Opinion: A closer look at Pope Francis

By Thomas Carpenter
Daily Beacon
January 26, 2015

http://utdailybeacon.com/opinion/columns/workshop/2015/jan/26/closer-look-pope-francis/

In 2014, pop culture had a surprising hero: The Pope.

Pope Francis joined the ranks of the selfie and Lil Jon for some of the most talked about topics of last year. Comments like, “Atheists can be good people too” and the fact that he used to be a nightclub bouncer gave him a status among young people the papacy hasn’t enjoyed since the Great Schism.

He has been hailed as a “progressive” and “revolutionary” pope, but are his policies really any different from previous popes? He certainly is more charismatic than that bowl of cherries Benedict XVI, but is he really the progressive the media and non-Catholics alike are calling him? It turns out it may just be a facade.

First of all, let me just say that anyone would look hip after having Benedict XVI as pope. This guy was about as lively as a banana slug. So here comes the newly elected Pope Francis giving impassioned sermons about the mistreatment of homosexuals, and the liberals just absolutely went crazy.

In fact, Benedict said the exact same thing in his “On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons” letter but spent so much time talking about the sinfulness of homosexuality, it was dismissed by the left. Pope Francis has made it clear he believes homosexuality is very much a sin in the eyes of God and is in fact, “an attempt to destroy God’s plan.”

Pope Francis also hasn’t done anything to change some of the more sexist traditions of the Catholic church, including the prohibition of women serving as clergy, stating that “the door is closed” for women hoping to occupy those roles.

I don’t mean to rag on him too much. The Pope has been very vocal of his opposition to the wealth and opulence that exists in many churches and priesthoods all over the world, and he has called for a more frugal and chaste church. He has also called out large corporations and their leaders for the increasing wage disparity crisis affecting economies all over the globe.

More recently even, he has come out as a bit of a treehugger, condemning the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. What his papacy might (and should) be defined by, though, is how he handles the child sex abuse scandal which plagues the global catholic church. So far, he has excommunicated one priest from Argentina and placed another on house arrest. He has also continued to place victims of sexual abuse on his advisory council.

While these are certainly steps in the right direction, a great deal more needs to be done on the matter before we can start praising the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis has some great PR people, that much is clear. He has been open to the fact that some really bad things (i.e. child abuse) are in fact bad in the eyes of God and the church, but it remains to be seen if any real progress will come to the Roman Catholic Church anytime soon.