Topsy and Tuptim Examine Fratelli Tutti Politics in Chapter V

It's a chilly, rainy day so Topsy and Tuptim decide to meet at the coffee shop to discuss Chapter V of Fratelli Tutti where it's warm and cheerful. [See Ch. I, Ch. II, Ch. III, Ch. IV] They choose a table by the window where they can watch the rain splashing on the glass making little rivulets down the panes. The sidewalk outside is almost empty with an occasional passer by huddled under an umbrella warding off the downpour.

Tuptim: [sipping her extra strong expresso...] What a day! It's so gloomy. The downpour seems like a metaphor for the assault on the faith coming from the Vatican. It never just rains at Casa Santa Marta. The pope sits there pouring out one disastrous document after another.

Topsy: [Shrugs...] Well -- we need the rain. Let's look at it as heaven's tears calling us to repent over the grievous sins of our world, especially the pope and so many in the magisterium, and of course we laity deserve plenty of blame too. How many are immersed in porn, cheating on their spouses, stealing from their employers, practicing contraception, getting abortions, and other serious evils? We desperately need authentic teaching about faith and morals. How often to do you hear a homily about the evil of contraception or infidelity or drug abuse or anything that affects our daily lives? We've pretty much been abandoned. [Pensively....] Maybe if we water the earth with repentance and throw ourselves on God's mercy, he'll send us a miracle...like the water from the rock in the desert.

Tuptim: [Sighing...] We sure need some miracles. Did you hear the latest from the Vatican about the attack on Humanae Vitae? I brought a few articles that raise more red flags about this pope. And they relate to chapter V's discussion of politics. [Browsing the articles...] Let's see....ah, here it is. As of September 2021, Philippe Bordeyne, 61, a moral theologian and rector of the Institut Catholique of Paris, will take over as president of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. [She looks up and gives an off-with-his-head sign.] It's out with Pier Angelo Sequeri and in with one more morally bankrupt Francis appointment. Sequeri opposes, uh ah here's the quote  "artificial sterilization of the conjugal act." He also defends the necessity of maintaining both the procreative and unitive aspects of marital intimacy. Obviously too orthodox for Francis. Now listen to this gem from Bordeyne from an interview in 2016 during the Synod on the Family:

Traditionally, the Church presents the family as "the basic unit of society", a rather abstract formula. Pope Francis shows concretely how she is a microcosm where everyone learns about life in society: through maternal tenderness, through the magnanimity of the father… His formulas speak for themselves: “The mother who protects the child with affection and compassion. , (…) Helps him to experience the world. " Society needs family - which does not stop the petty bourgeois triangle of father, mother and children - because it is the place where each individual grows as a related person. To despise different families would also be to despise this work of socialization.

Topsy: Wow! "The petty bourgeois triangle of father, mother, and children." Hey, Heather needs two mommies not a mom and a dad. That stupid statement could have come straight out of the Communist Manifesto!

Tuptim: Or the Democrat platform. Bordeyne is really bad news for the family. He's pro-contraception and talks about the role of the theologian as a "tinkerer" rather than someone working to uphold moral ideals. I'm afraid he's one more moral relativist termite in a roman collar chomping on doctrine and turning it into sawdust.

Topsy: Ah...but it's all done in the name of pastoral care. [Pausing...] It does alway seem like only those living in sin get any pastoral attention. Faithful spouses who stay true to their marriage vows get thrown under the bus. You never hear one word about them and the injustice of stealing their children and forcing them to pay child support when all they want is to maintain the family unit.

Tuptim: [Sarcastically...] Just remember, don't focus on that "bourgeois family triangle" because it takes a village of step parents, live-in lovers, gay partners, LGBTQ activists, and Hillary Clinton to raise your child. And don't you dare disagree, you homophobic bigot! We need more children dressing up in peacock feathers and boas and having money stuffed in their underwear at gay bars like that poor abused Desmond is Amazing whose been embraced (literally) by the transvestite perverts. And did you see the news about the Milwaukee judge who sponsored transvestite story hours? [Topsy shakes her head.] He was just exposed, pun intended, as a child porn offender. Surprise! He faces seven counts of child porn possession. His two adopted children have been removed and are being placed in temporary custody.

