By REY FLORES
Now that the dust has settled from Pope Francis’ little Fiat 500 during his papal visit to the United States, I can reflect on some of what I learned from the entire event.
I learned mainly that most people in America don’t know what the heck they’re talking about when it comes to the Catholic Church, the Pope, and what it all means. Certainly the propaganda news media do all they can to co-opt, distort, or misrepresent who Pope Francis is and what his words mean, further confusing just about everyone, including many Catholics.
It doesn’t help that Pope Francis tends to shoot from the hip and speak from his heart; sometimes his message can be easily manipulated, and it often is manipulated, to fit the narrative of the secular media. It’s almost as though the Pope likes to speak in code, as if all of us were smart enough to figure out what he means to say when he really isn’t saying it.
If the mainstream news propaganda were our only source, they would have had us thinking that Pope Francis had repainted the Sistine Chapel in rainbow colors, made abortion the newest sacrament, and demanded that every Catholic married couple plant a tree instead of having children.
But, as an example of messages that can be distorted, when I attended Francis’ address to Congress, he spoke in no uncertain terms about things like the environment, immigration, and the death penalty. He discussed life and family in fewer words, without the elaboration and definition many of us wanted to hear.
Now, days after he’s gone, we learn that he secretly met with embattled Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis while he was in the United States. Why would Francis choose to keep a low profile on that meeting?
My guess is that he truly cares about all of our concerns and upholding Church teachings on abortion, annulments, contraception, and so-called same-sex marriage, but he chooses instead to engage the liberal crowd by addressing the environment and illegal immigration.
A new friend at EWTN called the Pope a “bridge builder”; someone who wants to engage those who do not trust the Church by meeting them where they are, and then perhaps blindsiding them with all of the non-negotiable social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. God only knows.
Something else I have learned is that there are plenty of anti-Catholic, anti-Pope political conservatives who love to bash the Pope based on divisive and uninformed rhetoric from conservative radio personalities such as the controversial Michael Savage and Glenn Beck, a former Catholic who is now a Mormon.
Some anti-Catholic conservatives are relentless on social media, posting one allegation after another, accusing Pope Francis of being everything from a New World order puppet or a Marxist to being a full-fledged co-conspirator of the Communist Party.
I have had to unfriend and block a few of these armchair theologians and religion experts from my Facebook account who, despite my attempting to charitably correct them, continued to berate, belittle, and offend our Church and our Holy Father.
It seemed like all the Catholic mainstream conservative radio personalities were ganging up on the Pope leading into the week of his visit. If there are any radio stations out there looking to balance their programs with a solid Catholic, I’m happy to help.
Never ones to be left out, the liberal media got in on the act. There was headline after headline calling Francis “the people’s Pope” — as in the People’s Republic of the Vatican. By week’s end, there were cartoons showing socialist wannabe Bernie Sanders asking the Pope to be his running mate.
Homosexuals think they like this Pope because of his comments here and there like the now infamous, “Who am I to judge?” I’ve had to explain over and over to people that the Church always welcomes sinners of all sorts, just not any of our sins.
Now that Pope mania has come and gone, we can get back to the upcoming 2016 presidential race, which has also brought about many different arguments back and forth about religious freedom this and religious freedom that, but at least the Pope-bashers won’t have Francis to beat up on anymore, from the left or from the right.
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(Rey Flores is a Catholic writer and speaker. Visit his new website at www.TheConservativeHispanic.net or email him at reyfloresusa@gmail.com.)
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