Pope Should Put Own House in Order

By Tom Joyce
Mount Airy News
February 20, 2016

https://mtairynews.com/opinion/38056/pope-should-put-own-house-in-order

Tom Joyce

I’ve made a habit of not trashing anyone’s religion, whether it’s a Southern Baptist, Northern Baptist, Western Baptist, Eastern Baptist, Buddhist or atheist who’s involved and, yes, I’ll even include Methodists in the mix.

As I see it, people’s choice of faith, or none at all, is much like their politics — a personal decision based on their own beliefs, influences and life experiences.

All that being said, I do have problems sometimes with how the Catholic church operates, and was reminded of that once again this week as Pope Francis made his holier-than-thou sojourn through Mexico.

Francis has been one of the more outspoken popes on worldwide issues since ascending to the papacy in 2013. But interestingly, this has been limited to criticism of others by the pope while at the same time not tackling ongoing problems in the Catholic church such as pedophile priests who have sexually abused minors, and its archaic position on birth control.

He has gone around lecturing industrialized nations about their role in global warming, which the jury is still out on in many people’s minds as far as its severity. Yet no one can dispute that child molestation is a major problem in today’s world, and it’s one the Catholic church has been woefully derelict in addressing within its own ranks.

The pope’s call last year for action on climate change seemed well-intended enough. But in addition to the fact scientific debates continue to surround this issue, a wholesale shift to green energy among those who depend on gas-powered vehicles and fossil fuels for survival is unrealistic at this time for economic and other reasons.

Not many average consumers can afford to shell out $35,000 to $40,000 for an electric car, you know.

I attributed the pope’s stance on climate change to the fact that here’s a guy who lives in a protective cocoon (the Vatican), who doesn’t understand how people function day to day in the Real World, and sort of gave him a pass.

However, Francis really had me bristling this week during his visit to Mexico, where he once again displayed a Pollyanna naivety toward Real World issues.

There he was, expressing support for open borders — specifically that between the U.S. and Mexico where lax enforcement has led to 30 million illegals in this country by some estimates, and a laundry list of accompanying problems.

Pope Francis specifically criticized Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s support for building a wall between the two nations, calling it “not Christian.”

Remember, here is a man who lives in the Vatican City, an enclave totally surrounded by Rome. No cases of rambunctious Italians overrunning the Vatican have been reported, much less Mexican illegals, children wandering in from Central American countries or Syrian refugees.

Nor are jobs of Vatican City residents being hijacked by illegals who also are taking advantage of social services, educational and other benefits.

So campaigning for open borders is easy for the pope to recommend to others, whenever he has the Gendarmerie Corps at his own disposal to maintain border control for the Vatican City. Hmm.

And this just in: the Catholic church, despite the pope trying to raise awareness of various social concerns and attacking the usual handy targets, has yet to adequately address its own pedophile issue.

This has been the biggest scandal in the church in the past century, and it seems to me that Pope Francis has continued a sorry legacy of failing to eliminate the problem. That has included not having a true zero-tolerance policy toward priests exposed as molesters, which is being undermined by such things as discouraging other church leaders from reporting priests’ actions to police.

Notifying the authorities is something teachers and others in society are legally required to do — instead the Catholic hierarchy apparently believes that is the responsibility of victims and families rather than anyone inside the church

Francis has even gone so far as to promote a bishop in Chile who was accused by abuse victims of covering up for a pedophile priest.

On another sex-related topic, the pope also has refused to address the reality of the population spiraling out of control on a planet with limited resources, which is especially a problem in African and other nations gripped by famine.

Once again, it’s easy for the pope to staunchly forbid contraception in Third World countries he doesn’t live in — thus leading to even more mouths to feed.

He should keep his own mouth shut.

Tom Joyce may be reached at 336-415-4693336-415-4693 or on Twitter @Me_Reporter.