The Moral Degeneracy of the Catholic Pope

By Cliff Kincaid

On Fox News, former federal prosecutor Andrew Cherasky wondered what was behind Joe Biden’s gift of life for convicted murderers sentenced to death. The answer is the Soros-funded ACLU, working in concert with Catholic Pope Francis. Guest host Raymond Arroyo, a prominent Catholic, had to have known this fact.

“Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo calls out the commutation of death row inmates on ‘The Ingraham Angle’” was the headline over the Fox News story about his guest appearance and commentary on the issue.

Arroyo contrasted Biden’s actions on behalf of cop killers and child killers with his lack of mercy for the innocent unborn.

But he only went so far. He mentioned the Christian tradition of allowing the state to execute convicted killers but failed to hold Francis accountable for his prayers on behalf of those on federal death row.

Before the “Catholic” President Joe Biden saved the lives of these killers, Pope Francis had specifically prayed that the sentences of inmates on death row in the United States would be commuted or changed. It was a public display of mercy for saving the lives of child killers, a rapist, and a drug kingpin from execution.

Also playing a role in this was the ACLU, which, in an end-of-year message, stated that “it’s been a busy year for civil liberties – and advocacy from supporters like you made all the difference” and declared that “Together, we…

• “Compelled President Biden to commute the sentences of 37 people on death row.
• “Enshrined and expanded the right to abortion in 6 state constitutions at the ballot box.” (emphasis in the original)

Notice the word “compelled.”

While Biden has obvious mental deficiencies, Francis seems to be in charge of his mental faculties and knows what he is doing.

Francis is a committed left-wing ideologue whose ascension to the papacy was itself strange, as Pope Benedict was forced out in what seemed like the kind of coup the American intelligence agencies attempted against President Trump.

The ACLU agenda is clear as well. The ACLU (and Joe Biden) want to spare the lives of convicted killers and facilitate the destruction of innocent unborn human lives. This is their deliberate policy.

I once had an exchange with Jonathan Turley, a famous commentator on Fox News, who claimed that the Catholic Church opposed capital punishment. That was false.

It’s true that Pope Francis and the U.S. Catholic Bishops had then launched a campaign to end the use of the death penalty, but this was not the official Catholic Church position until Pope Francis unilaterally changed it in 2018.

Article 2267 of the Catholic catechism, an authoritative compendium of church teaching, had said the church “does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives” against criminals.

Turley had also suggested at the time that Justice Antonin Scalia, a Catholic, may be violating church teaching by endorsing capital punishment. In fact, Scalia had noted that the death penalty is not immoral and that support for it has been part of Christian and Catholic tradition in the Old and New Testaments.

In the 7-2 pro-death penalty ruling that came down from the Supreme Court in 2008, five of the seven endorsing capital punishment were Catholics.

In a 2016 case, the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 that death sentences handed down against three men, in what became known as the “Wichita Massacre” in 2000, should not have been tossed out by Kansas’ highest court. Scalia wrote the decision. The sole dissenting opinion came from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama appointee.

The case involved what the court called a “notorious Wichita crime spree [which] culminated in the brutal rape, robbery, kidnapping, and execution-style shooting of five young men and women.” The victims were white and the Carr brothers were black.

Justice Samuel Alito, a Catholic, said it involved “some of the most horrendous murders that I have ever seen in my 10 years here. And we see practically every death penalty case that comes up anywhere in the country. These have to rank as among the worst.”

St. Augustine, a Catholic bishop, is considered one of the most important Christian thinkers of all time. wrote in The City of God:

“The same divine law which forbids the killing of a human being allows certain exceptions, as when God authorizes killing by a general law or when He gives an explicit commission to an individual for a limited time. Since the agent of authority is but a sword in the hand, and is not responsible for the killing, it is in no way contrary to the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill’ to wage war at God’s bidding, or for the representatives of the State’s authority to put criminals to death, according to law or the rule of rational justice.”

In 2018, however, Francis unilaterally ordained that the death penalty was “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” and declared that the church would work with determination for its abolition worldwide.

At the time, Arroyo declared that “The change of the Catechism’s teaching on the death penalty today has triggered a lot of anger among Catholics on social media…”

It’s worse than that. Many Catholics do not see Francis as legitimate.

Hopefully, Francis will be met with opposition to his many liberal stands by President Trump’s nomination of Brian Burch of the conservative group Catholic Vote as his next ambassador to the Holy See. Burch is considered to a critic of Pope Francis.

A courageous Catholic, Burch was a signer of a letter sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland in June 2022 requesting that the Department of Justice respond to a series of attacks against churches and pro-life organizations as well as act to prevent and prosecute those behind the assaults.

According to official statistics from the Catholic Church, at least 360 incidents involving hatred of Christianity have occurred across 43 states and the District of Columbia since May 2020. These incidents include arson, statues beheaded, gravestones defaced with swastikas, and other destruction and vandalism.

The FBI was caught with a memo authorizing surveillance of traditional Catholics but FBI Director Christopher Wray disavowed the memo. We now understand that the assignment was subcontracted to Pope Francis, who sacked a conservative Bishop in Texas. This does far more damage to the Catholic Church than anything the FBI could do.

Strickland was NOT caught in a sex scandal, and his Tyler, Texas, diocese did not have to go bankrupt because of sex scandal payouts to victims. Instead, he was accused of criticizing the pope.

“The only answer I have to that,” referring to his removal, “is because forces in the Church right now don’t want the truth of the Gospel,” he said.

Most Catholics understand their faith is under assault by what Strickland called “dark forces” in the Vatican (and the FBI).

An analysis of the results of the November 5 presidential election found that Trump won the national Catholic vote by a 15-point margin, winning 56 percent of the Catholic vote against the 41 percent achieved by Kamala Harris.

The Catholic News Agency reported, “This shows a much larger victory for Trump among Catholic voters than the [Washington] Post’s 2020 exit polls, which showed Trump with only a five-point lead above President Joe Biden, 52 percent to 47 percent.”

The 2024 results also demonstrate that most Catholics do not regard the words of Francis on such matters as the death penalty to be the Gospel. 

However, on January 10, however, Pope Francis will warmly receive our so-called “Catholic” president Joe Biden at the Vatican, just days before President Trump is inaugurated.

It’s bad enough that President Trump will have to deal with wars and rumors of wars and the “enemies within,” such as the intelligence agencies. Now he will have to take on the global agenda of the pope.

Tragically, Francis has become a significant impediment to the restoration of the fundamental values of Judeo-Christian civilization.

• Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org