6 ways Pope Francis promotes political liberalism

The following is excerpted from "The Undertaker Pope: A Brief Study of an Infallibly Politically Correct Pontificate", an article by Christopher A. Ferrara, featured in The Remnant Newspaper.

In the fourth year of his pontificate, Pope Francis continues to deliver regular payloads of explosive off-the-cuff remarks that delight the media and shock the Catholic faithful....

For Francis, "magisterium" and "what I think" are one and the same thing. What Francis thinks -- and speaks incessantly -- generally serves the ends of political liberalism and state power while confirming the Church’s post-Vatican II demotion to a mere religious constituency under the secular sovereign. Witness, for example:

· Francis’s warm relations with socialist dictators;

· his lauding of pro-abortion and pro-“gay” politicians;

· his abuse of the papal office as a platform for globalist environmentalism (thus advantaging the same transnational corporations he professes to deplore);

· his refusal to intervene in opposition to the legalization of “gay marriage” because “the Pope belongs to everybody, he cannot enter the concrete, domestic politics of a country. This is not the Pope's role”;

· his demand -- flatly contradicting his professed abstention from domestic politics -- for universal abolition of the death penalty (while declining to demand the abolition of abortion), open borders in Europe and America, and policies of environmental regulation and wealth redistribution;

· his conspicuous failure to identify government policy, particularly in socialist countries, as a primary cause of the poverty he attributes entirely to the greed of the wealthy.

Not even during a post-conciliar epoch marked by the generalized surrender of churchmen to the zeitgeist have we seen a Pope willing to serve as the veritable pontifical undertaker at the funeral of the Church Militant, glibly reciting a few last words at the graveside in superficial remarks to reporters that he insists are "magisterium".... How is it possible that a conclave could have placed such a spectacularly unsuitable man on the Chair of Peter?...

I propose no answer to the question. Only history will provide the answer. Meanwhile, however, one can only wonder whether the unprecedented circumstances surrounding the elevation of Cardinal Bergoglio to the papacy are in some mysterious way related to the unexampled recklessness of his reign, so pleasing to the world that sings his praises.