The Pope, abandoning even the slightest pretence at the political impartiality that his office demands, has come dangerously, culpably close to comparing President Trump with King Herod, who was responsible for the Massacre of the Innocents.
The Jesuit house journal La Civiltà Cattolica describes itself as “reflecting the mind of the Vatican since 1850”. Last week, in that august if somewhat self-satisfied journal, Fr. Antonio Spadaro SJ reported the Pope as uttering the following words at a meeting with the Bishops’ Conference of Thailand, as part of His Holiness’ answer to a question about how to care for refugees. I shall quote the relevant passage in full, lest I be accused of making it up:
“The phenomenon of refugees has always existed, but today it is better known because of social differences, hunger, political tensions and especially war. For these reasons, migratory movements are intensifying.
“What is the answer the world gives? The policy of waste. Refugees are waste material. The Mediterranean has been turned into a cemetery. The notorious cruelty of some detention centers in Libya touches my heart.
“Here in Asia we all know the problem of the Rohingya [a persecuted Muslim minority in Burma, or whatever it calls itself this week].
“I must admit that I am shocked by some of the narratives I hear in Europe about borders. Populism is gaining strength.
“In other parts there are walls that even separate children from parents. Herod comes to mind. Yet for drugs, there’s no wall to keep them out.
“As I told you, the phenomenon of migration is compounded by war, hunger and a defensive mindset, which leaves us in a state of fear and leads us to believe that you can defend yourself only by strengthening borders. At the same time, there is exploitation.”
The mention of “walls that separate children from parents”, with Herod in the same breath, is plainly directed at President Trump, whose electors voted for him in large numbers because, among other things, he promised that Mr Obama’s open-borders policy would be brought to an end. At the President’s rallies, enthusiastic chants of “Build That Wall!” are often heard.
The Pope, as so often these days, was disingenuous in his musings on the issue of refugees. The chief reason why wetbacks swim the Colorado River into the paradise that is the United States is that many Latin American countries are unstable, prone to be corruptly misgoverned by Communists, and accordingly bankrupt, leaving their people mired in the unremitting poverty that is the hallmark of Socialism everywhere.
The wetbacks love the free-enterprise, free-market system that the Pope excoriates as “capitalism”. For them, the free-market countries of the West are the Promised Land. Yet the Pope is silent upon the real reason for mass migration – economics. For if His Holiness were to admit that the overwhelming preponderance of migrants are economic migrants, he would be compelled to confront the fact that the very refugees on whose behalf he purports to speak prefer “capitalism” to the cruel, failed, tired, Communism that he advocates.
The Pope ought to have spoken out against the Communism that has inflicted perma-poverty on most countries in Latin America. And, if he were really concerned that illegal immigrants to the United States were being separated from their children, it is striking that he was – as far as I can discover – entirely silent when Mr Obama (a fellow-Communist) carried out precisely the same policy, but on a far larger scale.
A Pope taking care to be impartial would have spoken out not only against President Trump but also against two prominent “Democrats”, Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the House of Representatives) and Joe Biden (head of the Communist “Democratic Socialists”), both of whom, though nominally Catholic, are openly in favour of baby-butchering. It is these two, surely, who should more fittingly be compared with the baby-butcher Herod.
But no. The Pope, by his repeated, selective targeting of President Trump, has turned the Holy See into a childish bully-pulpit from which he can advance a nakedly party-political cause that is evidently far closer to his heart than mere Christianity – namely, the Communism that the absurdly naïve Jesuits of South America have long and foolishly embraced.
This is by no means the first time the present Pope has aimed his petty invective at President Trump. In January 2019, on a visit to Panama, he said: “Builders of walls sow fear.” In March he said: “If you raise a wall between people, you end up a prisoner of the wall that you raised.” In April he repeated himself: “Those who build walls will become prisoners of the walls they put up. This is history.”
Now he sees fit to compare President Trump (but not, of course, his unlamented Kenyan-born fellow-Communist predecessor St. Barack) to Herod. Bah! Pshaw! Zounds! Gadzooks! Faugh! Pfui! Pish-tush!
The fanatical Left, of which the Pope no doubt sees himself as one of the leaders, are losing all touch with reason and reality. Last week Emma Thompson, described as an “actress”, attended a terrorist rally outside the London offices of the BBC, There she announced that, because of the imagined (and imaginary) “climate emergency” of which the Pope is also prone to speak in an ill-informed and relentlessly partisan fashion, people should “wrap up warm, stockpile food and remember there is a surprising amount of protein in the average household pet”.
She went on in the rebarbative fashion that is expected of climate Communists: “Expect crop failures, water contamination, damaged houses and ruined lives, and we will see these persistent weather fronts continue to wreak havoc across the nation, albeit with one or two days of dry and settled weather.” The plague-describing Psalmist at his most excitable could not have done it better.
Never mind the mere facts. Notwithstanding deforestation sanctioned by corrupt Communist governments in Latin America, the planet is greening thanks to CO2 fertilization. Notwithstanding lurid reports of climate disasters, hurricanes, tropical storms, floods, droughts, tornadoes, forest fires, plagues of mosquitoes and suchlike disasters happened more often, and took far more lives, before the mild warming of the past half-century than since.
And how did la Thompson get to a recent climate-change protest thousands of miles away? She flew, of course, just as the Pope does on his frequent round-the-world tourist trips. Not for them the tedium of the train or the banality of the boat or the boringness of the bus. Gimme my Club Class ticket, pop the champagne – CO2 bubbles and all – and do as I say, not as I do.
The Church played a noble part in helping to establish the Renaissance and the subsequent Age of Enlightenment. The Jesuits, before they decided to put Communism ahead of Christianity, were at the forefront of the movement to advance Catholicism as the fides quaerens intellectum – the faith striving for rational explanation and exposition.
Now, however, we are at the end of the Age of Enlightenment. The Age of Endarkenment is upon us. Communist actresses and Communist Popes who spout the most arrant, cruel nonsense, are cringingly, uncritically reported in the Marxstream media and expect to be treated with head-banging deference.
Here is why their remarks, whether about refugees or about climate change, should not be heeded. The totalitarianism that killed hundreds of millions in the 20th century is killing hundreds of millions more in the present century, because banks whose executives are terrified of being seen to be out of tune with the Communist Party Line on climate are refusing to lend to third-world countries desperate for electricity so that they can build the one form of generation that they can afford and can maintain – coal-fired power stations.
These shiny-trousered agents of genocide are egged on by the likes of the Pope and the hapless Thompson, who are either ignorant of the tens of millions of deaths every year that arise from lack of access to electrical power or – perhaps – simply do not care.
I make no apology for having used the word “Communist” or “Communism” more than a dozen times in this article. For Communism kills, and kills by the hundreds of millions. The killing will not stop until Communism is faced down and discredited and, eventually, outlawed as the genocidal madness it is.
How, then, to survive the Age of Endarkenment?
Step 1: Get yourself a backup generator with plenty of fuel, and let it be your lumen fidei, for the endarkenment will be literal. Windmills, solar panels and suchlike costly fooleries will not keep the lights on when the night is dark and still. Blackouts will become more frequent until the world once again comes to its senses. You will need to be ready for them.
Step 2: Don’t eat your dog. Households with dogs will be better able to defend themselves against the hordes made starvingly desperate by Communist policies.
Step 3: Get good earplugs. Pay no attention to the hysterical nonsense from gabbling Popes or gibbering “actresses”. Love them all dearly, pray for them all daily, but do not listen to a word they say. The most charitable prayer for those who unwittingly advocate genocidal policies is the prayer of the Lord of Life for his executioners: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
