Bishop Conley on Rolling Stone and the bid to exploit Pope Francis

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Feb 03, 2014

Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska has a brilliant little piece on the First Things site, explaining how secular culture seeks to exploit the popularity of Pope Francis. Using the cover story in Rolling Stone as an example, Bishop Conley remarks that the magazine’s coverage is loaded with inaccuracies, but then it isn’t really designed to be accurate. The real purpose of the piece, Bishop Conley argues, is to set up Pope Francis as an icon of liberalism. To secular liberals it doesn’t matter what the Pope actually believes; what matters is that impressionable readers are given the impression that the Pope has given his blessing to the liberal ideology. “The enemy has no interest in eradicating Christianity,” Bishop Conley observes, “if he can sublimate it to his own purposes.”