Col. Patrick Lang — Pope Francis may be removed from office

Col. Lang is a reactionary traditionalist. Pope Francis is a radical liberal. Coincidentally, Steven Bannon, also a reactionary traditionalist, is also highly critical of Francis.

However, there is no provision in canon law for removal of a pope for "perceived" heresy, as far as I know.

The liberal-traditionalist divide is asserting itself in a highly divisive world in which liberalism, traditionalism, fascism, and socialism are clashing in the historical dialectic, and the outcome is uncertain, to say the least. The world has not seen this level of ideological conflict since the 1930's.

Be this as it may, it is not the reason I chose to link to this, but rather because of this:

Most prominently, Pope Francis hosted a pagan ceremony with Pachamama statues in the Vatican Gardens on Oct. 4 and even blessed one of the statues.

If you have been following the Bolivia story, you will recognize "Pachamama" as the deities of the indigenous people of the region in which Bolivia is located. The coup leader explicitly mentioned this.

Why is this important? Because previously the official position of the Catholic Church in Latin America was in many places opposite to the reorientation of Francis to the point of being complicit in the repression that took place.

Francis apparently chose to send a strong signal that things have changed on his watch. And the Catholic Church still has major social and political influence in Latin America since it is one the fundamental cultural institutions.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Pope Francis may be removed from office
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.)
At the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lang was the Defense Intelligence Officer (DIO) for the Middle East, South Asia and counter-terrorism, and later, the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. At the DIA, he was a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service. He participated in the drafting of National Intelligence Estimates. From 1992 to 1994, all the U.S. military attachés worldwide reported to him. During that period, he also briefed President George H. W. Bush at the White House, as he had during Operation Desert Storm.

He was also the head of intelligence analysis for the Middle East for seven or eight years at that institution. He was the head of all the Middle East and South Asia analysis in DIA for counter-terrorism for seven years. For his service in the DIA, Lang received the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive. — Wikipedia

Alanna Ketler — Pope Francis: Capitalism is “Terrorism Against All Of Humanity”

Pope Francis doubles down for Christmas.

Once again, Pope Francis has made global headlines, shocking reporters late Sunday after blaming the “god of money” for the extremist violence that is taking place in Europe and the Middle East. A ruthless global economy, he argues, leads disenfranchised people to violence.

Responding to a question from a journalist about whether or not there is a link between Islam and terrorism, more specifically addressing the fatal attack on a priest by a Muslim extremist in France last week, Pope Francis said, “Terrorism grows when there is no other option, and as long as the world economy has at its center the god of money and not the person.” “This is fundamental terrorism, against all humanity,” he continued.

“I ask myself how many young people that we Europeans have left devoid of ideals, who do not have work. Then they turn to drugs and alcohol or enlist in [the Islamic State, or ISIS],” he said....

Collective Evolution
Pope Francis: Capitalism is “Terrorism Against All Of Humanity”

Alanna Ketler

teleSUR — The Pope Hails Communism for Focus on 'Poor' and 'Marginalized'

Asked if his pursuit and for a more egalitarian society meant he envisioned a “Marxist type of society,” the pontiff quipped "it is the communists who think like Christians.”…

teleSUR
The Pope Hails Communism for Focus on 'Poor' and 'Marginalized'

Reuters — Pope Francis and Bernie Sanders meet to discuss need for morality in world economy

Expect to be hearing a lot more talk about "the moral economy."

Raw Story
Pope Francis and Bernie Sanders meet to discuss need for morality in world economy
Reuters

Eric W. Dolan — Bernie Sanders: Of course conservatives attack Pope Francis — he is a socialist

Exploiting the feud between Francis and the Donald.

Raw Story
Bernie Sanders: Of course conservatives attack Pope Francis — he is a socialist
Eric W. Dolan

Voltaire Network Joint Declaration of Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia,

For the record.

Voltaire Network
Joint Declaration of Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia

Pope Francis, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow

Anastasia Borik — What you need to know about the meeting of the Pope and the Patriarch

Dispels some myths and explains background and details.

Russia Direct
What you need to know about the meeting of the Pope and the Patriarch
Anastasia Borik

Sputnik — Pope Francis Sees Putin as 'Only Man' to Defend Christians Around the World

This is really going to give the Western powers that be heartburn.

Sputnik
Pope Francis Sees Putin as 'Only Man' to Defend Christians Around the World

Richard Greene — BREAKING: Pope to Meet Head of Russian Church - It's Never Happened in 1000 Yr History

The long-feuding churches are meeting in atheist Cuba, with the blessing of communist hero Fidel Castro. How times change.

