UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture
By Phil Lawler | March 18, 2013
The election of Pope Francis produced an explosion of media commentary, and I cannot pretend that I have read more than a small portion of the editorials that appeared immediately after the historic choice of a Pontiff from the New World. But in the past few a few commentaries have struck me as particular worthwhile:
•Mary Anastasia O’Grady, who covers Latin America for the Wall Street Journal, looks Behind the Campaign to Smear the Pope. Alert readers may have noticed that nearly all the stories about the alleged failure of Cardinal Bergoglio to oppose the military dictatorship in Argentina cite a single journalist: Horacio Verbitsky, a former member of the Montoneros guerillas who fought that regime, now a left-wing journalist. More balanced witnesses testify in the Pope’s favor. For example, 1980 Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel says that “there were bishops that were complicit with the dictatorship, but Bergoglio, no.” One opponent of the regime reports that while she was in hiding, she “ate with Bergoglio.” The bitter opponents of the Pope, O’Grady reports, are “those trying to turn Argentina into the next Venezuela.”
•Ross Douthat of the New York Times wonders whether Pope Francis is What the Church Needs Now. The new Pope commands respect for his simplicity, humility, and integrity, Douthat writes. That is particularly important at a time when so many people have ceased to respect the beliefs that the Church teaches. Pope Francis insists that God wants something from us, in contrast to the popular culture that would “dismiss the idea that the divine could possibly want anything for us except for what we already want for ourselves.”
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