The Pope In The Pot-and-Kettle Adage

"There's no public figure in the world today with an image defined by a more misleading sound bite than Pope Francis, whose signature line from almost three years ago remains, 'Who am I to judge?"
"Reality couldn't be more different, in truth. Francis is one of the most 'judgemental' figures around, in the sense of never pulling punches when he thinks something is wrong."
John Allan, Vatican reporter

"Harsh and divisive language does not befit the tongue of a pastor. It has no place in his heart."
Pope Francis

Pope Francis, Donald Trump --- pulse.ng

The good Pope castigated American bishops when he stood before them last September. There is little doubt that they must have wilted recognizably under the weight of their good Shepherd's admonitions that they would do better to open their hearts than to engage in speech that their parishioners felt attacked them personally for their values and lifestyles, invoking in them guilt and remorse for their ill-done ways.

No doubt the American bishops felt they were expressing the opinions of the Church. And for their troubles instead of support, they were harshly lectured.

This is a Pope who is different, who thinks of himself as a man of the people, and whose heart is with those whose worn and battered hearts are weary with sorrow and care, poverty and neglect. No other Pope followed Christ's example as deeply as this one did, in washing the feet of a dozen convicts, several of them women, one a Muslim. He truly became their servant, as he was the unadorned, passionate servant of God, bestowing blessings upon them because of their vulnerability and misery in society.

Clearly this is a man who will have no problem passing through the eye of a needle.

Pope Francis kissing the feet of a young offender -[- The Telegraph

No mention whether those so blessed felt uplifted and compelled to surrender their lives of crime to lives of compassion for others, of moving in society as trusted and helpful members, leaving their time of sociopathy behind, for this good man showed them the passage to contentment and fulfillment. He has given hope and care to many, from homosexual outcasts to divorcees, to women carrying disease-distorted foetuses, for he is a man of merciful compassion.

This man with the soft touch reaching out to the world's unfortunates and outcasts, a man who eschews rank and privilege, ostentation and reeking hypocrisy, demanding of his priests and his bishops that they too look inwardly to find within their hearts a reflection of the man whom god sacrificed to save the world, and act accordingly. He has looked outward as well, toward the world of politics and bombastic discrimination and has found it wanting, little surprise.

The surprise, however, lay in his passing judgement on the character and pronouncements of a man whose own simplicity of statement and charisma has attracted the counter-element to the Pope's own popularity, and whom he characterized as 'un-Christian', thus mortally stinging the pride of a man who considers himself a Christian above all, though not of the denomination that the Catholic Church represents.

And, for the first time, the Pope has been publicly rebuked, chastised, by the unabashed target of his criticism, for entering political waters in frank dismissal of a potential candidate for the American presidency.

Now he who has calumniated another by his ad hominem observation is himself being censored for careless smearing of someone as wildly popular as is the Pope. If there is hypocrisy here it lies perhaps in the choices this good man makes. His predecessor made an offhand comment on the violence within Islam, and lived to rue it, and recant it in favour of restoring warmth between Islam and the Church. It seems that Pope Frances is of that same school.

Absent is his obligation to defend Christianity under siege around the world. As the shepherd and pastor and confidante of 1.7-billion Christians worldwide, he errs by not singling out the plight of Christianity in its ancient birthplace; by not identifying their attackers, by refraining from pleading for Islam to cease and desist, by carefully avoiding directly confronting the vileness of jihad, central to Islam, and central to the destruction of ancient Christian cathedrals and churches, and the faithful who once prayed in them.