"Pope Francis’s increasing tendency to conflate Catholic wisdom with a left-leaning secular humanitarianism."

Daniel Mahoney, writing at The Quadrant,

is troubled by Pope Francis’s increasing tendency to conflate Catholic wisdom with a left-leaning secular humanitarianism.

...Recently, returning from another World Youth Day in Kracow, Poland, the Pope made the fantastic and disturbing claim that “Catholic violence” is just as much a problem as “Islamic violence”—and this right after the brutal assassination of Father Jacques Hammel by Islamist terrorists in a church in northern France.

The only example of “Catholic violence” that Pope Francis could come up with was that of a baptized young man who had killed his girlfriend for clearly non-religious reasons or motives.

...Recently, in an interview with the leftist Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari, he claimed that it is the Communists today who “think like Christians.” He ignored the Church’s principled and long-standing opposition to every form of totalitarianism. Communists are said by Francis to have a special Christ-like concern for the poor. The Pope is silent about the tens of millions of ordinary workers and peasants who perished at the hands of ideological regimes of the Communist type in the 20th century. Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the Pope has no understanding of Communist theory and practice, that he associates Communists exclusively with those activists and intellectuals imprisoned or killed by the military government during the “dirty war” in Argentina during the 1970’s. In a word, his vision is remarkably parochial and blind to the greatest evil of the twentieth century, a totalitarianisms inspired by viciously anti-Christian ideology.

...And just the other day, he spoke about how he was “grieving” for the dead tyrant of Cuba, a man who turned that fabled island into an island prison and persecuted the Catholic Church for many decades (even outlawing Christmas for thirty years). We Christians are obliged to pray for our enemies, but we are also required to know whom they are and to vigorously oppose those who threaten liberty and human dignity and the fundamentals of political civilization. No pope should confuse a tyrant—especially one who was at the same time ideological and megalomaniacal—with a statesmen deserving of our respect. The Pope’s comments on Communism and Castro do not honor the truth or contribute to intellectual and moral clarity or seriousness.

When Cardinal Burke and three other Cardinals issue a “dubia” requesting clarification on the ambiguities created by a famous footnote in Amoris Laetitia (does the Church still stand with Christ in affirming the indissolubility of marriage and in repudiating “situational ethics”), the Pope remains silent even as he criticizes the “legalism” of those who dare request doctrinal and moral clarity.

Read more here.