Topsy: [Shaking her head ruefully...] I saw a video about Desmond's mom. She is one sick cookie. Poor kids. So many are being physically and psychologically abused while the pope and his evil synods treat the nuclear family as an anomaly and promote "alternative" families. I will always defend the right of children to be raised in loving "bourgeois" family triangles. [Thoughtfully....] But all this talk about politics really fits with Chapter V of Tutti Frutti. The title is politics and if there's one thing leftists at the Vatican and the wider Church understand and promote it's church politics.

Tuptim: [Shaking her finger at Topsy...] Naughty girl. You are promoting disinformation. The title of the chapter is "A BETTER Kind of Politics."

Topsy: Ah... [She beats her chest...] Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Tuptim: If you had to summarize Chapter V in just a few sentences, what would you say?

Topsy: Hmm...That's a challenge! But let me make an observation. The timing of the document a month before the presidential election using all kinds of buzz words that clearly attacked Trump's policies indicated exactly how political this document is and was meant to be. Populism is discussed over and over with no definition and always in a negative light as are border walls and "xenophobia." FT is one long rant against Americans, without naming us...you know, people who embrace patriotism and want to protect the integrity of their countries. The pope considers us bigots and xenophobes. The fact is that the U.S. has always welcomed legal immigrants who apply for entry whether they are fleeing persecution or looking for a better life.

Tuptim: I can testify to that. Florida is filled with immigrants who fled Communist Cuba. And think about Obama's policies. He kept Christian refugees out while favoring Muslims, but you never hear the pope talk about that. And he's back again in this chapter touting globalism and fraternity. [She reads from paragraph 165]:

[There's a] need for a greater spirit of fraternity, but also a more efficient worldwide organization to help resolve the problems plaguing the abandoned who are suffering and dying in poor countries.

[Looking up...] I want to know who will run this "efficient worldwide organization" that's going to solve all the problems of poverty and suffering in the world. If you look at past U.N. conferences you see that their way of resolving problems is to kill the children of the poor and demand countries embrace gender insanity to receive aid. Bill Gates and other population gurus want to kill off a huge percentage of the world's population, but that doesn't keep the pope from putting these evil people on Vatican commissions. I want to know who exactly is going to run this "worldwide organization" and what they stand for?

Topsy: It's pretty clear the pope has a high opinion of the U.N. and I frankly found this paragraph terrifyingly naive and stupid!:

At the same time, “the work of the United Nations, according to the principles set forth in the Preamble and the first Articles of its founding Charter, can be seen as the development and promotion of the rule of law, based on the realization that justice is an essential condition for achieving the ideal of universal fraternity… There is a need to ensure the uncontested rule of law and tireless recourse to negotiation, mediation and arbitration, as proposed by the Charter of the United Nations, which constitutes truly a fundamental juridical norm”.[153] There is need to prevent this Organization from being delegitimized, since its problems and shortcomings are capable of being jointly addressed and resolved.

Tuptim: The U.N. has done more damage than almost any other institution on the planet, particularly for the weak and vulnerable beginning with babies in the womb. 

Topsy: Oh c'mon. Give some credit to the World Bank and the World Health Organization!

Tuptim: [shrugging...] And we get the privilege of paying for it. The U.N.'s idea of the "rule of law" is to make resolutions like the Convention on the Rights of the Child that replaces parents rights over the education and upbringing of their children with global governance. The Biden administration is working behind the scenes at the U.N. right now to expand abortion and gender insanity. And, sad to say, papal politics resembles the secular politics of the Democrats and the United Nations. Many of our Catholic shepherds are godless demagogues. The German Church, in fact, is embracing protestantism. Cardinal Marx is more of a Lutheran than a Catholic! Oh...and a literal "marxist' as well. And on and on it goes!

Topsy: [Thoughtfully...] The office of readings during Lent has so many excerpts from Exodus. Whenever I see anything by this pope I can't help being reminded of Aaron giving in to the people's demand to make a golden calf for them to worship. That's what Pope Francis and Cardinal Marx and Cupich and so many others inflict on us -- idol worship. Whether it's Pachamama or the U.N. or providing platforms for eugenicists and population control gurus or religious indifferentism with the Abu Dhabi statement, Pope Francis seems intent on dismantling the faith and replacing it with a one world global religion.

