THIS MOST UNHAPPY BOOK REPORT ON "THE POLITICAL POPE" # 1

THIS MOST UNHAPPY BOOK REPORT ON "THE POLITICAL POPE" # 1

         IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP:W.W.W.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - TUES. MAR 13/18

PREFACE:

    This is the first in a series of direct excerpts from the book by George Neumayr titled "The Political Pope" - How Pope Francis is delighting the Liberal Left and Abandoning Conservatives, Center Street, New York, Nashville, 2017.

Chapter One - The Pope They Have Been Waiting For 1-4

"You must straighten out your position with the Church," Pope John Paul II shouted at a cowering Ernesto Cardenal, a Catholic priest turned Marxist activist. In violation of his religious vows, Cardenal had joined the communist Sandinista Government in Nicaragua, and Pope John Paul II was scolding him before the cameras of the entire world... So strong were Pope John Paul II's anti-communist credentials and so effective was his anti-Soviet advocacy that Kremlin leaders, according to historians, hired a Turkish gunman to assassinate him. That attempt failed, and Pope John Paul II continued to denounce the Soviets until their empire crumbled in 1991.

Pope Joseph Ratzinger also opposed communism fiercely. After serving as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger succeeded John Paul II in 2005 and took as his papal name Benedict XVI. In hid role as doctrinal guardian of the Church, Ratzinger repeatedly warned the faithful to reject "liberation theology," a Marxist-inspired ideology disguised as a concern for the poor and the Soviet Union's KGB spies had helped smuggle into Latin America's Catholic Church in the 1950s.

"The movement was born in the KGB. and it had a KGB-invented name: liberation theology," according to Ion Mihai Pacepa, who served as a spymaster for Romania's secret police in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Soviets had long eyed the Catholic Church for infiltration. In the 1950s, Bella Dodd, the former head of the Soviet-controlled Communist Party of America, testified before the U.S. Congress that communists occupied some of the "highest places" in the Catholic Church. "We put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within," she said. "The idea was for these men to be ordained, and then climb the ladder of influence and authority as monsignors and bishops." As an active party member, Dodd said that she knew of "four cardinals within the Vatican who were working for us... {Update: Bella Dodd converted to Catholicism and had a possible influence on Blessed Fulton Sheen.}

"In the 1950s and 1960s, most Latin American were poor, religious peasants who had accepted the status quo, and {Soviet Premier Nikita} Khrushchev was confidant they could be converted to communism through the judicious manipulation of religion," he said....

Against this historical backdrop, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI viewed the spread of liberation theology in Latin America with alarm.... Pope Benedict XVI called liberation theology a singular heresy. He argued that it deceives the faithful by concealing "Marxist dialectics" within seemingly harmless advocacy for the lower classes.... and disputed the claim of many churchmen that Christianity could purify the Marxist elements of socialist thought.

How shockingly different statements from the Holy See sound today under Pope Francis. The first Latin American pope in Church history, Jorge Mario Bergoglio has generated headlines not for scolding Marxists but for supporting them, not for rebuking liberation theologians but for honoring them. ... Now media outlets eagerly run stories about Pope Francis sympathy for it. "Liberation Theology Rehabilitation Continues at Vatican," ran a characteristic headline on a story from Associated Press.

In one of first major interviews, Pope Francis said that liberation theologians have a "high concept of humanity." A few months after he became pope on March 13, 2013, Francis welcomed the founding father of liberation theology, the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez as an honored guest.

Gutierrez had disappeared from high ecclesiastical circles under Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI after making a Marxist appeal for " effective participation in the struggle which the exploited classes have undertaken against their oppressors." George H. Kubeck