UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
* With some help, it appears, from an ongoing right wing influenced media push, Pope Francis, according to polls, is beginning 2015 with a very positive public image worldwide. Also, he has twice as many Republican fans as Democratic fans in the USA (although many less than likely 2016 US Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, with whom the pope will likely clash in 2015).
Please see here:
* [Pew Research]
* [Gallup]
* Meanwhile, the editors at the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) seemingly struggled to name the pope, barely, as Person of the Year after twenty one months. NCR conceded that Francis’ abuse commission has yet to act and that he was tone deaf on women, while NCR also apparently skipped over Francis’ reported failure so far even to appoint independent auditors for the Vatican’s own significant financial operations and assets. Other than on children and women and some financial matters, the pope seems to be doing great for some of NCR’s editors. Hello? Perhaps NCR’s multi-million dollar right wing foundation donor nudged a bit here? Will we ever really know?
* Will Pope Francis’ high positive public polling be maintained in 2015? That is very unlikely, for some of the reasons discussed below. Child abuse scandal investigations, especially in Australia, the UK, the Dominican Republic and the USA (e.g., in Minneapolis) and elsewhere will likely boil over in 2015. The October Final Synod on the Family on its current trajectory will likely leave many women, children, couples, gay folks, divorced Catholics and many others in a “merciless lurch”. Significantly, on his present path, Francis will after his October Synod likely be “flushed out” on changing sexual morality teachings. Thereafter, his folksy public relations spin will probably lose much of its appeal and seem even more contrived, as reality raises its truthful head.
* Pope Francis has had a long ‘honeymoon period” with Catholics. He followed “bad acts” — two failed popes. He could only “go up in the polls”. For almost two years, his folksy rhetoric, winning smile, symbolic gestures and vague promises have offered faint hope for many of the millions of disgusted, even despairing, Catholics whom he inherited upon his election in early 2013.
* Nevertheless, after nearly two years with much spin and sparse results, the “era of good feelings’” and media adulation for this unexpected pope clearly seems to have crested. The widely read and respected Financial Times (FT) recently even labeled the Vatican after almost two years under Francis as “criminally slow” on curtailing child abuse. FT also viewed the initial Synod on the Family as having been a “victory for conservatives” ! The FT then even added, “Yet untold millions of Catholics have drifted away from the Church not just because of that but because its obsession with personal morality is so at variance with the lives they live. {My emphasis}
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