~a column by Colleen O’Brien
I have yet to talk to anyone who doesn’t like Pope Francis after having “met” him more intimately last week. He is a positive fellow and he speaks forthrightly, no pulling back from controversial subjects that 99 percent of our representatives at all levels shy away from as if there are more important things to talk about . . . which there aren’t.
He has several causes, all of them of a social justice nature– the ending of war, arms trade, embargoes, unfair trade pacts. . . .
Francis talks about not just poverty but anti-poverty; not just immigrants but immigration reform; the sanctity of life not just at the beginning but at a point which involves the death penalty; not just refugees but the importance of thinking of each one of them as actual individuals rather than faceless hordes of the fleeing; not just the arms trade and the drug trade but the horror of them; not just global warming but the need to act together across the planet if we’re to avoid its dire possibilities.
In a kindly way, Pope Francis gave no one much air, and with his precise, slow delineation of ideas he made it clear that we need to get on with the job at hand — promoting the general welfare, securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, establishing justice in this land of the free and the brave. He used words of our own constitution and our beloved “Star Spangled Banner.” He kept many an American glued to the tube for six days with his sly, wry, wise manner and message.
He was clever, he was right on, he was soft-spokenly adamant.
So many of us were listening carefully. I truly hope that many of this number were the people who are supposed to be representing us, guiding us and watching out for us in terms of our health, our education, our infrastructure, our general well-being. I sincerely wish that many of those men and women who make their living off of us in the chambers of our government in DC experienced a moment of recognition that what Pope Francis had to say was a description of the job they were hired to do.
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We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
“O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”
