Nathan Ormond

“Today, listening to some of the populist leaders we now have, I am reminded of the 1930’s, when some democracies collapsed into dictatorships seemingly overnight. By turning the people into a category of exclusion-threatened on all sides by enemies, internal and external-the term was emptied of meaning. We see it happening again now in rallies where populist leaders excite and harangue crowds, channeling their resentments and hatreds against imagined enemies to distract from real problems.

In the name of the people, populism denies the proper participation of those who belong to the people, allowing a particular group to appoint itself the true interpreter of popular feeling. A people ceases to be a people and becomes an inert mass manipulated by a party or demagogue. Dictatorships almost always begin this way: sowing fear in the hearts of the people, then offering to defend them from the object of their fear in exchange for denying them the power to determine their own future.

For example, a fantasy of national-populism in countries with Christian majorities is its defense of ‘Christian civilizations’ from perceived enemies, whether Islam, Jews, the European Union, or the United Nations. The defense appeals to those who are often no longer religious but who regard their nation’s inheritance as a kind of identity. Their fears and loss of identity have increased at the same time as attendance at churches has declined.

The loss of relationship with God and a loss of a sense of universal fraternity have contributed to this sense of isolation and fear of the future. Thus irreligious or superficially religious people vote for populists to protect their religious identity, unconcerned that fear and hatred of the other cannot be reconciled with the Gospel.”
― Pope Francis, Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future

“The health of a society can be judged by its periphery. A periphery that is abandoned, sidelined, despised, and neglected shows an unstable, unhealthy society that cannot long survive without major reforms.”
― Pope Francis, Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future

“It was precisely here that the Church was born, in the margins of the Cross where so many of the crucified are found….This is why they followed Jesus. He gave them dignity….To do this Jesus had to reject the mindset of the religious elites of his day, who had taken ownership of law and tradition. Possession of the goods of religion became a means of putting themselves above others, others not like them, whom they inspected and judged. By mixing with tax collectors and ‘women of ill repute,’ Jesus wrested religion from its imprisonment in the confines of the elites, of specialized knowledge and privileged families, in order to make every person and situation capable of God. By walking with the poor, the outcasts, and the marginalized. He smashed the wall that prevented the Lord from coming close to His people, among His flock.

In showing God’s closeness to the poor and sinners, Jesus indicted the mindset that trusts in self-justification, ignoring what happens around them.”
― Pope Francis, Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future

“I once criticized someone who said that he was interested in thinking about the word while I, like all these hermeneutic rascals, was content to think abou twords. The remarkable thing to me was that, after saying this, he continued to speak. To my astonishment, he continued to use more words, a flood of them, really, and sometimes - he is a fluent speaker and an eloquent writer - with dramatic emphasis on the word 'world'. The more he assured us that he was concerned with the world, not words, the more loudly he kept using the word 'world'.”
― John Caputo