“Trump Derangement Syndrome” has become a common meme among Conservatives to describe the Left’s hysterics regarding Donald Trump since he became President. Democrats’ penchant for crying Hitler at a former New York Democrat whose record for implementing his rather moderate platform has been spotty at best lends credence to the meme.
The tech-driven identity marketing bubble we all live in goes a long way toward explaining the TDS phenomenon. Lefties are conditioned to define themselves by their opposition to Orange Man, and their algorithmically chosen social media feeds, TV shows, and breakfast cereals reinforce the programming.
Staying grounded in reality as much as possible is vital, though, and dissidents would do well to remember that we’re immersed in the autonomic marketing maelstrom, too. A marked example of the algo echo chamber’s effect on the Right is a phenomenon that could be called Catholic Derangement Syndrome (CDS).
CDS comes into sharp relief in the disparate reactions of right-wingers to mainstream reporting on Trump vs the MSM narrative on Pope Francis. When the press accuses the Trump Administration of keeping immigrant children in cages, the red-pilled set rightly calls fake news. But when the whole media rogues gallery from the New York Times to Google trumpets that Francis has hoisted the rainbow flag, they uncritically lap it up.
Otherwise levelheaded people, including practicing Catholics, proceed to clutch their pearls over the Pontiff’s latest enormity.
Now, a lot of the Catholics I interact with online are converts–and relatively recent ones. I’m more than willing to cut them some slack since they’re new to the sorts of CDS-driven panics I’ve seen come and go since JPII’s pontificate. That’s why when this latest bombshell dropped, I advised caution. We are wisely told to wait 48 hours before reacting to any reportage on Trump. Recent history shows that it’s wise to apply the same rule in the Pope’s case.
Lo and behold, two days after the MSM hailed Francis as an LGBTQ, champion, the whole narrative has turned out to be a psyop based on a shaky foundation of trick editing and outright deception.
VATICAN CITY — Francesco, a newly-released documentary on Pope Francis, contains comments from the pope on homosexuality and civil unions. Some of the remarks, however, are the result of editing distinct phrases from a papal interview and presenting them as a cohesive whole.
While filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky told CNA and other journalists that Pope Francis made comments calling for the passage of civil union laws directly to him, the comments actually appear to come from a 2019 interview of Pope Francis conducted by Mexican journalist Valentina Alazraki.
The pope’s comments on civil unions, have not been disputed by the Vatican despite multiple requests for clarity. The remarks were not contained in the published version of Alazraki’s interview, and have not been seen by the public except in Francesco.
On Wednesday, however, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, director of the influential journal La Civiltà Cattolica, told journalists that the pope’s remarks on civil unions are excerpted from the 2019 interview, and did not dispute the way in which they were presented in the documentary.
NB: Alazraki doesn’t even recall the Pope calling for civil unions when she interviewed him.
At the same time, a CNA analysis of the interview’s transcript shows that other papal comments on homosexuality featured in Francesco were compiled by heavy editing of the 2019 interview’s video footage.
Francesco presents Pope Francis saying the following, in remarks about his approach to pastoral care:
“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it.”
While the pope did say those words on camera, he did not say them in that order, or use those phrases in immediate proximity.
If it is not possible to repeal such a law completely, the Catholic politician, recalling the indications contained in the Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae, “could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality”, on condition that his “absolute personal opposition” to such laws was clear and well known and that the danger of scandal was avoided.
Keep in mind, this is the same Pope who said:
The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage. These realities are increasingly under attack from powerful forces which threaten to disfigure God’s plan for creation.
And who compared the social destruction wrought by gender theory to the physical devastation of nuclear bombs.
[B]efore he became the pope, then Cardinal-Bergoglio “always recognized that, without calling it ‘marriage,’ in fact there are very close unions between people of the same sex, which do not in themselves imply sexual relations, but a very intense and stable alliance. They know each other thoroughly, they share the same roof for many years, they take care of each other, they sacrifice for each other. Then it may happen that they prefer that in an extreme case or illness they do not consult their relatives, but that person who knows their intentions in depth. And for the same reason they prefer that it be that person who inherits all their assets, etc. This can be contemplated in the law and is called ‘civil union’ [unión civil] or ‘law of civil coexistence’ [ley de convivencia civil], not marriage.”
- His position on treating homosexuals with dignity is in line with Church teaching, including the 2003 CDF guidelines.
- His views on civil unions are the same ones he expressed back in 2013, and the out-of-context statement presented in the documentary was actually taken from a year-and-a-half-old interview.
- Even those statements don’t represent a rupture with established Church teaching in light of the fact that gay marriage is already legal, and Francis isn’t necessarily calling for civil unions within the explicit context of sexual relationships.
It should also come as no surprise that Afineevsky also hates the Church.
So far, Trump has kept us out of any new wars. One reason the establishment is stumping so hard for Biden is that they know he’ll get the US into a war with Syria, Ukraine, Iran, or any of a number of conflicts that will serve Israel’s strategic interests. Getting a former Israeli soldier who hates Trump to doctor up a diversion from the Biden story isn’t exactly subtle. On the other hand, our rulers aren’t that bright.
On the other other hand, even self-styled rational dissidents have been so inculcated with CDS that they’re ready to believe even the most suspiciously timed anti-Francis hit pieces at the drop of a hat.
The next time you hear breathless reports that the Pope endorsed midget cannibalism, wait two days before reacting. And don’t spread the narratives of people who hate you.