Why is this a big deal? Because Russia is under attack by Western elites, spearheaded out of Washington. This is a thumb in their eye. It will be amusing to see how they spin it.

The there will be the jokes: "Pope Francis, Patriarch Kirill, and Fidel Castro walk into a bar ….

Russia Insider
BREAKING: Pope to Meet Head of Russian Church - It's Never Happened in 1000 Yr History
Richard Greene

Daniel A. Wagner — A Papal Education

On achieving universal literacy.

A significant aspect of raising the level of collective consciousness is raising the general level of education, a point that R. Buckminster Fuller made forcefully fifty years ago.

Project Syndicate
A Papal Education
Daniel A. Wagner | UNESCO Chair in Learning and Literacy, Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, and Director of the International Literacy Institute

Jason Easley — Pope Francis Rejects Kim Davis’s Account Of Meeting And Refuses To Endorse Her Bigotry

Looks like the Kim Davis "secret meeting" with Pope Francis was a plant.

Politics USA
Pope Francis Rejects Kim Davis’s Account Of Meeting And Refuses To Endorse Her Bigotry
Jason Easley

See also

CNN’s Daniel Burke reports:

The day before Pope Francis met anti-gay county clerk Kim Davis in Washington last week, he held a private meeting with a longtime friend from Argentina who has been in a same-sex relationship for 19 years.

Yayo Grassi, an openly gay man, brought his partner, Iwan, as well several other friends to the Vatican Embassy on September 23 for a brief visit with the Pope. A video of the meeting shows Grassi and Francis greeting each other with a warm hug.
“Three weeks before the trip, he called me on the phone and said he would love to give me a hug,”Yayo Grassi told CNN. “He has never been judgmental,” he added. “He has never said anything negative.”

Crooks and Liars
Pope Francis Met With Gay Couple In D.C., Too

Susie Madrak

Noah Feldman — Pope Francis Sends Wrong Message to Kim Davis

We already knew that Pope Francis went out of his way while in the U.S. to visit the Little Sisters of the Poor, who object to filling out a form that would guarantee their organization an exemption from providing contraceptive care under the Affordable Care Act. But we found out Wednesday the pope also met with Kim Davis, in an event that did more than just signal support for Catholic conscientious objectors -- he was, unfortunately, giving succor to the very un-Catholic idea that public officials should break laws they don't like rather than resigning to avoid a conflict between faith and professional obligation.…

When Francis met with Davis -- who let it be noted is an evangelical Protestant, although her parents apparently are Catholic -- he was sending the wrong message, namely that there's something sympathetic or even legitimate about public official refusing to do his or her job when religious teaching goes the other way.

Running for president, John F. Kennedy had to overcome the Protestant allegation that as a Catholic he would obey the pope and not the laws and Constitution of the U.S. In a famous speech, Kennedy made it clear that he wouldn't take instructions from Rome. And he said he would be a president “whose fulfillment of his presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation.” That's exactly what’s required of all public officials. And no one should undercut it, pope or otherwise.

Bloomberg View
Pope Francis Sends Wrong Message to Kim Davis
Noah Feldman | professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard University

See also

France 24
Pope secretly met gay marriage row clerk Kim Davis on US trip

The pope, speaking to reporters as he returned home from his 10-day trip to the US and Cuba on Monday, said government officials had a “human right” to refuse to discharge a duty if they felt it violated their conscience.

Doubling down.

Matias Vernengo — Material well being and morality

Is there a contradiction in the pope's condemnation of capitalism and the demonstrable fact that the developed world is capitalist and as poor countries adopt capitalistic economics they develop more quickly, so that everyone is better off. In other words is the pope wrong about trickle down, that is, a rising tide does lift all boats?

Only if TINA ("there is no alternative"), and that is an unproven assumption. It also disregards the effect of neoliberalism on the developing world though the attendant neo-imperialism and neocolonialism.

Naked Keynesianism
Material well being and morality
Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, Bucknell University

See also

WCEG — The Equitablog
Plutocratic Self-Justification as a Dissipative Activity…
Brad DeLong

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks." — William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Oliver Knox — Hosting a Pope: Obama Learns from Bush

When Pope Francis makes his first visit to Washington, this week, President Obama will do something he has rarely done in his six years in office: He’ll follow George W. Bush’s example.

Obama will take the unusual step of welcoming Francis in person at Andrews Air Force Base, just outside Washington, greeting the head of the Catholic Church as he disembarks from the chartered aircraft that brings him to the United States after the first leg of his North American tour, a stop in Cuba.

