Hell-o Friends,
I have, or several years bookmarked Democratic Underground as a daily read. It has been a source of information and graphics. I have been wary in joining most things. I have Luddite tendencies, but oddly post internet journals, the chief being a voice from the rustbelt. I put one up on our Pope's newly released document, the Apostolic Exhortation, click.
I was home watching television when Jorge Mario Bergoglio, cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires was presented to the world as Pope Francis. I was happy, and teared up, for i knew immediately. In Catholic Christianity there is a symbolism, and usually the choice of a papal name is bland in comparison to the possibility of fullness that it might contain. For from the crucifix at San Damiano, Jesus said, (depending on translation) "Francis, seest thou not that my house is in ruins; go and restore it for me." Anyone with sense knew he meant the man from Assisi, yet idiot commentators were unsure.
Catholicism is a broad faith and church. As James Joyce described the Catholic Church, in Finnegan's Wake, "Here comes everybody". We have always had the best and the worst, the loving apostles of Jesus and pharisaic hypocrites. Francis by gesture after gesture is showing himself saint.
In regards to the current document, which was released immediately before US Thanksgiving, and the shopping season that floods the local television newscasts, Paragraph 54 damns everything from Reaganomics, which was only a return to pre-1933 prevailing US economics, and which is Republican party dogma. Paragraph 56 damns every economic point by Ayn Rand, the Tea Party, the Koch brothers, Fox cable, etc.
The "success" of economic Reaganism has largely been unchallenged in the US. Things have become economically increasingly unjust, and increasingly so. I don't like the terms much of "left" and "right" (or liberal and conservative), but Reaganism eliminated the "left" or progressive wing of the Democratic party; and the "right" wing of the Republican party just became more and more extreme. Pope Francis, economically and therefore politically, is more "liberal" than over 95% or even 99% of the elected Democratic party. As radical (or extreme) as the disciples of Reagan have become, Francis is radical in the opposite fashion. Reagan was selling arms to Iran, in order to give money to people in Latin America to kill people who were saying things as Francis is saying here. That sounds quite harsh, but it was so. Any US Republican who is supposedly a Catholic shares nothing with the Francis in these regards. Further, the bishops have become a part of the republican party apparatus. Now, they have to choose either to follow the golden calf, that Francis mentions in paragraph 55, or the "Joy of the Gospel" which is the name of the letter "Evangelii Gaudium". Or as Jesus said choose your master—"God or Mammon".
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