Enabling Chaplain and Cloak-holder for the Bourgeois West.

One of the many falsehoods told about this pontificate is that it is supposedly one of the "Third World," and is not focused on the obsessions of the West. 

This is, of course, utter bullshit. 

For starters, it ignores the cultural reach of the apostate West and the determination of Western clerics and those educated in a Western milieu to accommodate themselves to that culture.

And really--look at the Bishop of Rome's inner circle: men of northern and western Europe to the core (with the exception of Maradiaga who nevertheless regurgitates the same slogans). Then, of course, there is the soft, therapeutic rhetoric of the man at the top, oh-so-sensitive to the decadents who respond with rapturous applause. 

And why not? This pontificate is wholly concerned with bourgeois rhetoric and therapy, right down to the admiration of Western-born Marxism and class consciousness. The tenured pseudo-revolutionaries at your local public university sure aren't living in slums nor are their kids rubbing elbows with children from déclassé zip codes.

With that in mind, R.R. Reno offers this eviscerating insight into the Atlantic Canadian bishops' pro-euthanasia declaration and the pontiff who midwifed it:

These bishops are convinced that they can bring people the gospel of life in some mysterious, inner way, even as their words and actions tell the world that the choice of death should occasion “dialogue,” not a clear statement of moral truth.

Shame on the bishops of Canada’s Maritime Provinces. Shame on this pontificate. As I’ve written in the past, sidelining the objectivity of truth encourages the triumph of bourgeois religion, a generic do-good sentimentality characterized by only one stricture—which is that the conduct of the well-off, well-educated, and well-intentioned residents of the rich world of the West is not to be judged in any definitive way. People like us make mistakes, of course. But our issues are “highly complex” and “intensely emotional,” and we mean well. We can be complicit with “structures of injustice,” and even play roles in an “economy that kills.” 

But we never sin.

It’s ironic that this supposedly revolutionary pope should be such a reassuring champion of the therapeutic culture of the West. Though perhaps it’s not ironic. The rhetoric of revolution has long served wonderfully to transform sin, judgment, and redemption into injustice, consciousness-raising, and social change.