Shedding the Catholic Church’s historic immunity from American politics

Victor Davis Hanson writes about Pope Francis' visit to America.

Unpopular though it may be to say so, I, for one, grew exhausted by the non-stop pronouncements /commentaries of Pope Francis. The spiritual leader of 1 billion Catholics — roughly half of the world’s Christians — Francis just completed a high-profile, endlessly publicized visit to the United States.

But unlike past visiting pontiffs, the Argentine-born Francis weighed in on a number of hot-button U.S. social, domestic, and foreign-policy issues during a heated presidential-election cycle.

...Hundreds of thousands of migrants are now swarming illegally into the West, whether into Europe mostly from the Middle East, or into America from Latin America. They arrive in numbers that make them difficult to assimilate and integrate, with radical repercussions on the host country’s ability to serve the social needs of its own poorer citizens.

Yet Francis reserves most of his advice for host countries to ensure that they treat the often-impoverished and mostly young male newcomers with Christian humanity. That advice is admirable. But the pope might have likewise lectured the leaders of countries such as Syria and Mexico to stop whatever they are doing to heartlessly drive out millions of their own citizens from their homes.

Or he might have suggested that migrants seek lawful immigration and thereby more charitably not harm the interests of immigrants who wait patiently until they can resettle lawfully.

Or he might have praised the West for uniquely creating conditions that draw in, rather than repel, the world’s migrants.

...Because Pope Francis has shed the Catholic Church’s historic immunity from American politics, for good or bad, he and the church are fair game for political pushback.

But do we really want a priest in the role of Bernie Sanders or Ted Cruz, dressed in ancient Roman miter and vestments, addressing hot-button issues with divine sanction?

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