# 22 OF 45 - THIS UNHAPPY BOOK REPORT ON "THE POLITICAL POPE:!

# 22 OF 45 - THIS UNHAPPY BOOK REPORT ON "THE POLITICAL POPE"!

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW/CINOPSBEGONE.BLOGSPOT.COM - WED. AUG. 21/19

Chapter Eight - The Pacifist Pope - p. 133-140

    "The Church has long supported the morality of the death penalty, the "just war doctrine," and resistance to tyrants. ... Francis is the first pope to flirt seriously with these claims. He supports a pacificism fashionable in European liberal circles and leftist Latin American ones.... His musings on pacificism have been "silly," says a former high-making Church official interviewed for this book. "He has been cursed by him by his background....

   
 'War is always a defeat for humanity," he has said categorically. Gone are the careful distinctions between just and unjust wars made by his predecessors.

The Pope Opposes Life Imprisonment:

    Some opponents of the death penalty have expressed unease about the pope's opposition to life imprisonment... He has become a crusader for "prisoners' rights," casting lifetime imprisonment as a "form of torture" and a "hidden death penalty." ... The Church has long justified the death penalty on the grounds of "retributive justice." But Pope Francis insists on describing retributive justice as "vengeance." ... This view contradicts the constant teaching of the Church on this issue. The late 

Cardinal Avery Dulles did a study of this question and found that the Church "never" morally opposed the death penalty...

Just as the pope casually equates capitalism with greed, so he equates weaponry with blind violence.... That weapons protect innocent people from the violent rarely figures into his analysis...Following his lead, the U.S.A bishops have backed President Obama's gun control proposals. "It is time to heed the words of Pope Francis and make meaningful and swift action to address violence in our society. We must band together to call for gun-control legislation," Chicago archbishop (now Cardinal) Blase Cupich wrote.

All Wars Are Unjust?

In fact, it is baldly heretical, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that "it sometimes becomes necessary  to use force to obtain the end of justice. This is the right, and the duty, of those who have responsibilities for others, such as civil leaders and police forces."

Coddling Dictators:

  
  The pacifism of this pontificate is also seen in its diplomacy, which has been marked by the coddling of communist dictators and excuse-making for Islamic radicals. In 2015, Pope Francis perplexed many by rolling out the red carpet for Raul Castro, the murderous leader of Cuba's communist regime.

    "The warmth and hospitality that Pope Francis showed to Raul Castro at the Vatican last week has baffled many Catholics - and for good reason. The dictator went to Rome for a PR boost. The pontiff obliged him," wrote Mary Anastasias O'Grady in the Wall Street Journal.

   
 "The Holy Father is a native of 20th-century Argentina, ideologically defined by nationalism, socialism, corporatism and anti-Americanism. It wouldn't be surprising to learn that this influences his views toward the U.S. and the island 90 miles from its shores.

    O'Grady argues that the pope's much-ballyhooed role as a "broker" in hastening normalized relations between the United States and Cuba is a boon not to dissidents but to the Castro brothers, who desperately needed the U.S. embargo lifted in order to prolong their regime.

"When the Cuban dictatorship lost its Soviet sugar daddy in the early 1990s, it nearly crumbled.... As Venezuelan oil subsidies to Havana slowed, the rotting system teetered on the edge of collapse," she wrote. "It was an opportunity for the Church to show solidarity with the powerless Cuban people - or least stand back. Instead the Vatican stepped in to help the Castros.

"In December we learned that Pope Francis brokered the Obama-Castro thaw, which while unlikely to spur improvements in human rights is already generating interest in investing with the military government."

George H. Kubeck, "This information is devastating! There is something seriously wrong politically with the Vatican."