Well, perhaps the Pope did not cave just now. Perhaps he has always been this way. Pope Leo XIV stepped into the scandal of Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) who was going to be awarded a life-time achievement award by Cardinal Blasé Cupich of Chicago. Pope Leo did not acquit himself very well.
Dr. Tom Woods has provided some insight. In the interests of full disclosure, it should be noted that I was raised Catholic with 12 years of Catholic schooling.
Dr. Woods:
Senator Durbin is a standard left-liberal, which is how prelates like Cupich like their politicians. A significant portion of Catholic laity was shocked that Durbin, who favors abortion, would be so honored, and the whole matter was indeed a scandal.
Proceeding to give his own scandal, Pope Leo XIV of course defended Cupich and Durbin (what else can one expect from the Vatican anymore, sadly), cautioning that “it’s very important to look at the overall work that a senator has done.”
In other words: that abortion thing that we insisted to you was the equivalent of murdering a person in his bed? You have to balance that against all the good work the senator has done for immigrants!
How does “good” work with immigrants erase the murdering of some 60 million+ children since Roe v Wade, most of whom were unborn but not all of them? In fact, Illinois is one state where, if a baby survives an abortion, the baby can be legally left to die of neglect.
Church doctrine on this issue is very clear. It is murder to kill an unborn child. This has been a lynchpin for Catholic doctrine for centuries. One would think that the Pope would not only understand this but would be forceful in the defense of life.
The Catholic World Report observes, “What is a problem and a genuine scandal is [Cupich’s] honoring a public official who clearly and unapologetically supports abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and violations of religious liberty, all of which are profound attacks on the dignity of the human person, people of faith, and the Catholic Church.”
Pope Leo decided it would be good to smear pro-life people.
Pope Leo evidently thought it would be helpful to say, “Someone who says I’m against abortion but is in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life. Someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”
Philosopher Edward Feser responded to that with: “With due respect to the pope, the remark is manifestly false. To cite just a few names among many, sainted doctors of the Church such as Thomas Aquinas, Alphonsus Liguori, and John Henry Newman were against abortion and for the death penalty, as were sainted popes such as Innocent I, Pius V, and Pius X. I imagine Leo would not dare to suggest these great heroes of the Catholic faith were ‘not really pro-life.'”
Pope Leo seems to be a very good fit for Pope Francis’ Communist legacy. Consistent with world socialists, Pope Leo repeatedly has sided against Israel in the ongoing war in Gaza. This is despite the fact that Gaza via Hamas and the West Bank systematically exile and murder Christians. And, of course, the Hamas view of gays is decidedly not pro-life. And Hamas’ stated mission is the destruction of Israel and the killing of all Jews worldwide. On the other hand, Israel has ensured that Christians have full access to and control over their holiest sites and gives its Christian residents full civil rights.
Andrea Widburg notes:
Every position that Pope Leo strikes is a downstream result of Liberation Theology, a Catholic movement that suddenly appeared in 1960s Latin America and that came into the Vatican with Pope Francis. Former Soviet spy Ion Mihai Pacepa explained that Liberation Theology wasn’t a spontaneous idea but was something the Soviet Union created and spread, wrapping Marxist revolution in a Catholic-sounding package:
The movement was born in the KGB, and it had a KGB-invented name: Liberation Theology.
[snip]
The birth of Liberation Theology was the intent of a 1960 super-secret “Party-State Dezinformatsiya Program” approved by Aleksandr Shelepin, the chairman of the KGB, and by Politburo member Aleksey Kirichenko, who coordinated the Communist Party’s international policies. This program demanded that the KGB take secret control of the World Council of Churches (WCC), based in Geneva, Switzerland, and use it as cover for converting Liberation Theology into a South American revolutionary tool.
What started in Moscow and moved to Latin America has now taken deep root in the Vatican. That’s terribly sad because it means that an ideology that has brought nothing but misery to the world controls an institution that helped create many of the best aspects of the modern West.
This is very unfortunate. The Catholic Church has been a positive force in the world. Beginning in 33 AD, the Church laid the foundation for the best of Western society.
Sadly, the current Pope seems to be systematically gnawing away at its core values just as Pope Francis did. Has the Catholic Church entered another one of its occasional Dark Ages?
Jack Cashill has a solution to this problem.
The world would be better served if our Holy Father stepped down and took a position more his speed, like, say, Democrat precinct captain.