The following comes from a May 11 Huffington Post article by Dennis Earl:

It’s been quite the honeymoon. Not too long after Pope Francis succeeded Benedict XVI in March 2013 to become the new head of the Vatican, reporters, pundits and even comedians began to sing his praises. Why, exactly?

Because he said things like, “I’m a sinner” and “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?”

But, as the old saying goes, talk is cheap. Pope Francis can present himself as a more compassionate pontiff all he wants. With over 40 years experience working within the stubbornly Conservative Catholic Church, the 78-year-old is no liberal. The reality is he is quite content maintaining the status quo.

 

As recently as this past January, the pope told an audience in Manila, “The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage. These realities are increasingly under attack from powerful forces which threaten to disfigure God’s plan for creation… Every threat to the family is a threat to society itself.”

That same month according to Reuters, during an impromptu speech on a plane in front of journalists, “He told of an education minister he once knew who was offered loans to build schools for the poor, but on condition their libraries stocked a book on gender theory, the questioning of traditional male and female roles.”

According to Reuters, without a hint of irony, he said, “This is ideological colonization. They colonize people with ideas that try to change mentalities or structures…” How progressive.

Like his discredited views on homosexuality and gender roles, The Pope’s views on women and reproductive rights are also out of step with modern times.

Besides being firmly anti-contraception, he is adamantly anti-abortion to the point of cruelty. Despite publicly asserting that the Vatican “obsesses” too much about this legal medical procedure, he continues to speak out against it. Consider this comment he made in 2013:

“Each child who is unborn, but is unjustly condemned to be aborted, bears the face of Jesus Christ, bears the face of the Lord, who, even before he was born, and then as soon as he was born, experienced the rejection of the world.”
Actually, each child has the face of their biological parents but I digress.

Francis has also said that “the right to life is the first among human rights. To abort a child is to kill someone who cannot defend himself.”

In 2013, during a long interview with America Magazine, the pontiff was asked about the role of women in the church. This is how he started:

I am wary of a solution that can be reduced to a kind of ‘female machismo,’ because a woman has a different make-up than a man. But what I hear about the role of women is often inspired by an ideology of machismo.
Two months before he gave this interview, the media darling revealed just how inclusive he truly is:

As far as the ordination of women, the Church has already spoken out and the answer is no. John Paul II made the Church’s stance definitive. The door is closed.
Despite recently speaking out against the low wages women receive compared to men, as you can plainly see he is far from a feminist.

So stop calling him “progressive” already.