NOTE: Joel wrote this more than a year ago.
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World Affairs Brief, March 15, 2013 Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World. Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com
THIS WEEK’S ANALYSIS:
Eastern Europe—Closet Communists or NATO Puppets?
Evading the Truth on Domestic Surveillance
First Jesuit Pope
BLM Settles with Environmentalists—Tying up Energy Again
Impugning the Right Wing and all Survivalists
Beware of Survival Communities
Tucson Gives Air Force Carte Blanche Powers
Job Numbers Aren’t Real
My Scrape with Death this Week
[…]
FIRST JESUIT POPE
Jorge Mario Bergoglio a Jesuit Cardinal from Buenos Aires, Argentina has been selected as the new Pope of the Catholic Church. While the choice is celebrated with great joy in Latin America—the largest body of Catholics in the world, who have long felt slighted about the papal post until now—conservative Catholics are worried about the Jesuit’s Leftist political orientation. As Wikipedia said, “Bergoglio is the first Jesuit chosen to be pope. He is also the first pope from South America, the Americas, the New World, and the Southern Hemisphere. He is the first pope from outside Europe in 1,272 years.” This is a big thing to those who feel they have been under-represented for so long.
Having lived in Latin America several years, I’ve had the opportunity to observe and contend with Jesuit priests. The order is Leftist out of it’s “concern for the poor,” but their outreach is more revolutionary than charitable in action. Jesuit theologians concentrate on the “unequal distribution of wealth in the world” and overtly promote socialism and government redistribution in order to achieve “social justice.”
Because of its socialist orientation, many Jesuit priests have become Marxists and communists and have actively worked toward the violent overthrow of existing governments to achieve those ends. During the violent years of guerrilla activity when I was in Latin America, I experienced the Tupamaros in Uruguay and Argentina, and the Marxist guerrillas of El Salvador and Guatemala.
It seems that Jesuits and Maryknoll nuns in those days were always involved in both direct and indirect support of the revolutionaries. A couple of MaryKnoll nuns were killed supporting the communists, which engendered a huge outcry in the international press. No one would print facts about them hiding behind religious immunity in order to supply Marxist guerrillas.
This relates to the new Pope because he did not support the revolutionary arm of the Jesuits and colluded with the military juntas in Argentina during the “desaparecidos” years (the Disappeared Ones) of 1973-1986 and allowed two of the more militant priests under his supervision to be arrested. They were eventually tortured for information.
What this means to me is that Bergoglio is more of the idealogical Left than the radical and revolutionary Left, and that he opposed revolutionary overthrows of existing regimes. While this distinction is nowhere to be found in the English press, his selection generated some negative press in the Spanish and Latin American countries because of support of the “dictadura” which is considered a betrayal by the Left in Europe and Latin America.
Let me note parenthetically, that there was a reason for the regimes in Argentina and Uruguay to kidnap and kill revolutionaries during the Desaparecido years, while not convicted by the courts. The courts were filled with Marxist judges who would never convict their own in the years prior to the rise of “death squads.”
The death squads and other forms of vigilante justice came about as the only way to eliminate the Communists who were responsible for the constant street demonstrations (many violent), bombings and kidnappings for ransom in those countries. In Latin America, universities cannot be invaded by police without permission, so the revolutionaries would retreat to the universities after an attack and use them to cover for the making of bombs and stockpiling weapons.
When a country allows these kinds of safe havens for enemies of liberty, the military is forced to take independent action outside the law and fight a war in the shadows. That’s what happened in Latin America. I’m not saying that death squads were not overzealous or didn’t make mistakes, but it is the Leftists and Marxists in government and the courts protecting the enemy that drove them to it, as a matter of national preservation. Now, all those people have been replaced by yesmen and socialists, so there is little resistance to what’s coming again in Latin America.
Conservative Catholics are also reassured by the new pope’s support of long-held Catholic doctrines of opposition to gay marriage, the teaching that homosexuality is a sin, and the opposition to abortion, euthanasia and contraceptive use.
My concern is that as an ideological Leftist, he will not provide resistance to or change of the current Vatican direction in supporting globalism, as exemplified by remarks of the past two Popes. Ironically, were he more aligned with the revolutionary elements of the Jesuits, he probably would oppose globalism. The hard-core Left is just as opposed to globalist control as on the constitutional Right are—but not for the same reasons. They think it is mere “greedy capitalist” control, not the overarching conspiracy for power and control it really is.
I think Pope Frances will go along with the globalist trend because that matches his history of compromise with past regimes in Argentina. The Vatican needs a good house cleaning to purge it of the Leftist, globalist (money laundering and banking scandals), and homosexual influences, and sadly I don’t think Francis is going to do it. There are powerful partisan factions among the Cardinal selectors representing all these factions and he’s a compromise choice—not a changer.
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