figures, unless otherwise noted, in millions because you will see the results are so conclusive that lack of detail isn’t going to matter.

According to the 2012 Archdiocese of Boston financial report, Catholic Charities spent $31m on program services. Close to $20m, or 62.3% (I didn’t round off in figuring percentages), came from government grants. Cardinal O’Malley contributed approx. $820,000 or 2.6 %.

I did not even try to find financial reports for 195 (arch)dioceses in the U.S., but rather extrapolated based on the number of Boston Catholics as a percentage of the total. The only source I could find by diocesan population lists 2,077,487 Boston Catholics as of 2004. The total number of Catholics in the U.S. according to the Official Catholic Directory  was 64.8m in 2005, so Boston has 3% of the total.

Using this admittedly very rough figure, we’ll assume that if Boston spent $31m on charity, then the national total for all dioceses would be $1030m of which $605m came from the government and $2.72m from the bishops.

The U.S. bishops also have a national umbrella organization, Catholic Charities USA. In 2012, it spent $3.892m in program services of which $2.993m came from the government. So $2.72m plus $89.9M ($3.892m minus $2.993) is the total annual charitable giving of the U.S. episcopate - $92.6m.

The National Center for Charitable Statistics researchers tallied up expenditures by nonprofits in the broad category of "human services," which includes nutrition, employment assistance, legal aid, housing, disaster relief and youth development. In 2010, the most recent year available, they came up with total expenditures of $168 billion in that category. So the Catholic bishops contribute about .06% to total nonprofit expenditures in the U.S.

(Unlike the above cited source, I omitted such charities as Boys Town and Covenant House because they are not funded or controlled by the bishops nor are charities at the parish level. In other words, if the Vatican and bishops ceased to exist, all of these charities would continue as they are.)

Every time I have brought up this subject in previous diaries I have had to make assurances that yes, Catholics are generous; yes, Catholics do numerous good works. I am, however, trying to make the point that the next time a Catholic prelate threatens to close his charities if this nation doesn’t agree to limit women and gay rights, we can with confidence tell him to stick it.

 






.


Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.