Pope Francis’ imminent visit to America is being spun by secular media as a political bonus for Democrats. No one, it seems, expects the pope to deliver a speech prophetically denouncing the human organ trafficking of Planned Parenthood, the grave threats to religious liberty in America, or even the ethnic cleansing of Christians from the Middle East.

Instead, we are told that Pope Francis will emphasize his areas of agreement with the left over climate change, inequality, and immigration. If any congressmen are squirming in their seats, it is expected, it will be those prolife Catholic Republicans who differ with the pope on these latter issues.

As a Catholic, I still hold out hope that the pope will disappoint expectations, and speak up on subjects that are life-and-death, doctrinally clear, and rooted in genuine Catholic morality — rather than parroting the agenda of the secular, globalist left. But the actions of U.S. bishops in recent weeks are making it harder to hold on to that hope. Most sickening was the statement where Francis’ handpicked Archbishop Blaise Cupich of Chicago drew a moral equivalency between the butchery at Planned Parenthood and the inconveniences faced by illegal aliens, Medicaid recipients, and convicted killers. Cupich brazenly cloaked himself in the same “seamless garment” that his predecessor Cardinal Joseph Bernardin had crafted as a bulletproof vest for pro-abortion Catholic Democrats.

But it’s not just the bleeding edge of the Catholic left that feeds the secular media narrative. The widely-respected Abp. Charles Chaput, seen by many as the most conservative major Catholic prelate, recently delivered a speech on immigration that tracks exactly with the positions of the Democratic Party and radical immigrant activists groups such as La Raza. Chaput defended birthright citizenship for children of illegals, opposed deportations, and even condemned attempts to refine our legal immigration criteria to focus on skilled immigrants, rather than relatives of recently amnestied illegals. TV networks and Democratic candidates will eagerly feed on his remarks, in their ongoing effort to portray conservative Catholics as “dissenters” from “Catholic social teaching,” no purer in their religious allegiance than those who “dissent” from the Church’s teaching on selling baby limbs in medical waste coolers.

This narrative is entirely fictitious. Abp. Chaput’s remarks do not reflect real Catholic teaching on immigration — not the text of the current Catechism, nor the historic practice of Catholic countries, including the Papal States, on immigration. (To how many Muslims has the Vatican granted citizenship?) No more do Pope Francis’ speculations on the causes of inequality, or the vagaries of earth’s climate, have the slightest guarantee of religious authority. On all of these matters, popes and bishops are merely playing pundits, speaking beyond their proper authority and undermining it in the process. (Read more from “Open Borders Catholics Falsify Church Teaching – and Profit From It” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.