UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody
Posted on April 12, 2016 by Betty Clermont
An Italian news agency specializing in Vatican affairs reported yesterday that “the senator, after the controversy, may terminate the visit and return at a better time.” The “controversy” refers to “interference (by the Vatican) in the US presidential campaign, especially a few days of the primary important in New York State.”
“For some analysts, Sander’s visit to the Vatican, without being received by the Holy Father, may damage his image.” Vatican spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi, had made it clear “that His Holiness doesn’t plan to give the senator an audience.” In fact, other than Pres. Obama, Pope Francis has never met in private with any US Democrat.
If Bernie Sanders does cancel his visit, this should be wonderful news for progressives.
Jews
Pope Francis met with the leader of an anti-Semitic group on April 1. “Hard-core, anti-Semitic” is how the Southern Poverty Law Center described the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). The Simon Wiesenthal Center named SSPX as influential within the French far-right, anti-Semitic party. The SSPX is a priestly society which currently has no canonical status in the Church ever since its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, ordained bishops without the consent of Pope John Paul II. Yet Pope Francis initiated a process of “full reconciliation” with the SSPX in 2013.
In his first act as pontiff, Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras as head of his new “Council of Cardinals.” In addition to supporting the 2009 military coup against the constitutionally-elected and progressive against Pres. Manuel Zelaya, Rodriguez Maradiaga was referred to as a “notorious anti-Semite” by Alan M. Dershowitz.
Women
“Abortion is to throw someone out in order to save another. That’s what the Mafia does,” Pope Francis said during his Feb. 16 in-flight interview. In his much-touted encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si, Pope Francis asked, “How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties?”
On the topic of birth control in Laudato Si: “Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking of how the world can be different, some can only propose a reduction in the birth rate,” the pope wrote. He also denounced international organizations for making economic assistance to developing countries “contingent on certain policies of ‘reproductive health.’”
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