Imagine if during this 2020 election season, Pope Francis had hosted Steven Bannon and his European allies as speakers. If they’d given him a platform, flush with bishops and cardinals nodding and applauding. Prelates clapping and smiling at his message. Namely, that the Democrats and their platform were a threat to the human species itself. Well, that just happened, except it was abortion promoting globalist Jeffrey Sachs, warning against Donald Trump. 

Burning Incense to President Xi

Imagine the Vatican had smacked down liberal and even moderately conservative Catholics. If it had pointed out as the model of Catholic politics some right-wing authoritarian dictatorship. There aren’t many left around. So let’s pretend Francis had sent his right-hand man to Putin’s Russia, to tour it and praise it as the best practitioner of Catholic social teaching. Yes, that happened too, except Francis was smacking down free market Catholics. And the dictatorship the Vatican praised was Communist China.

For much, much more on that, watch my interview with the great Eric Metaxas:

The Litany of the Democrats

Now let’s pretend that Francis had appointed a long list of like-minded allies to major roles in the U.S. church. (Well, he actually did that, but let’s pretend they were different bishops with different views.) Imagine Francis had looked for the most pro-life, free market, pro-gun rights priests in America, even plucking them from obscurity. Then put them in charge of the churches in our largest cities. And then they started claiming that the Church’s teaching lined up, almost point for point, with the Republican party platform.

And that just happened, too. Except, of course, the bishops are leftists, and they’re endorsing Democratic talking points, and trivializing the protection of unborn children.

Americans United Against Faith and Reason

If a conservative pope had meddled this directly in U.S. politics, we know what our media would do. They’d caterwaul about the threat of a “right-wing theocracy.” We’d see endless hand-wringing from CNN’s and NBC’s house Jesuits. Groups such as “Americans United Against Faith and Reason” would suddenly spring up, with deep pockets and vast ad budgets. Nuns in stretchy stirrup pants and Georgia O’Keefe sweatshirts would arrive in comfy coach buses. They’d lumber out waving glossy pre-printed signs, to demonstrate against their faith being “hijacked by politics.” They might get briefly arrested, then toddle back home for cream cheese and jelly sandwiches and weak tea.

But when the Vatican goes completely in the tank for the globalist left? What we hear is crickets. Or worse, the low, amused laughter of Caesar as Christian apostles kneel at his altar. “Is that enough incense, Great Caesar? Does anyone have a light?” That’s what happened a few weeks ago, when the Church of England endured a brief spell of Christian witness on extramarital sex, for which it quickly and cringingly apologized in public.  

Catholics, Live Not By Lies

I’ve spent many thousands of words in the past six years critiquing Pope Francis. It didn’t make me friends. It burned many professional bridges to nowhere, to low-effort, decently-paid sinecures with the collapsing Catholic establishment. (Hey, writers can’t always be choosers, and the beagles need to eat!)

But now I can put down my cudgels. A brilliant, highly-respected Catholic scholar of Solzhenitsyn (among many other things), Prof. Daniel Mahoney, has in a single essay vindicated every point I made all through those years. Read his stinging, scholarly rejectionhttps://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/02/24/pope-francis-wayward-shepherd/#slide-1 of Francis’ works and pomps. It’s every bit as pointed and prophetic as Solzhenitsyn’s own famous plea, “Live Not By Lies.” Send it to any Catholic you know who’s still tempted by the messy pottage our fawning, atheist, pro-abortion media keep ladling out for Francis.

The Legacy “Catholic” Leviathan

Let’s leave the seedy intrigue in Rome and move closer to home. There’s a massive infrastructure of well-funded and well-paid Irish and Italian American Democrats in America who claim to be somehow “Catholic.” Let’s call this infrastructure, neutrally, “Leviathan.”

Leviathan’s various tentacles are stuffed with many millions that pious widows gave their organizations decades ago, to use for authentic Catholic purposes. Others feed on hundreds of millions from non-profit contracts with the federal government. Still others are newly hired by Francis’ new leftist appointees to still-wealthy Catholic dioceses.

Leviathan squats like a dragon on most of the money, power, and institutions of official “Catholic” America. And Leviathan’s in the tank for the same Democrats who favor partial birth abortion and even infanticide. Who oppose religious liberty, even for Catholics. Who ignore savage persecutions of believers in foreign countries, and pretend that haranguing illegal immigrants amounts to genocide.

“How can they possibly justify any of that?” you might ask yourself.

Well, this week I will go through the stories Leviathan’s minions tell themselves to rationalize their stances. The Rube Goldberg engines of sophistry that drive them to work each morning. The plates of red herring they eat as their daily bread.

That’s right, it’s another series, folks. Buckle in for a bumpy ride.

John Zmirak is a Senior Editor of The Stream and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism.