UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
Pope Francis’ plan from Day One is now clear. His plan has been (1) to secure the pope’s tight control over Vatican finances with his own management team, (2) to distract from the Vatican’s sexual and financial scandals with (A) farcical Synods, (B) a “go slow and lightly” abuse commission, (C) empty platitudes about the poor, capitalism and climate change, and (D) media hyped but pointless papal trips, and (3) to firm up political alliances, especially with a powerful new US president, preferably Jeb Bush, who can be expected to fund and protect Vatican interests as his brother and father did so well.
Since the Final Synod in less than five months will likely expose the pope as an “all talk, no action” failed leader, the pope needs more diversions until the all important US elections in November of next year. The meaningless climate change encyclical will serve as a main interim diversion until then, even though it will likely absurdly avoid discussing the harm of the papal denial of women’s choices to regulate their own family’s size. Repealing the papal contraception ban is the one concrete step the pope has the power to take, but he won’t to protect his claim to infallibility by backing two earlier popes’ reckless contraception bans. And more Catholic babies mean more Catholic voters and donors. It is a good deal for Catholic prelates if Catholics continue to tolerate it. But see my Pope Facing Revolts In USA, Germany & Chile, and What Do We Now Know About The Real Goal Of Pope Francis? .
The climate encyclical will also allow the pope to dare to address the UN after two UN committees have, in effect, condemned the Vatican’s failure to curtail sufficiently the rape and other sexual abuse of children by priests protected by unaccountable bishops.
Popes for over 1,500 years until the mid-19th century have made deals directly with political leaders — popes exchanged their influence over docile and uneducated Catholics worldwide in exchange for money and protection from political leaders. The democratic revolutions, the spread of education and the rise of mass media have forced popes to change their approach.
Popes beginning in 1870 claimed the supernatural power of infallibility, reinforced by mind control of Catholics beginning at their First Confession at seven years old and by a claimed monopoly on the essential Eucharist and the clerics who exchanged it for weekly donations. The prior two popes solidified this 1870 power grab with a top down and self serving Canon Law system and a Catechism that subordinated the Gospel message to papal power politics.
Papal power has now become dependent on popes’ ability to deliver to national political leaders an expanding population of Catholic voters as directed by papal wizards and their subordinate prelates and other clerics. Bans on family planning had produced an increasing number of Catholic voters, often impoverished by excessive family size, who often swallowed the papal propaganda unaware mostly of what was really happening. Educational access and scandal revelations in a 24/7 media and internet age are rapidly undercutting the traditional papal power base. Pope Francis is running out of time as the wizard’s curtain is lifted almost daily.
What modern popes learned, and Pope Francis knows, is that the papal ability to draw out voters, especially dogmatic fundamentalists and select groups like US Latinos, is the key to popes’ getting governmental subsidies and protection from prosecutions and interference related to Church scandals. This pattern is currently playing out in the pope’s politically most important area, the USA .
Turnout, turnout, turnout of targeted voters is the key, as Sarah Posner shows here, Five Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Overthink the New Pew … . Posner points out, for example, that the percentage of white evangelicals who voted in the 2014 US midterm election outstripped their share of the population as a whole. Political organizing and turnout, she shows, matter far more than numbers. It was no coincidence Pope Francis and his US subordinates targeted these voters with anti-gay, anti-contraception/abortion and similar crusades, that continue with a view towards next year’s US presidential elections. Francis has enhanced these crusades now with a call for anti-radical Islam crusade, all parallel to the “low tax” right wing US Republican billionaire backers’ playbook. The pope. it appears, talks about the poor often, but usually works for the wealthy, no?
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