In his 1998 encyclical, “Faith and Reason,” Pope John Paul spoke with unhectoring clarity about the errors of relativism in modern thought. While Karol Wojtyla’s role in the fall of communism is likely exaggerated, he was no communist. Pope Benedict XVI was—still is— a great intellect, who took a risk in attempting to explain why “Islam may be a closed and irrational system, impermeable to reform.”

Pope Francis, the new Holy See, is no match to his predecessors. In fact, Jorge Bergoglio is shaping up to be more of a bumpkin than expected.

Courtesy of conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh comes Pope Francis’ “latest papal offering”:

Pope Francis attacked unfettered capitalism as ‘a new tyranny’ and beseeched global leaders to fight poverty and growing inequality, in a document on Tuesday setting out a platform for his papacy and calling for a renewal of the Catholic Church. … In it, Francis went further than previous comments criticizing the global economic system, attacking the ‘idolatry of money.'” … “Pope Francis said that trickle-down policy…” We hear about trickle-down policies? “Pope Francis said that trickle-down policies have not proven to work.”

Preached Pope Francis: “I encourage financial experts and political leaders to ponder the words of one of the sages of antiquity: `Not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood. It is not our own goods which we hold, but theirs,’ said Francis, quoting the fifth-century St. John Chrysostom.”

In other words, the livelihood for which a successful man labors belongs not to him, but to the poor and their benevolent proxy: the government. Some doctrine that is.

Rightly, Rush rails against the Pope. Read on.

What is with Christians that they hunger to forgive evil, usually without any evidence of expiation?

It’s hard to tell what’s more obscene: The idea that one can apologize for the hubris and deceit that is Obama and his health care, or the actual need some have for an apology from an entity so evil that he would toy with the lives of millions as though they were insects and he God.

Some things are unforgivable.

For what it’s worth, here’s Hussein’s “apology” for the pox he has unleashed on the land:

“I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me. Obviously we didn’t do a good enough job in terms of how we crafted the law … And, you know, that’s something I regret. That’s something we’re gonna do everything we can to get fixed … We’re looking at a range of options.”

UPDATE (11/8): “No-Fault Forgiveness Can Be Fatal”:

[The] all-too familiar spasms of no-fault forgiveness …are more a distillation of the mass culture than a reflection of any real religious sensibility. If anything, they are a sign of people adrift in a moral twilight zone.
If punishment is a declaration of those values we wish to uphold, then pardoning [someone] before he has made amends and paid for his crime perverts and subverts those values. Redemption can be achieved only when the consequences of one’s actions are faced. …
In the Jewish perspective, justice always precedes and is a prerequisite for mercy. A Jew is not obliged to forgive a transgressor unless he has ceased his harmful actions, compensated the victim for the harm done, and asked forgiveness. Even then, he can but is not obligated to forgive. This is both ethically elegant and psychologically prudent. It upholds the notion of right and wrong and lends meaning and force to the process of asking for and extending forgiveness. And it doesn’t mandate the incongruous emotion of compassion for someone who has … committed other unforgivable crimes.

MORE.

Today came terribly sad news. John McCain’s murderous Muhammadans beheaded a Syrian Catholic priest, to the cheers of local villagers, children too.

The senior Republican senator from Arizona recently crossed enemy lines to cavort with these Syrian rebels, the type of chaps who lunch on enemy lungs. He, Lindsey Graham—another senior Republican Senator—and many of their Demopublican colleagues can’t wait to supply the noble savages of the world with rations, their exotic tastes and murderous proclivities be damned. The US Constitution these politicians have spent a lifetime trashing.

Those who know “McMussolini” know that the only time John McCain will shake fists and point fingers is over a war delayed, one that isn’t led by the US, or a war waged without the necessary conviction (read collateral damage).

Oh, he’ll also wrestle a crocodile for an illegal alien. Or, rather, get his beefy dumbo of a daughter, Meghan McCain, to do the wrestling for him.

The complaint McCain and his posse level against Obama for not becoming as entangled in Syria as they would have liked is remarkably sophisticated (NOT): Had Obama intervened in Syria earlier, they assert without proof, we’d be dealing with the purest of rebels, and not with the McCain mongrels, who’ve been diluted by Jihadis.

Rubbish.

A quip by a character in one of the great Oscar Wilde’s plays (not to be confused with wonderful Oscar-Wood) comes to mind. “She thought that because he was stupid he’d be kindly, whereas kindliness requires intelligence and imagination.” I paraphrase Wilde, but this applies in spades to McCain, a career Republican malevolent fool, who took to Fox News Sunday with his buddy Chuck Schumer to promote more war (in Syria) and more welfare (the Oink-Filled Immigration Omnibus).

For Christians, rule by Alawite minority is by far the more civilized of the options facing them in this country. This, unfortunately, is the reality. But does the US ever learn from the Anglo-American calamity in Iraq or Afghanistan? In the words of Frederick Douglass, “To ask the question is to answer it.”

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The front page of BBC News World, on Easter Day, March 31, 2013, says it all.

On what is “by far the most religiously significant” event in the Christian calender, the world’s secular saint—a former communist, terrorist, and ever the committed statist (provided those in charge of the state apparatus are black)—garners the first, very LARGE headline:

“Nelson Mandela’s condition ‘improves.'”

The second, more modest headline, small mercies, is: “Pope delivers Easter plea for peace.”

A news headline second in line to one about an avowed, former communist—secular saint of the West Nelson Mandela—is quite an achievement.

Go Pope.