Pope Deliberately Opposes Gop Plans To Cut Benefits For Poor, Downtrodden

In ending his fourth pilgrimage to the United States as he began it, with an appeal to Americans to live up to their ideals, Pope John Paul II deliberately cut against the grain of contemporary political trends.

Although Vatican officials and leading U.S. bishops say the pope’s message was carefully grounded in biblical morality and church doctrine, Pope John Paul knew he was not speaking in a vacuum. He carefully follows developments in the United States and receives regular briefings from American bishops.

Thus it is no secret to the pope that even as he has been urging Americans this week to open their hearts to the poor and the downtrodden, the newly Republican Congress is seriously considering legislation - opposed by Catholic bishops in the United States - to reduce government benefits for the poor and the elderly and to tighten American borders to immigrants.

In fact, among the constituencies that have helped elect Congress’ Republican majority are members of the same mass audiences who have cheered and even wept as the pope has urged prosperous Americans to help their less-fortunate countrymen. Public opinion polls have also shown over the last several years that many Catholics do not share the pope’s views against artificial birth control and the ordination of women as priests.

Does that suggest that Pope John Paul’s latest message will be forgotten soon after his Alitalia jetliner whisked him back to Rome? Monsignor Frank Maniscalco, for one, does not think it’s that simple.

Maniscalco, spokesman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the pope had gained a wide audience in the United States because of the consistency of his message.

The American people, he said, “know that what they see is what they get. There seems to be a great desire to see that in our (political) system. He can be at odds with a large number of people on issues. He’s here to tell people what they ought to do, not what they want to hear.”

The pope’s message is not new. He has repeatedly spoken out, for example, in defense of the poor, the elderly and the homeless, as well as against abortion and artificial birth control. But as next year’s presidential election draws nearer, it has a new resonance.

While some may find it difficult to pinpoint where the pope’s politics ends and his religion begins, the fact is that he intentionally lets them overlap. Pope John Paul, like religious leaders everywhere, does not hesitate to integrate issues of faith into the fabric of daily life.

Contemporary issues may change, he has said, but the underlying moral framework by which Christians must judge individual conduct and public policy remains constant.

“Can the biblical wisdom which played such a formative part in the very founding of your country be excluded from that debate?” the pope asked on the fifth and final day of his U.S. visit.

“Would not doing so mean that America’s founding documents no longer have any defining content, but are only the formal dressing of changing opinion? Would not doing so mean that tens of millions of Americans could no longer offer the contribution of their deepest convictions to the formation of public policy?”

Clearly, the pope sees a connection between faith and action. He said democracy could not be sustained without a shared commitment to moral truths.

So it was that the pope on Sunday told the faithful: “Sometimes, witnessing to Christ will mean drawing out of a culture the full meaning of its noblest intentions, a fullness that is revealed in Christ. At other times, witnessing to Christ means challenging that culture, especially when the truth about the human person is under assault.”

How enduring his message will be and how it may shape the actions of the Roman Catholic faithful remains to be seen. Some sociologists and scholars who have studied the trends following great evangelistic episodes say that, once the preacher goes home, the fervor dies and people return to their old ways.