Keep Right — Column by Ralph K. Ginorio
Many Americans and Roman Catholics around the world are hailing the election of Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost as Pope Leo XVI. Chicago-born and with a lifetime of service shepherding Roman Catholicism in Peru, Leo XIV was like Martin Luther a priest of the Augustinian Order. His smiling demeanor and service to the poor fill many with the hope that Leo XIV will be a true Pastor for Christians in these difficult times.
So indeed he may. Like every well-meaning person, I (a formerly devout Roman Catholic who is now a very flawed Reformed Christian) pray to Almighty God that His Christian faith is enriched by Leo’s leadership. No, the Roman Catholic Church no longer dominates Western Christendom. But its influence is great, even within Protestant and Reformed Christianity. The Pope matters, both within and beyond the Christian faith, as he has mattered for nearly two millennia.
However, I fear that Leo XIV was chosen to challenge the West, particularly the United States, at this critical moment in world history. There are precedents for a Pope being chosen because the College of Cardinals believed that a particular historical circumstance required a very specific type of man as Pontiff.
As a Second World War loomed on the horizon, the Papal Secretary of State Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli was elected Pope Pius XII. As a young Papal Nuncio in Bavaria during the brief period of the Communist Bavarian Soviet, Pacelli developed a clear understanding of the Satanic evil that is Communism. As a diplomat, Pacelli negotiated Concordats between several nations and the Roman Catholic Church.
It was believed that Pacelli would be uniquely qualified to face the crisis posed by Hitler and Stalin to the faithful. There are several popular libels authored by Leftists claiming that Pacelli was “Hitler’s Pope”, because he did not engage in futile virtue-signaling in the face of Hitler’s conquests and policies. Instead of empty gestures, Pacelli acted with expedition and grace to protect both Catholics and Jews in several German-occupied nations during the war. There
is also compelling evidence that Pacelli, recognizing the unique evil in German National Socialism, set in motion secret efforts which culminated in the Stauffenburg plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
During the Cold War, Pope Pius XII placed the Roman Catholic Church firmly on the side of the Free World. For example, he supported the anti-Communist and pro-Christian efforts in Soviet-dominated Hungary of Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty; efforts which nearly led to Mindszenty’s martyrdom. Pius XII was also a great opponent of Leftist attempts to harmonize Roman Catholicism with the modern world.
Pius’ successor, Pope John XXIII, convened Vatican Council II. Vatican II promulgated precisely the kinds of policies opposed by Pius XII. In effect, it led the Church to abandon many significant traditional Roman Catholic understandings and practices in an effort to “be relevant” in today’s contemporary world. His successor, Pope Paul VI, implemented these reforms.
When Pope Paul VI died in 1978, the Roman Catholic Church, like all mainline Christian denominations, was shaking in the aftermath of ecumenical modernizing efforts such as Vatican Council II.
Vatican II had led to a dramatic reduction in Vocations calling young men and women to become Priests, Monks, and Nuns throughout the Western World. It also was followed with a conspicuous downturn in Church attendance by the Laity.
Instead of unity behind Catholic traditions, the post-Vatican II Church was deeply divided. Latin American Liberation Theologians were playing leading roles in Communist Revolutions throughout Central and South America. In the United States a Boston Street Priest, Father Paul Shanley, became a prominent supporter of NAMBLA, the so-called North American Man Boy Love Association.
Post Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church seemed to have a new and intense toleration for Eastern Orthodox Christians, Coptic Christians, Nestorian Christians, Protestant Christians, Reformed Christians, and even Jews and Moslems. A broad ecumenicism was the order of the day, where the Roman Catholic Church built bridges with most every type of believer.
Every type, that is, except for Conservative and traditional Roman Catholics.
At this time, the Church largely forbade the Latin-Rite Mass. It effectively decanonized St. Christopher. And, it distanced itself from Conservative Catholic Lay organizations such as Opus Dei.
Simultaneously, after the American defeat in the Vietnam War, Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union was making great exertions to expand its influence into Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Its efforts in Eastern Europe had crushed any dissent, sometimes with tanks, for decades. And its fellow Marxist Totalitarian Communist Police State, the Peoples’ Republic of China, was conducting the greatest mass-murder in human history, the Cultural Revolution.
The College of Cardinals had elected Cardinal Albino Luciani of Venice to try to heal the divisions within the Roman Catholic Church post-Vatican II. Sadly, Pope John Paul I died a mere thirty-three days after his election to the Pontificate.
So, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Poland was elected and took the name John Paul II. He was uniquely qualified to take on the dual challenges of his time, both within and beyond the Roman Catholic Church.
He worked to bring the Latin American Liberation Theologian Revolutionaries to heel. Famously, in 1983 he traveled to the heart of Catholic Communism, Sandinista Nicaragua. There, he criticized the clerical revolutionaries and their Marxist masters to their face. He worked assiduously to limit the powers and scope of religious orders most prone to engage in revolution, such as the Jesuits.
He strove to bring the Church into a consistent position affirming the dignity of human life in all circumstances, opposing abortion, the death penalty, and totalitarianism. His efforts did reverse the public fragmentation of the Church, without ending the divisions.
Throughout the Soviet Empire, Pope John Paul II worked to undermine totalitarianism and promote human dignity. Together with fellow Pole Lech Walesa and world leaders such as Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and the USA’s Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II did nothing less than undermine the Soviet Empire and bring it to a fall.
One way that he did this was by using the Soviet’s signing the 1975 Helsinki Accords on Human Rights against them. John Paul boldly pointed out Communist hypocrisy about the brutality of their rule and their many crimes against humanity.
John Paul’s successes and the longevity of his Pontificate led to him choosing most of the Cardinals who would select his successor. They chose German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who chose the Papal name of Benedict XVI. Pope Benedict’s reign included a special emphasis on restoring Christian Vocations and church participation within the Western world, particularly in Europe. He oversaw the Canonization of Pope John Paul II as a Roman Catholic Saint, and
moved forward the candidacy of Mother Teresa of Calcutta to the same honor. Benedict also mended fences with estranged Latin-Rite Catholics and other traditionalists.
However, in 2013 Pope Benedict resigned under very suspicious circumstances redolent of a Palace Coup d’Etat. He was replaced by the very type of Latin American Liberation Theologian that so vexed John Paul II, Jesuit Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires. This new Pope, Francis, moved Papal policy far to the Left. He identified the Capitalism of the American-led world economy as being of primary danger to the People of God. Unprecedentedly, Francis allowed the Chinese Communist Party to select Roman Catholic Bishops who served in Red China.
Francis chose a vast supermajority of the College of Cardinals who would elect his successor. Pope Leo XIV may very well have been chosen by the Latin American Liberation Theology wing of the College of Cardinals to do to the United States what Pope Saint John Paul II did to the Soviet Union.
As Karol Wojtyla knew Communism as only one who was subjected to it could understand it, Robert Francis Prevost understands the United States only as a natural-born American can. Was his election a result of the fear induced in Left-leaning circles around the world of President Donald J. Trump and the Make America Great Again movement?
Will Pope Leo XIV, a man who did not utter one word in English in his first Papal statement from the balcony, bring the full power of his considerable intellect and force of personality into a long, twilight struggle against American exceptionalism? Will the Roman Catholic Church, once again led by a man whose definitive professional experiences were as a Latin American Liberation Theologian, join the elites of Europe in abandoning liberal democracy in favor of social democracy? Will the genuine freedom of conscience and expression of Catholic, Christian, American, and Western traditionalists be sacrificed in order to establish a redistributive “great reset” along the lines described by the World Economic Forum?
Only time, and the choices that Pope Leo XIV makes, will tell.
