The right wing and their cohorts in the media, really, really dislike this new pope. From this Saturday's The Journal Editorial Report on Fox "news," host Paul Gigot and his guests were all opining on how terrible it is that Pope Francis dared to speak up about taking care of the poor and income disparity. It wasn't as in your face as Rush Limbaugh attacking the pope as a Marxist, but the message was still loud and clear.
Gigot's "all Catholic panel" with The Wall Street Journal's Dan Henninger, Mary Anastasia O'Grady and James Freeman's complaints and comments about Pope Francis ranged from:
The pope is over his head.
To...
It's fine to shepherd the flock away from materialism, but don't dare suggest that "forcing" anyone to give to the poor is going to bring people closer to Christ.
To...
The pope just really doesn't understand how markets work because he's from Argentina.
And then we had this doozy from Dan Henninger with what sounded like a not so thinly veiled threat at the end:
HENNINGER: I think part of what we're seeing here Paul, if I may say this is, this is the first step foward of a rookie pope, alright? Pope's have always, traditionally, been very careful about the way they describe these sorts of things and Francis, when he was a cardinal in Argentina was very outspoken.
He's finding that the media, modern media, will define his views for him if he isn't more explicit in making clear what he's saying and he wasn't quite clear about a lot of these issues in this letter and I think that if he steps back he'll see that a pope has to be a little more careful about choosing his words.