Other world leaders don’t get that kind of reception.

Don't think that the pope has clout?

RealClearPolitics
Hosting a Pope: Obama Learns from Bush
Oliver Knox

Nathan Schneider — How Pope Francis Is Reviving Radical Catholic Economics

Weekend reading.

No one can accept the precepts of neoliberalism and consider themselves Christian,” he wrote in his days as Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires. As pope, he puts the matter more directly: “Such an economy kills.” In Laudato si’, he regards the environmental crisis as an economic-justice crisis as well: “The same mind-set which stands in the way of making radical decisions to reverse the trend of global warming also stands in the way of achieving the goal of eliminating poverty.”…

So does the pope’s assault on the economic order represent continuity, or an actual break? Has the content of faith changed, or just its emphases? And how much can (or will) Francis really do?…

There’s no comprehensive school of economics to describe all this. One attempt, championed by G.K. ­Chesterton and others a century ago, was dubbed “distributism.”Italian economist Stefano Zamagni, a leading contributor to the economic teaching of Benedict XVI, tells me the reading lists at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences have lately included Elinor Ostrom, the Nobel Prize–winning theorist of the commons. Rather than the market or the state per se, Catholic economics often attends to those common treasures in between that we manage for ourselves.

Zamagni belongs to the school of “civil economics,” which regards the notions of a utility-maximizing Homo economicus and an impersonal “invisible hand” ruling the market as impoverished visions of economic life. “If all you do is increase growth, you destroy social relations, family relations, and the environment,” he says. Civil economics, by contrast, seeks to evaluate companies according to more humane metrics than just profit and loss, and to identify ways that people can shape the economy with their values.

Zamagni belongs to the school of “civil economics,” which regards the notions of a utility-maximizing Homo economicus and an impersonal “invisible hand” ruling the market as impoverished visions of economic life. “If all you do is increase growth, you destroy social relations, family relations, and the environment,” he says. Civil economics, by contrast, seeks to evaluate companies according to more humane metrics than just profit and loss, and to identify ways that people can shape the economy with their values.…

In an address to members of Italian cooperatives last February, Francis championed what he called “an authentic, true cooperative…where capital does not have command over men, but men over capital.”….

Laudato si’ was drafted by a cardinal from Ghana and cites bishops’ conferences from all over the world. It calls for international institutions to address the climate crisis and for governments to act. But mainly it calls for a widespread conversion to local economic resistance, following the lead of the poorest and most vulnerable.

The Nation
How Pope Francis Is Reviving Radical Catholic Economics
Nathan Schneider

David F. Ruccio — Does capitalism cause poverty? Let us count the ways

Clearly, Pope Francis’s criticisms of capitalism (as I have discussed here and here) have touched a nerve. They certainly have in the case of Harvard’s Ricardo Hausmann, who attempts to argue both that capitalism is not responsible for causing poverty and that more capitalism will eventually eliminate poverty.

Hausmann’s story is a very familiar one. What it comes down to is the idea that the majority of people before capitalism arrived one the scene were poor and as capitalism develops and more and more people became wage-laborers with rising real wages. But areas of the world still remain outside of capitalism and those people will remain poor unless and until capitalism is allowed to fully develop.

It’s a story that is as old as Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and it’s been told and retold by generations of classical and neoclassical economists ever since.
Their story is certainly right about one thing: capitalism does create the promise of ending poverty.

The problem is, their story conveniently overlooks important aspects of the development of capitalism—all the ways capitalism has over the course of its history created more, not less, poverty. I’m thinking of four instances in particular.…

Occasional Links & Commentary
Does capitalism cause poverty? Let us count the ways
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics University of Notre Dame Notre Dame

Maximilian Auffhammer — Why the Pope is wrong on markets

Should be "Why I think the Pope is wrong on markets." Is the reason for that type of thinking ideologically and cognitively biased. Pope Francis's economic advisors have convinced him it is, and that's my view, too. The neoliberal bias is over-reliance on markets. How has that worked out?  Why would it change suddenly enough to make the needed difference?

In may view, markets could be one of the tools employed but relying completely on markets seems to me to be unrealistic in that there are so many and diverse vested interests in preserving market imperfections already created and culturally accepted. 

Radical action is required to shift energy sources away from carbon-based sources to clean renewable sources. This will require both institutional change that only governments can mandate quickly. It will also require public investment in clean renewable energy as a public utility. 

This means recognizing and acknowledging that a healthy and sustainable environment is a public good and that living in a healthy sustainable environment is a natural right included in the right to life. This falls to government to ensure as the guarantor of good order and security in a society. The rule of law must be used toward this end rather reliance on market forces by attempting to reduce or eliminate market imperfections.

