New Pope Under Impression Jesus Wasn't Even A Stockbroker

New Pope continued his socialist rabble rousing today with the release of his Lenten Message, which, like the music of Sex Bob-Omb, will make you think about death and get sad and stuff. Except with redemption and resurrection, too, and you don't have to fight anyone's seven evil exes. And he's still doing that economic justice thing that he's so big on, although when you read through the whole thing, there is a surprising amount of Jesus stuff in there too.

The sermon as a whole is pretty basic Franciscan stuff, about how Christ chose to be poor because that's the most human way for God to relate to humans; we won't go into the theology here except to note that Francis doesn't once mention that the Parable of the Talents teaches us that Jesus wants us to invest in the stock market and get rich.

The real piss-off-Rush-Limbaugh part of the sermon comes in Francis's discussion of "destitution," which Francis addresses as the root of sin:

we Christians are called to confront the poverty of our brothers and sisters, to touch it, to make it our own and to take practical steps to alleviate it. Destitution is not the same as poverty: destitution is poverty without faith, without support, without hope. There are three types of destitution: material, moral and spiritual. Material destitution is what is normally called poverty, and affects those living in conditions opposed to human dignity: those who lack basic rights and needs such as food, water, hygiene, work and the opportunity to develop and grow culturally.

Silly Pope, don't you know that the real cause of sin is liberalism? And once again, the Pope flirts with being exactly like Marx and Hitler, calling for "a fair distribution of wealth" and for a bleeding-heart commitment to "justice, equality, simplicity and sharing." Sometimes we think the Pope doesn't even understand what America is all about.

In the realm of "moral destitution, which consists in slavery to vice and sin," the sermon claims that such vices are often driven by physical destitution and hopelessness:

And how many are plunged into this destitution by unjust social conditions, by unemployment, which takes away their dignity as breadwinners, and by lack of equal access to education and health care. In such cases, moral destitution can be considered impending suicide.

And then he's off on a bunch more God stuff, which we suppose is his job after all. We should probably stop holding out hope for an atheist pope, maybe. Still, unlike the all too familiar sermons we remember about how the poor are really, really lucky to have nothing because that brings them closer to God, at least here we have a Pope who says that the Christian goal of self-denial is much easier to approach when you at least have some stuff that you can afford to give up for Lent:

we would do well to ask ourselves what we can give up in order to help and enrich others by our own poverty. Let us not forget that real poverty hurts: no self-denial is real without this dimension of penance. I distrust a charity that costs nothing and does not hurt.

And no, he still hasn't stripped the Vatican of its gold and art collections. And he hasn't excommunicated the child-abusing priests. Still, he sounds a lot more like what we'd want a pope to sound like than either of the guys who preceded him, and that's still saying a lot.

[ AP / Vatican News ]

 Follow Doktor Zoom on Twitter. He likes these friars from the Vatican News site a lot. Franciscan monastery outing, or Phish concert?