The Socialist Pope: What’s Not to Like?
My
Parents
I was what they call a “red
diaper baby.” That’s the kind of child who was brought up in a home with
socialist or communist ideas. My parents looked like ordinary working class
folk. They didn’t go to jam sessions or take drugs. My father didn’t sport a
beard—not even a mustache. They didn’t go to political meetings or attend
demonstrations.
But their ideas and tastes in music were
much more to the left than I realized. How many children’s parents sang songs
by Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger while riding in their cars? Later on, the
songs would also include Peter, Paul, and Mary and Bob Dylan. And they also
listened to what we would call today World Music.
Our home was full of books. Books galore.
And I was allowed to read anything I happened to pick up. Those books included
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and The Communist
Manifesto, both of which I read as a preteen. I also read Pregnancy
and Birth at age 11 when my mom was pregnant with my youngest sister.
Many years later when I asked my mother why these particular books were around,
she said “oh a neighbor left them in the hall, so we picked them up.” Ha, some
excuse! Why pick them up? “Ma, you were a communist,”
I teased her.
Well, not really a communist. More like an
American socialist, much like Bernie Sanders, what one would call a Democratic
Socialist. My mom and dad were both union. When transit workers threatened to
strike the Long Island Railroad, higher-ups where I worked complained. Hey, it
was going to really inconvenience me, but I piped up: “My mommy was union. My
daddy was union. And if those people need to go on strike, it’s going to really
mess up my commute, but I support them just the same.” And my husband is union
too. I would be except my field is not unionized. They all looked at me like I
had two heads.
My father was a regular Archie Bunker
type—he even looked like him. He’d say things and my mother would get
furious at him for that. But when push came to shove, he would help anybody in
distress no matter what that person’s race was. I was taught to despise racism
and that started when I was very young. I remember visiting a friend and saying
to my mother that my friend was nice but “she is so dirty.” My mom explained
that my friend wasn’t dirty at all. She was just Hispanic. I saw the first
black person in our area while I was on a bus. I asked my mother, “why is that
lady so black?” My mother was horrified but the lady rose magnificently to the
occasion by saying “I was born that way.” Our neighborhood was becoming more
and more diverse and my parents didn’t care. I went to school with and played
with all sorts of people, and they were always welcome in my home—race,
religion, and economic class did not matter.
Jesus
In Catechism,
we were taught about how Jesus Christ fed the poor and healed the sick. He did
not ask for means testing. He would just as soon run to heal a Roman soldier’s
child as he would any fellow Jews—any day of the week. Nobody in the crowds
were asked for proof that they were poor. They got their loaves and fishes no
matter what. Jesus was always telling people to ditch their riches and give to
needy people. Jesus was one heck of a socialist, if you ask me.
Jesus accepted people who were different,
such as the Good Samaritan. He ate with sinners and allowed a tax collector to
be a disciple. He also accepted a prostitute to be one of his followers and
appeared first to her after he died. When Saul became converted, he had a
vision of allowing Gentiles to be part of Christianity. That was all part of
the plan.
Jesus believed in redemption. One could
atone for past sins. No person’s fate was set in stone. There was no
predestination in his worldview. When he said to be “born again,” he did not
mean to become part of an elite group of people who looked down on everybody
else. He believed in spreading the Word, but not in torturing or discriminating
against people who did not listen.
And let us remember one very salient fact:
Jesus was born as a Jew. He lived as a Jew. And he died as a
Jew. So, there was absolutely NO room for any kind of antisemitism in what he
preached. He never preached hate against any group of
people. He only preached about what he thought was best to do. He talked about
behaviors and did not marginalize people. My parents pretty much believed this
way.
Differences
Yet, there
were differences too. My parents were not churchgoers. They used birth control.
They did not spurn unwed mothers. They did not disapprove of my going to my
best friend’s apartment, where a drag queen watched the younger children. My
parents were years ahead of their time in accepting that people had different
lifestyles.
With a background like that, I wasn’t
exactly going to turn into a conservative Republican.
What about Protestant? There are all sorts
of Protestants. Some are very liberal and others are very backward. I could see
myself with the liberal Protestants, but never with those crazy evangelicals
who claim that there is no salvation except in their own particular sects.
There are evangelicals with great hearts who mean no harm, but the other kind
are really poisonous. In fact, they are the exact opposite of all the things
that Jesus preached with their homophobia, racism, and lack of compassion for
poor and disabled people.
Pope Francis fired the ambassador who set
up a meeting that included the homophobic Kim Davis. That meeting made a
horrid, hateful blot on the Pope’s glowing visit.
Pope Replaces Ambassador to U.S. Who Set Up Kim Davis Meeting
By Daniel Burke,
CNN Religion Editor
Visit:
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/12/europe/pope-vigano-resign/index.html
I can’t say whether or not Jesus would
approve of gay marriages but I can say that he would never had denied a gay
person therapy for any problem. I can say that Jesus would never have tried to
keep people out of the country simply because they had different backgrounds
and beliefs. I can say that he never, ever, ever would have denied poor people
help. He would never, ever, ever have blamed them for their economic problems.
I can’t say whether or not Jesus would
approve of contraception, but I can say I think he would have preferred it to
abortions. And I believe he would have been very compassionate toward women who
felt that they needed abortions. He would not have made up laws about these
things. He also would have favored the kind of safety net that would provide a
much better alternative to abortions.
Yes, indeed there are differences between
what I believe in and what is current Catholic doctrine. Yet, the socialist
strain that runs through true Catholicism and the antiwar stance of the Church
has its appeal. When the Pope meets with Bernie Sanders, the Democratic
Socialist, and then goes to Greece and picks up a little refugee girl crying at
his feet and lifts her up to stand and pats her head, and then takes 14
refugees on his plane back to the Vatican, what’s not to like?
Jesus was the original
socialist and Pope Francis is following the Way of Jesus.
