The Vatican says the Pope's critics are far right extremists

Vatican Insider, a website run by La Stampa, today suggests that the far right is battling the Pope. In fact the Pope's critics are not far right or even right-wing - they are simply appalled or bewildered Catholics who fear he deliberately chose to ignore the allegations against former Cardinal McCarrick. And, if they are well informed, they think he has been ignoring other sex scandals involving prelates who are his allies. 

This line is very disingenuous of the Vatican, assuming that this story comes from the Vatican, as I do. The name Vatican Insider does suggest this, after all.

By the way, and digressing, what is meant by the far right? Admirers of General Franco or Mussolini? 

The article explains. Catholics who like the traditional family, dislike the modern liberal world, fear the Islamification of Europe, see a clash of civilisations between the West and the rest, prefer conservative Catholic societies to multicultural ones and disapprove of single sex marriage. (I thought all Catholics disapproved of single sex marriage.) 

Perhaps Catholics who want no more Muslim immigrants entering Europe.

Catholics who agree with the Czech, Slovak and Polish governments, with Mateo Salvini, who is a Catholic, and Viktor Orban who converted to Protestantism. 

The latter, they point out, detests George Soros, who is Jewish. The implication that Viktor Orban is an anti-Semite is completely unfounded and therefore completely disgusting.

It reminds me of the Vatican paper that described Mr. Salvini as evil. I hope this was not on direct papal instructions. I feel it may have been.

Getting back to the point, Catholics who think in these socially conservative ways are irrelevant to the outcry over sex scandals and the Pope's alleged complicity in their cover-up. Irrelevant to the fact that all Catholics are horrified by the way in which prelates have interfered with boys and seduced seminarians and their wrong-doing has been hidden.

The suggestion that it is the far right who are stirring up trouble because they dislike Pope Francis's liberalism reminds me of Cardinal Wuerl's remark recently that the scandal "isn’t a massive, massive crisis”. 

It really is, which is why he is now said to be resigning.

In a similar vein, Cardinal Cupich of Chicago told NBC that

"The Pope has a bigger agenda. He's got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the church. We're not going to go down a rabbit hole on this."

Uncovering sexual scandals is a distraction from important things, not from preaching the gospel but modish, left-wing politics.

Perhaps His Eminence meant a distraction from a project to make the Church politically left-wing and socially liberal, the project that began when a small group of cardinals succeeded in persuading their peers to elect Pope Francis. The then Cardinal McCarrick was too old to vote at the conclave but spoke there and played his part in helping Francis to win.

How far we are from Pope Pius XII, who died in 1960,  and his predecessors, for whom liberalism and 'Enlightenment values' were ipso facto bad things. They were much more socially conservative than any European politician these days.

How far we are from earlier popes, like Pope St Pius V, to take one example from scores, who organised alliances to protect Christendom from Muslim invaders. The Christian naval victory at Lepanto was in large part the achievement of St Pius V.