Economists who assume that market forces are the solution to all social, political, and economic problems are just blinkered by ideology.  

The Berkeley Blog
Why the Pope is wrong on markets
Maximilian Auffhammer | George Pardee Jr. Professor of International Sustainable Development at UC Berkeley

ht Mark Thoma at Economist's View

John Stanton — Neoliberal American Capitalism Rocks On!

Is there no alternative? Is resistance futile? Interesting essay.

Dissident Voice

Neoliberal American Capitalism Rocks On!
John Stanton

Paul B. Farrell — Pope Francis leading the new American (Socialist) Revolution

Yes, Pope Francis is encouraging civil disobedience, leading a rebellion. Listen closely, Francis knows he’s inciting political rebellion, an uprising of the masses against the world’s superrich capitalists. And yet, right-wing conservatives remain in denial, tuning out the pope’s message, hoping he’ll just go away like the “Occupy Wall Street” movement did.

Never. America’s narcissistic addiction to presidential politics is dumbing down our collective brain. Warning: Forget Bernie vs. Hillary. Forget the circus-clown-car distractions created by Trump vs. the GOP’s Fab 15. Pope Francis is only real political leader that matters this year. Forget the rest. Here’s why:

Pope Francis is not just leading a “Second American Revolution,” he is rallying people across the Earth, middle class as well as poor, inciting billions to rise up in a global economic revolution, one that could suddenly sweep the planet, like the 1789 French storming the Bastille.

Unfortunately, conservative capitalists — Big Oil, Koch billionaires, our GOP Congress and all fossil-fuel climate-science deniers — are blind to the fact their ideology is on the wrong side of history, that by fighting a no-win battle they are committing suicide, self-destructing their own ideology.

The fact is: The era of capitalism is rapidly dying, a victim of its own success, sabotaged by greed and a loss of a moral code. In 1776 Adam Smith’s capitalism became America’s core economic principle. We enshrined his ideal of capitalism in our constitutional freedoms. We prospered. America became the greatest economic superpower in world history.

But along the way, America forgot Smith’s original foundation was in morals, values, doing what’s right for the common good. Instead we drifted into Ayn Rand’s narcissistic “mutant capitalism,” as Vanguard’s founder Jack Bogle called the distortion of Adam Smith’s principles in his classic, “The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism.” The battle is lost.…

When one assumes that economics is science, hence value free, then policy becomes based on efficiencies.  Neoliberalism is the equation of political liberalism with economic liberalism, which reduces policy to value-free efficiencies wrapped in narratives to sell it politically.

As the term "capitalism" implies, capital is prioritized over labor. So policy aims at capital formation and efficiency of capital.

Then the task becomes removing frictions, including values. The result is predictable —amorality that doesn’t distinguish between morality and immorality, ethical and unethical. What is legal is permitted, and what is legal is determined by those controlling the system.

But not for much longer, as Pope Francis’ revolution accelerates, as his relentless socialist message of sacred rights for all people makes clear. Why? Our mutating capitalist elite have triggered a massive backlash, a “profound human crisis, the denial of the primacy of the human person. The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money.”

The solution?

1. Socialism: Everyone has a sacred right to land, lodging and labor
2. Humans, not capitalist profits, must be at the center of global economics
3. Billions worldwide, cannot wait much longer for action
4. Revolutions begin with angry citizens, not politicians or philanthropists
5. Warning: Socialism is now a moral obligation, a commandment to obey

MarketWatch
Pope Francis leading the new American (Socialist) Revolution
Paul B. Farrell

See also

Digressions&Impressions
On the Significance of the Revival of Christian Philosophy
Eric Schliesser

Jubilee USA Network — Pope Francis Calls for Global Bankruptcy Process

The pope is on a roll.

Pope Francis called for an international bankruptcy process in a news conference as he left Latin America on Monday. According to the Associated Press, when asked about the Greek debt crisis, Francis stated, "if a company can declare bankruptcy, why can't a country do so and we go to the aid of others?" Francis offered further comments noting that too many countries are struggling with high debts and he suggested a United Nations bankruptcy proposal could be the solution.‎

“Pope Francis knows that heavy debt loads cause poverty and inequality,” said Eric LeCompte, who consulted the Vatican on its position. LeCompte is the head of the religious development organization Jubilee USA Network. “The Pope's statement is a logical extension of the Catholic Church's strong support of debt relief for struggling countries."

Common Dreams
Pope Francis Calls for Global Bankruptcy Process
Jubilee USA Network