A lengthy record is emerging, but for simplicity's sake, we'll stick to just the past few months. In June, the Pope jumped on the ill-informed, 'settled science' climate change bandwagon. Last week, the Vatican simultaneously welcomed the Iran nuke deal, while singling out the disarmament of Israel's nuclear defenses. Then over the weekend, on the way to America, Pope Francis rubs elbows with the Castros? Wow. John Paul II is turning in his grave...
But that's only the warm up. For Pope Francis's first visit to the United States, our Occupier-in-Chief has invited a pro-abortion nun, a gay Episcopal bishop, and LGBT ‘Catholic’ activists! It sounds like the beginning of a joke, and perhaps that's what this president is making of it. I mean, his tenure has fully displayed his disdain for faithful Christianity. So why is this Pope going along?DailyBeast: His anti-Communist Cold War crusade shaped the late saint’s papacy. The first Latin American pope has very different views. And in Cuba, it shows.
The ripped corner of a faded banner from Pope John Paul II’s 1998 visit to Cuba hangs from a crumbling stone wall in Old Havana. Whether someone hung it anew to herald the visit of Pope Francis this weekend or if it has truly stood the test of time is anyone’s guess, but there is little question that the two papal visits are very different, and the earlier one feels as if it’s from a very distant past.
When John Paul II visited this strange and wonderful island 17 years ago, he kissed a tray of Cuban soil held up by children at his airport ceremony and held Fidel Castro at arm’s length telling him in no uncertain terms that he was there to pray that Cuba would become a land of “freedom, mutual trust, social justice and lasting peace.” It was a kind of victory lap for the great Cold War crusader against Communism, given credit by many for vanquishing Fidel’s sponsors in the by-then quite defunct Soviet Union.
The elder Castro was just as rigid, using his time at the podium to say Cuba was fine just the way it was, thank you. “We choose a thousand deaths rather than abdicate our convictions,” he told John Paul as a way of greeting.
Nothing could be more different from the welcoming ceremony when Francis landed here on Saturday night, not least because Pope Francis shares many of the convictions that Fidel and Raul officially say they stand for: identifying with the poor, calling for greater income equality.
On Friday evening, Francie and Fidel’s younger brother, Cuban President Raul Castro, greeted each other like old friends, embracing in such a warm way one can almost imagine them sitting down over a glass of rum (and a cigar?) in the old city center like old compañeros de lucha, comrades in the struggle.
Uh, ya think?! Then say something, El Papa! I don't suspect anything will be said, though. This has rapidly become a result of the current Vatican's liberal lean towards so-called tolerance and inclusion. That can be no more dismissed as the Obama White House's role-reversal treatment of allies and enemies...WaPo: THE VATICAN has raised objections to a few of the guests invited to the White House arrival ceremony [this] week for Pope Francis. The Wall Street Journal reported that the guests include transgender activists, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop and a nun who criticizes church policies on abortion and euthanasia. The Vatican worries that photos taken with the pope might be used to suggest his endorsement of activities he in fact disapproves of.
What struck us as we read about this controversy is the contrast between the administration’s apparent decision to risk a bit of rudeness in the case of the pope and its overwhelming deference to foreign dictators when similar issues arise. When Secretary of State John F. Kerry traveled to Havana to reopen the U.S. Embassy recently, he painstakingly excluded from the guest list any democrat, dissident or member of civil society who might offend the Castro brothers.A Rush caller chimed in today, and seemed to hit both targets in terms of acutely describing Pope Francis's politics and President Obama's religion...
And when Chinese President Xi Jinping comes to the White House next week, shortly after the pope leaves town, it’s a safe bet that he won’t have to risk being photographed with anyone of whom he disapproves. Chen Guangcheng, the courageous blind lawyer, for example, lives nearby in exile, but he probably won’t be at the state dinner. Neither will Falun Gong activists, democracy advocates or anyone else who might, well, give offense.
"The Pope is Peronista...Peronism is a fungible combination of kleptocracy, fascism and cult of personality...he ascribes to that view. He didn't reject it! The Pope from Poland grew up with communism, and he rejected it. And the President worships in the mirror...and the only real question about his religion is, is there a reflection?"
The accuracy is unmistakable. And if this isn't an an antithetical trifecta to the Reagan/Thatcher/John Paul alliance that brought down an Evil Empire and lifted up a renewal in worldwide Faith, then I don't know what is!
