Rush Limbaugh, the grand-dad of blow-hard radio, thinks that Pope Francis is either a gosh-darn communist or just deluded by leftists. Poor Pope Francis is a pitiful man –allowing himself to be led by the slick operators of the Vatican. Or, maybe Pope Francis is a communist and in love with socialism. Can he be far from Marxism? Rush came up for air after that rant.
I lose Rush somewhere because I can’t equate loving the poor with being a communist. Nor can I believe that capitalism in any form is an unassailable system of goodness. I think there is an immense amount of greed in our society and it ain’t all nice.
So the Pope doesn’t like trickle-down economics. Lots of good Americans don’t believe that kind of economy reaches the poor. Many good people believe with Pope Francis that money gets clogged somewhere between the very rich and the well-off.
Pope Francis would like a more generous distribution of our resources. He’s repeating what Jesus taught so powerfully when He told us that a cup of water given in His name will not go unrewarded.
If this sounds like communism to Rush, I marvel at the smallness of his mind. Or, is he like Captain Ahab, obsessed with himself all the while making his way in the dark sea of ignorance. Save us, Rush! Save us from dumb shepherds who do not understand how the world works.
Does Limbaugh know any other song than that communist-leftist refrain which we have heard so often from him? Let me shorten that sentence: Does Rush Limbaugh know anything, anything at all?
He might have learned something about Pope Francis and the Catholic Church if he would have read at least the introduction to Evangelii Gaudium. I doubt if he read the entire document and I would be surprised if he understood any of it
Rush, you have to be a Christian at heart to get it, to understand it. By the way, Rush, the document is not addressed to you. It’s a long memo to the contemporary Catholic Church.
The papal document is from beginning to end about what the Catholic Church calls “the New Evangelization.” It’s not about economics, though Pope Francis insists that we take care of the poor better than we have in the past. The Church of Christ is the church which lifts up the poor. Evangelii Gaudium is not a church teaching on economics. It’s a motivational sermon on evangelization.
Pope Francis loves the poor. He loves the poor because he sees in them the face of Christ. I guess, he’s a bleeding-heart liberal, Rush. That makes me and those who follow the Gospel of Jesus Christ fellow travelers, right?
Here we go again.