Monday 15 December 2014

Is Pope Francis A Good Guy?

Pope Francis is gaining a lot of friends in the secular world with what seems like a 'progressive' approach to things such as atheists, the Big Bang, and Evolution. 

Back in May 2013 the pope caused a fuss when he declared that even atheists are redeemed by Christ. This was interpreted by many who thought the Pope was saying that through good deeds even atheists can get to heaven. But just hold on a minute. Redemption, and salvation aren't the same. 

There's a very informative article here by Stephen Kokx about the pope's comments. The gist - all people, including atheists, are redeemed by the blood of Jesus. All people, including atheists, are good, but, as stated by Fr. Dwight Longenecker in Stephen's article 'wounded by original sin'. The bottom line is that Pope Francis hasn't said anything new about atheists. We're still going to hell, unless saved by Jesus, for the crimes of Adam and Eve. (that Adam and Eve are fictional seems to not matter). 

So Pope Francis was lauded as being progressive and welcoming to atheists et. al.. He was, in fact, doing nothing of the sort and not changing the Catholic Church's position, but merely restating what it already was. 

More recently, in October of this year, the Pope made some comments regarding evolution and the big bang theory. 

These are the Pope's comments: 
"The big bang, that today is considered to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the creative intervention of God. On the contrary, it requires it.
"Evolution in nature is not in contrast with the notion of [divine] creation because evolution requires the creation of the beings that evolve."
The Catholic church doesn't have a great track record with accepting modern science as Galileo Galilei found out when he tried to tell them that Earth went around the sun. 

But people are suggesting this pope is progressive. Let's look at that. On The Origin Of Species was first published in 1859, some 155 years ago. Since that day has Darwin's work has been supported by mountains and mountains of new evidence. Accepting it in 2014 can hardly be called 'progressive'. 

Besides, evolution has been supported (kind of) by at least two of Pope Francis's predecessors as seen in the article here written by Doug Linder. Doug points out that Pope Pius XII was okay with the idea with evolution, as long as humans still got their souls from God. Pius was not 100% convinced by evolution and cautioned that people should not accept it “as though it were a certain proven doctrine.”

Pope John Paul II said: 
Today, almost half a century after publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis.  It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge.  The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favour of the theory.
As Doug points out, in the 46 years between Pius XII and John Paul II evolution, as far as the Vatican is concerned, went from being a possibility, to a fact. Pope Francis getting on board with evolution is not 'progressive'. He's very, very late to the party. 

In November this year Pope Francis put a motorcycle up for sale. He had been given it as a gift (why?) and as he had no use for it, he decided to sell it and donate the money to charity. The $20,000 bike sold for some $300,000. If I was going to be looked after for the rest of my life I'd donate a fancy bike to charity too. 

I've tried to find the net worth of the Catholic church but it seems impossible. I found one estimate at between 10 - 15 billion (from a 1965 edition of Time magazine) but estimating the wealth today couldn't even be done by the church itself. This article in the National Post from Toronto confirms the impossible task of estimating the total worth of the church, but does bring some things to light: 
  • The Catholic Church owns approximately a metric tonne of gold valued in 2008 at $22.4 million. 
  • The revenue of the Vatican in 2011 was $308 million. (expenses lead to this being a $27 million surplus. 
  • The Vatican has $10 billion in investments in foreign companies. 
  • There is an estimated $655 million in Vatican coffers. 
Add to this the 700,000+ square kilometres of land, and priceless works of art and it's easy to see why the Catholic Church is regarded as one of the wealthiest institutions on earth. 

This is not to say that the Catholic church does nothing, I'm aware that they do spend millions to help people, and so they should given they are set up in the name of a man who championed the poor and who urged followers who wanted to be perfect to 'sell your possessions and give to the poor'. It wouldn't be fair to compare the charitable donations of the Catholic church to those of large companies such as Google or Walmart which are set up to make a profit, or an individual who could have a change in circumstances and suddenly not know from where their next meal is coming. 

The Catholic church operates on a different level. They see themselves as moral teachers, a guiding light on the pathway to the lord. They preach about how we should look after each other but still retain billions in wealth. When you look at what the church has compared to what it does, whilst keeping in mind its foundations, it simply does not do enough. Nowhere near it. 

The last thing I wanted to write about is the cover up within the church of child sex abuse. In 2013 Pope Francis set up a commission into the sexual abuse of minors by priests but as shown in this article in Time magazine from February this year, the U.N. has demanded the the church do more, starting with the handing over of internal case files to proper authorities. 

It's very easy to criticise someone for not being 100% idealistic and when doing so one opens oneself up to criticism for not doing enough themselves from those happy to commit the tu quoque fallacy.  I'm not asking for or suggesting Pope Francis be perfect though. I, unlike some of his followers, am aware he is 'just a man'. 

However, this man has unimaginable resources available to him. He has hundreds of millions of dollars in a nest egg, doing nothing except growing larger. He has influence over hundreds of millions of people. Is Pope Francis doing more than his predecessor? Probably. Slightly. But when your predecessor does nothing, doing more isn't very hard. When it comes to the pope being a leader in modern times, the bar is set incredibly low. 

I'm sure Jorge Mario Bergoglio, is a decent bloke. If he were my neighbour and I was going on holiday, I'm sure he'd be happy to feed my dog and I'd be happy to let him do so. 

But as Pope Francis I'm not convinced Jorge is doing enough. This is not an ordinary citizen, living in suburbia, working 9 to 5. He should be leading society, not being dragged behind it kicking and screaming. To me he was 10,000 steps from where he should be and he's taken one of those steps and people are singing his praises as though he's cured cancer. 

Be pleased, if you must, that he's taken a step in the right direction, but remember that he's got a long way to go before reaching the final destination. 


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This post was inspired by the diatribe by Noah Lugeons on episode 90 of The Scathing Atheist. You can listen to that episode here. I highly recommend subscribing to The Scathing Atheist podcast through iTunes or Stitcher. 

1 comment:

  1. As an Old, Atheist, Progressive, former-Catholic, I have a higher opinion of the guy. There is a certain amount of inertia in the bloated monstrosity that is the Catholic Church today. It cannot be turned on a dime. And it cannot dismiss some pretty be "givens": The existence of god, the whole jesus thing, the whole salvation thing. There are XXXX catholics in the world, and they are not going to magically become critically thinking, reasoning beings even if the pope told them to. The best he can do for society is to use his bully pulpit to influence what actually gets done, and I think he has done a pretty good job all things considered. He's a good guy.

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