Brent Budowsky: The right vs. the pope

Conservative columnist George Will earlier this week unleashed a vindictive and insulting attack against Pope Francis that embodies what has gone wrong with an American right once led by serious conservatives such as William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan.

Buckley and Reagan would be appalled by what some of their ideological heirs have done in the name of the conservative philosophy they cherished. Will, perhaps confusing the Holy Father with Donald Trump, titled his attack “Pope Francis’s fact-free flamboyance.” His rant included incoherent references to Galileo and the Peróns of Argentina in an attempt to support his opining that Francis is wrong about protecting the earth from climate change and saving the impoverished from starvation and poverty caused by economic injustice.

{mosads}Francis, who in my view should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his extraordinary contributions to humanity, is the most admired public figure in America and throughout the world. Reagan and Buckley, who believed in a nobler vision of conservatism than many on the right do today and who possessed a greater understanding of political self-interest than many Republicans do today, would be outraged by denunciations of Francis from extreme and strident voices on the right.

The GOP has a pope problem because many on the right who glibly talk about a war against Christianity are waging their own rhetorical war against Francis. And leading Republicans, many of whom privately know better, are so intimidated that they allow voices of intolerance and defenders of injustice to deform the traditions of conservatism and distort the values of Republicanism.

When Francis champions economic equality and reform of the financial system, he is not advocating Marxism, as fanatics on the right claim, he is reminding us that Jesus taught us that we should sell our possessions and give the proceeds to the poor. Remember from the Gospel of Matthew: the gentle and meek — not the powerful and rich — shall inherit the earth.

When Francis condemns the idolatry of the cult of money, he is not praising Trump for bragging about his billions of dollars, endorsing a politics dominated by those with the money to buy our government or accepting a financial system that lavishly rewarded those whose greed drove the world to an economic crash.

When Francis challenges political and financial leaders to enact sweeping reforms and condemns the systematic injustice of the trickle-down economics advocated by conservatives, his teachings derive from the Sermon on the Mount, not the “Communist Manifesto.”

When Francis speaks of just and humane treatment of immigrants and refugees, he is aligned with the progressive American ideal embodied by the Statue of Liberty that welcomes the tired and the poor, not a nativist conservative vision to build a Berlin Wall on our borders.

When Francis speaks of feeding the poor and helping the needy, he preaches the values of the Golden Rule, not cutting food for the hungry children of jobless parents.

When Francis issues an encyclical about protecting the earth from the rapacious greed of polluters, he aligns himself with the policies of leaders named Clinton, Gore and Obama, and not deniers of science or profiteers who poison our water and dirty our air.

When Francis calls for ecumenical cooperation and respect among diverse peoples, he offers no praise for politicians who run campaigns of bigotry against Muslims, suggest that hordes of Hispanic immigrants are murderers and rapists or call women fat slobs and bimbos.

When Francis advocates diplomacy to protect our security, he aligns himself with John F. Kennedy, who never feared to negotiate, not Dick Cheney, who appears hungry to begin new wars.

I do not suggest the Holy Father supports any political party or ideology. But as Francis challenges the crisis of conscience of the world, those on the right who demean and condemn him have created a crisis for conservatism. On this point, at least, Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley would agree with me.

Budowsky was an aide to former Sens. Lloyd Bentsen and Bill Alexander, then chief deputy majority whip of the House. He holds an LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School of Economics. He can be read on The Hill’s Contributors blog and reached at brentbbi@webtv.net.