It's almost become a slogan for Terry Mattingly that one of the "deadly sins" of mainstream media is to reduce all religious issues to politics. But if he reads this New York Times story on Pope Francis' upcoming U.S. visit, he may well add economics to his complaints.
No, economics isn't the only thing in the article. It also looks at Francis' personality and his approach to church matters; the fact that he has never been here before; what he thinks of capitalism; what Americans think of him; and the differing views of politics between South America and the United States.
But a sizable chunk of the story reads like this:
He is not opposed to all America represents. But he is troubled by privileged people and nations that consume more than their share and turn their backs on the vulnerable. The message he will probably deliver when he comes, they say, is that the United States has been blessed with great gifts, but that from those to whom much is given, much is expected.
“I think what he criticizes in the U.S. is the absolute freedom and autonomy of the market,” said the Rev. Juan Carlos Scannone, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Colegio Máximo, a prominent Jesuit college near Buenos Aires. He taught the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who would become Francis, as a seminarian and became a friend. “We should admire the U.S.’s democracy and the well-being of its people, but what Bergoglio would criticize is the consumerism: that everything is geared toward consumerism.”
Much of the story, in fact, resembles the Aug. 30 advance by the Associated Press. It's almost like someone at the Times read AP and said, "Hey, that's a good idea!" -- then assigned their own version.
Both stories emphasize how new the experience will be for a 78-year-old pope who has never visited here. Both style him a "homebody" who prefers to hang out with the poor than jet to public appearances. The Times quotes Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York saying Francis is "a little nervous about coming."
Both articles also quote sources who say the pope isn't really anti-American -- he just opposes the social and environment harm it's caused, he believes, by our economy: "maximizing profits" in the AP story, "savage capitalism" in the Times piece.
But where AP devoted two paragraphs to Francis' economic views, the Times deals with them in four, like this one:
