-By Warner Todd Huston
The Old Media has been looking for ways to attack the new Pope, Francis I, since he was introduced to the world. Initially, the media attempted the needle the new Pontiff into “reforming” the Church or face failure, but this week it seems that there is a new line of attack: he is an advocate for dictators.
Of course, by “reform,” the Old Media means that they want the new Pope to change Church doctrine on such things as ordination of women, support of gay marriage, and other liberal shibboleths. But discussion of what the Old Media thinks is “reform” is yesterday’s snipe.
This week the Pope is being portrayed as a supporter of the so-called “Dirty War” waged between political factions in Argentina and The New York Times is the chief proponent of the idea that Pope Francis faces “entanglements” in that War.
In a piece headlined, “Starting a Papacy, Amid Echoes of a ‘Dirty War’,” the Times associates Pope Francis with several priests who unfortunately supported government officials guilty of oppression and violations of civil liberties in the Dirty War and notes he has “never apologized” for the fact that the Argentine Church never came out vociferously against the military Junta between 1976 and 1983.
After mentioning the several priests that did disgrace themselves by associating with the Dirty War, The Times goes on to say that Francis “faces his own entanglement with the Dirty War.”
The Times goes on to say, “he has repeatedly had to dispute claims that he allowed the kidnapping of two priests in his order in 1976, accusations the Vatican is calling a defamation campaign.”
As Andrew Klaven pointedly said, “This is just despicable, isn’t it? Lead with examples of some priests who were wicked then segue into a paragraph about the pope to make it sound like he was one of them. Really–for shame.”
Apparently “disputing claims” seems to automatically make one guilty despite that these “claims” have never been proven.
The Church’s record in Argentina was decidedly mixed during the Dirty War, to be sure. Many priests spoke out loudly against the oppressive government, many more stayed silent but tried to work quietly behind the scenes to mitigate the evils of the oppression, and still others backed the government’s actions. For sure the Church itself never came out strongly against the atrocities as a matter of policy.
But one thing seems true. Francis, then Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was not one that came out in favor of the government’s actions nor did he engage in any actions that supported it. In fact, as the Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady reports, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was “a tireless advocate of the poor and outspoken critic of corruption” and Argentina has lost a powerful voice “against the malfeasance of the government of President Cristina Kirchner.”
Unlike The Times, O’Grady notes that no one has uncovered any evidence that Bergoglio aided and abetted the government’s oppression and that claims to the contrary are fostered mostly by “Former members of terrorist groups” and “modern-day fellow travelers in the Argentine government.”
O’Grady also points out that one man who served on the national commission that investigated the atrocities, Graciela Fernandez Meijide, confirmed that there was never even a hint that Bergoglio was guilty of any collaboration.
“Graciela Fernández Meijide, a human-rights activist and former member of the national commission on the disappearance of persons,” O’Grady reports, “told the Argentine press last week that ‘of all the testimony I received, never did I receive any testimony that Bergoglio was connected to the dictatorship.'”
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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