MAUREEN MULLARKEY: “This pontificate makes an idol of The Poor.”

This pontificate makes an idol of The Poor, an abstraction by which it justifies its own rancor toward the developed world. It gives evidence of a mind fed on tracts by statist ideolaters who muddle distinction between the material and the transcendent. Worse, it squanders the moral authority of the Church on an unholy alliance with corrupt or rent-seeking regimes that relinquish their own responsibility for the conditions of those they govern. It is an ominous confederacy that denies moral agency to all but the West.

Does there exist anything more Western than a self-flagellating urge to indict the West? A guilty son of the European stock that was once the pride and driving force of Buenos Aires, Francis resents the West’s affluence, scorns its freedom, curses it. . . .

I cannot not help but wonder if this week-long showcase of misdirected sermonizing, and often ambiguous pieties, signaled the de-Christianization of the Catholic Church. Were we witnessing the descent of Catholicism into one more “ism,” an ideology using language onto which an audience could project its own meaning? After Cuba, the non-stop showboating, pageantry, and preachments in the wrong places took on the look of a Faustian bargain between the Vatican and cynical brokers of worldly prestige—an exchange of truth (including that of the gradual but ongoing diminishment of poverty) for power.

R.R. Reno at First Things didn’t care for Mullarkey’s post, and announced his decision to discontinue hosting her blog:

I’ve decided to end our hosting of Maureen Mullarkey’s blog.

Maureen has a sharp pen and pungent style. Her postings about Pope Francis indicate she’s very angry about this papacy, which she seems to view as (alternately) fascism and socialism disguised as Catholicism. This morning she put up a post that opens with the accusation that the Vatican is conspiring with the Obama administration to destroy the foundations of freedom and hobble the developed world. I’ve had my staff take it down.

Reminder: R.R. Reno was an apologist for Obamacare, because his impulse, much like that of Pope Francis, is to idolize The Poor and dismiss concerns about political and economic liberty:

For all the weeping and crying and gnashing of teeth among conservatives, it’s important to recognize the positive opportunity in Obamacare. . . . The Democrats did not so much change the American health-care system as pump up everything in an attempt to realize the imperative of universal access. Some Christians, including politically conservative Christians, warmly welcome this. . . .

The big, baggy, health-care bill signed in March was not a game changer. For the most part, it simply created a situation in which the explosive question of how to pay for universal access is more visible and less avoidable. Now we’re about to play the second half of the game. The Catholic bishops offer commonsense advice for developing a game plan. Their principle of properly balancing public and private argues for strengthening the private approach laid out in Obamacare. It’s a path toward universal access that prevents a public takeover of health care.

This will require reforming the reform. The regulations for private insurance must be redesigned to maximize cost-saving incentives, among many other fixes necessary to control runaway spending. But the more immediate political task for Christians is to overcome an impulse toward a spurious libertarianism, so that we can perect the requirements and strengthen the mandates necessary for the private option to flourish.

Of course, this was before he realized that the bishops would not be able to negotiate a plan to their liking:

We must think creatively about ways to reuse to participate in the system being erected by the Affordable Care Act. . . .

We cannot presume that we will win these debates. We need to begin planning for the possibility of civil disobedience.