A Different Kind of Listening, by Robert Royal

The post-election crowing and whinging are both already wearying. The race is decided. What matters now is not endless analyses of how or why the winners won (that’s best left to journalists, political consultants, and other practitioners of dark arts). What matters is what they will do. I expect a lot. But before the recent campaign passes into the merciful mists of time, it has uncovered some more interesting and longer-lasting matters, Catholic matters, about our democratic peoples just now and several recent developments in the Church.

Something we heard a lot about during the long years of the Synod on Synodality was the need to “listen,” especially to the poor. Indeed, Pope Francis says that when he was elected, his friend, Brazilian Cardinal Hummes embraced him and told him “Don’t forget about the poor.”

As if. . . .

But what secular politicians and, sorry to say, many Catholic prelates usually mean when they talk about “the poor” is not real people living in hard circumstances, but something already turned into an ideological concept. ….