{"id":9233,"date":"2014-05-11T18:02:53","date_gmt":"2014-05-11T18:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=9233"},"modified":"2014-05-11T18:12:22","modified_gmt":"2014-05-11T18:12:22","slug":"populist-pope-populist-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/populist-pope-populist-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Populist Pope, Populist Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"satan_the_devil_painting_by_Michael_Pacher\"<\/a>The Washington Post<\/em> reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

VATICAN CITY \u2014 A darling of liberal Catholics and an advocate of inclusion and forgiveness, Pope Francis is hardly known for fire and brimstone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, if that is what he is “hardly known for”, people have not been paying attention. Listen to what he has, at least implicitly, to say about those who disagree with his pose on immigration (his speech<\/a> on Lampedusa would be a good place to start) or economics, and there\u2019s quite a bit of \u2018fire and brimstone\u2019, at least as that term is metaphorically understood.<\/p>\n

But for this pope, there\u2019s more to this than metaphor.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/em> explains:<\/p>\n

After his little more than a year atop the Throne of St. Peter, Francis\u2019s teachings on Satan are already regarded as the most old school of any pope since at least Paul VI, whose papacy in the 1960s and 1970s fully embraced the notion of hellish forces plotting to deliver mankind unto damnation.<\/p>\n

Largely under the radar, theologians and Vatican insiders say, Francis has not only dwelled far more on Satan in sermons and speeches than his recent predecessors have, but also sought to rekindle the Devil\u2019s image as a supernatural entity with the forces\u00ad of evil at his beck and call.<\/p>\n

Last year, for instance, Francis laid hands on a man in a wheelchair who claimed to be possessed by demons, in what many saw as an impromptu act of cleansing. A few months later, he praised a group long viewed by some as the crazy uncles of the Roman Catholic Church \u2014 the International Association of Exorcists \u2014 for \u201chelping people who suffer and are in need of liberation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026.Since its foundation, the church has taught the existence of the Devil. But in recent decades, progressive priests and bishops, particularly in the United States and Western Europe, have tended to couch Satan in more allegorical terms. Evil became less the wicked plan of the master of hell than the nasty byproduct of humanity\u2019s free will. Even Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, a lofty German theologian, often painted evil with a broad brush.<\/p>\n

Enter the plain-talking first pope from Latin America, where mystical views of Satan still hold sway in broad areas of the region. During his time as cardinal of Buenos Aires before rising to the papacy, Francis was known for stark warnings against \u201cthe tempter\u201d and \u201cthe father of lies.\u201d Now, his focus on the Devil is raising eyebrows even within the normally unquestioning walls of Vatican City.<\/p>\n

\u201cPope Francis never stops talking about the Devil; it\u2019s constant,\u201d said one senior bishop in Vatican City who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely. \u201cHad Pope Benedict done this, the media would have clobbered him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, as with so many of his actions, Francis may simply be correctly reading the winds of the Catholic Church…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a good, canny populist should.<\/p>\n

Not so coincidentally, the Devil (or, more accurately, fear of the old monster) has always been<\/a> a good recruiting sergeant for clergy looking to fill their pews.<\/p>\n

And so the show goes on:<\/p>\n

Although it is difficult to measure, Vatican officials talk about a resurgence of mystical rites in the church, including exorcism \u2014 or the alleged act of evicting demons from a living host. Cardinals in Milan; Turin, Italy; and Madrid, for instance, recently moved to expand the number of exorcists in their dioceses to cope with what they have categorized as surging demand.<\/p>\n

But by focusing on old-school interpretations of the Devil, some progressive theologians complain, the pope is undermining his reputation as a leader who in so many other ways appears to be more in step with modern society than his predecessor.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is opening the door to superstition,\u201d said Vito Mancuso, a Catholic theologian and writer.<\/p>\n

Among the things lurking behind that door is the alleged gateway to hell guarded by the small cluster of officially anointed exorcists of the Roman Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

By most accounts, the ranks of official exorcists number between 500 and 600 in a global church of more than 1 billion Catholics, with the vast majority operating in Latin America and Eastern Europe. This week, at the ninth and largest Vatican-sanctioned convention on exorcism, attendees gushed about the fresh recognition being afforded the field. Almost 200 delegates \u2014 most of them priests and nuns \u2014 from more than two dozen nations talked about how Satanic cults are spreading like wildfire in the age of the Internet.<\/p>\n

\u2026During the conference, the Rev. Cesar Truqui, an exorcist based in Switzerland, recounted one experience he had aboard a Swissair flight. \u201cTwo lesbians,\u201d he said, had sat behind him on the plane. Soon afterward, he said, he felt Satan\u2019s presence. As he silently sought to repel the evil spirit through prayer, one of the women, he said, began growling demonically and threw chocolates at his head\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lesbians! Throwing chocolates! <\/p>\n

Well, it beats projectile vomiting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Middle Ages, wrote that old crank Carl Jung, \u201clive on\u2026 merrily\u201d.<\/p>\n

And so they do.<\/p>\n

They are good box office too. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post reports: VATICAN CITY \u2014 A darling of liberal Catholics and an advocate of inclusion and forgiveness, Pope Francis is hardly known for fire and brimstone. Well, if that is what he is “hardly known for”, people have … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9,711],"tags":[998,16,489],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9233"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9241,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9233\/revisions\/9241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}