Tuptim: Hmph! And it's always based on Marxism. Did you notice his mentioning "subsidiarity" in paragraph 175? As far as I can tell, he has no respect for "subsidiarity" which calls for solutions to be sought first at the lowest level beginning with the family, then the neighborhood, the town, the state. But he's always calling for top-down globalist solutions and seems to love leftists politicians and even out-and-out Communists like the Chinese. What he did to the underground Church in China, which was a true example of subsidiarity, is not only shameful but horrifying.

Topsy: [sighing with a nod...] All true! How would you sum up Chapter V?

Tuptim: I thought the last 20 paragraphs...yikes...can the pope's speechifiers ever write anything short, transparent and clear? I thought the last 20 paragraphs about "political love" and "political and social charity" showed serious ignorance of what politics is. Since when do politicians "practice charity." In fact, when they claim to do it they are robbing one segment of the population to give their money to another, usually organizations the politicians perceive as advancing their interests -- like Planned Parenthood. The best government is the least government. A good government gets out of the way and lets the churches and the people do charity. The government has the obligation to protect the people, provide infrastructure, and provide a medium for exchange. To call charity the "spiritual heart of politics" is ridiculous and shows a total lack of understanding!

Topsy: Yeah...I just keep shaking my head -- like reading paragraph 188:

Politicians are doers, builders with ambitious goals, possessed of a broad, realistic and pragmatic gaze that looks beyond their own borders.

Really? That sounds like a monumental joke! What have Democrat politicians' goals been for the past four years? Use lies to destroy their political enemies. Turn every crisis into a means to set different groups against each other in the name of racism and white privilege. And all with the help of many of our bishops I might add. Remember when that El Paso Bishop...oh what's his name...took a knee for BLM?

Tuptim: [interjecting...] Mark Seitz and the pope called to congratulate him. Yup, the bishops get megabucks from the federal and state government which begins to look like payoffs for promoting the Democrats' agenda.

Topsy: And now that the Democrats are in power they use multi-trillion dollar giveaways to reward their donors and media allies. [She continues reading...]:

[Politicians'] biggest concern should not be about a drop in the polls, but about finding effective solutions to “the phenomenon of social and economic exclusion, with its baneful consequences: human trafficking, the marketing of human organs and tissues, the sexual exploitation of boys and girls, slave labour, including prostitution, the drug and weapons trade, terrorism and international organized crime. Such is the magnitude of these situations, and their toll in innocent lives, that we must avoid every temptation to fall into a declarationist nominalism that would assuage our consciences. We need to ensure that our institutions are truly effective in the struggle against all these scourges”.

Sounds great, until you realize this is coming from a pope who enables the left, encourages open borders which are controlled by sex traffickers and the drug cartels, advances clerics who undermine church doctrine, and gives evil politicians and other evil powerful people like Jeffrey Sachs a platform to advance their destructive and immoral agendas at the Vatican itself. I'll tell you, Tuptim, this chapter made me want to rip up Tutti Frutti like Nancy Pelosi ripped up Trump's State of the Union address.

Tuptim: Agreed. And it's ironic to hear Trump giving speeches that sound more Catholic than the pope's. It's a sad day when the words coming from the man we call "Your holiness" echo the message of the world. Jesus Christ is love. He is the way, the truth and the life. Did the pope mention him once in the document? Not that I can recall. He seems to put more faith in this undefined "politics of love" than in the teachings of the Church. Ironic, when you realize how many of our politicians call for human sacrifice and encourage their allies to riot, loot, burn down businesses, and harass their political opponents. Many of our political leaders, especially among the Democrats, resemble Herod and Pontius Pilate. When politicians enter government with modest incomes and retire as multi millionaires you know something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Topsy: Let's call a halt on this ridiculous chapter and have a muffin and a coffee refill. We need a few minutes to lower our blood pressure. [Looking out the window...] The rain's stopped and the sun is trying to come out. Let's look for a rainbow. We need a sign that God hasn't given up on us yet.

To be continued....