Bring a conservative Republican I firmly believe that free-market capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty and into a decent life than any economic arrangement in history. I am also a skeptic (not necessarily a denier) on climate change, there being as many scientists with Doctorates and fancy titles who say climate change isn’t happening, and even if it was, mankind isn’t causing it, as there are scientist with Doctorates and fancy titles who say California will be underwater in three years.
And finally, while I sympathize with the plight of those millions of people fleeing their homelands, especially in the Middle East and Latin America, seeking a better life in western countries such as ours, their sheer numbers make them difficult to assimilate and hamper a host nation’s ability to care for its own unfortunate citizens. Those large numbers also make it difficult to conduct effective backgrounds checks, and many of these would-be immigrants are criminals and terrorists. Also ignored are those countless immigrants patiently waiting their turn to enter western countries legally.
Which I bring up because in his recent visit to America Pope Francis specifically criticized capitalism, advocated a global fight against climate change, and urged western nations to take in the many millions of immigrants now deluging the West. Curiously, he never mentioned such nations as Syria and Cuba, whose heinous human rights violations are causing people to seek safe haven in other lands.
But it got me thinking. What if our next president — it won’t be this one — decided to visit Rome with his or her own laundry list of lecture points with respect to the Vatican?
For starters, what if the president told Vatican leaders that the church’s insistence on internally handling the longstanding sexual abuse scandal regarding priests and young boys leaves it open to charges of bias at best and a cover-up at worst.
What if the president told a huge crowd in St. Peter’s Square that refusing to allow women priests in this day and age is blatant sex discrimination, and ignores the fact that many women were companions of Jesus, who considered women his equal? What if the president pointed out that Catholic dioceses have, in total, approximately 200 million acres of land that could be freed up to settle those millions of desperate immigrants? What if the president also pointed out that the Vatican Bank engages in capitalist practices, and on several occasions has abused them.
If our next president did those things would he or she be accused of speaking about things in which he or she had no real expertise and therefore should leave to more knowledgeable people? Probably. So couldn’t the same thing be said about Pope Francis?