Brethren, have we not been warned so many times against false teachings and worldliness? I pray that these presidents and this pope discover Truth.
Related links: RUSH: When Will Obama Apologize To Christians In Middle East For Doing Next To Nothing?
A politician, a pope and a president
ADDENDUM: Get ready, because the Pope's arrival will commence a week of trashing capitalism. This from the mind of Thomas Sowell, through the lips of El Rushbo...
"Thomas Sowell has a column today about the pope and his arrival, but primary it's about the pope's message. I have highlighted three things that Sowell has written here because they're brilliant. They take issue with the pope and his belief that the objective for all of humanity is to end poverty. And of course the pope believes that we've all done a rotten, horrible job of it, and that governments need to get bigger and they need to become populated with more and more compassionate people to find ways to get rid of poverty.Related links: THE LEFT HAS ITS POPE
And of course Thomas Sowell points out that there's one way to get rid of poverty. But let me read to you what he wrote 'cause it's really, really good, folks.
"Any serious look at the history of human beings over the millennia," let's say from the beginning of time "-- Any serious look at the history of human beings over the millennia shows that the species began in poverty. It is not poverty, but prosperity, that needs explaining. Poverty is automatic." Poverty is the natural state. I'll tell you the reason I like this is because it goes right at my definition of American exceptionalism, which is that since the beginning of time the existence for most of the world's human beings has been bondage, tyranny, poverty, dictatorship. It certainly has not been liberty. It has not been freedom. Not until the United States came along. And that's not an exaggeration. ...
But what's happened over the course of the years, it is the quest for prosperity has become the reason they say people are in poverty. And that's why liberalism, socialism, communism, seeks to punish achievement, because achievement is deemed to be the reason people are the poverty. Therefore, we need to take from those people that succeeded because they really are just lucky winners of life's poverty. So we must take from them what is not fairly theirs and give it to some big entity over here, either the government or now Bono and let him distribute it and make things fair.
Another pull quote from the Thomas Sowell piece. "Any serious look at the history of human beings over the millennia shows that the species began in poverty." And again it's prosperity that needs explaining. Poverty is automatic. "As distinguished economic historian David S. Landes put it, 'The world has never been a level playing field.'" Of course, right there the left would stop and scream, "That's right, that's right, and that's why nothing has ever been fair, and that's why we must make sure that everybody has a equal chance of a fair playing field." That's the excuse for liberalism, that it somehow is social justice, that it equalizes everybody. False premise, can't be done.
But here's the question, folks. "But which has a better track record of helping the less fortunate -- fighting for a bigger slice of the economic pie, or producing a bigger pie?" Let me ask that question again, 'cause I think it and its answer are profound. Which has a better track record of helping the poor: fighting for a bigger slice of the economic pie or producing a bigger pie, growing the pie, or keeping a finite-size pie and have everybody fighting for a bigger piece of it, zero-sum game?
Yep, the pie is only so big. It's never gonna get any bigger. What we need is a referee to make sure that the pieces of the pie are parceled out fairly. That's why we need a great compassionate person like Obama or the pope to make sure that the pieces of the pie are not extraordinarily large for the undeserving and microscopically small for the truly deserving. And this also includes the idea that there is virtue in poverty and sin in success, and that's dangerous. That is really, really dangerous if you ask me, but that's where we are in the evolution of things today. ...
It is not poverty that needs explaining. We don't need any experts to come along and tell us what poverty is. What needs to be explained is prosperity. Poverty's automatic. Prosperity requires many things, none of which is equally distributed around the world or even within a given society. Prosperity does not have equal distribution. Never has. And this is why it's such a juicy target. Prosperity is deemed to be ultimately unfair because it isn't for everybody. But it is part of a growing pie. You can be prosperous for five years and lose it all, be back in poverty. It's up to you. Prosperity requires a lot of things. Prosperity does not require equal distribution around the world or even within a given society because it isn't possible.
I just wanted to share that with you because for the next five days you are going to hear nothing anywhere remotely like that. You're going to be hearing, you're gonna be deluged with how unfair your country is, how unfeeling. You're going to be told how your country isn't doing enough, hasn't done enough, you aren't doing enough. You might hear how your country and you are selfish. You might even hear how your country has taken things that it does not deserve and are not its own from other parts around the world. You're gonna hear all kinds of things the next four or five days to try to convince you how unjust, socially unjust your country is."
