In the eyes of the Kochs, Pope Francis has committed the ultimate sin: advocating against their bottom line. In response to the pope’s work to combat climate change, the brothers are pulling out all the stops, using their money and conservative cronies to try to derail his efforts to protect the environment, as we wrote about yesterday.
Last year, Pope Francis gave a statement asking for “the rich to help the poor, to respect them, to promote them.” The Kochs have a long history of doing just the opposite, but don’t tell John and Carol Saeman. The prominent Catholics and contributors to Koch-backed Freedom Partners co-authored a Washington Post op-ed where they said that Pope Francis’s call had inspired them to support the Koch brothers’ “nonprofit community.”
However, many Catholics believe that the Koch agenda goes against church teachings and the backlash from the community was swift. Catholic writer Michael Sean Winters was among the first to respond, saying:
“To believe that the teachings of the Church can be reconciled with the Koch brothers’ agenda is Alice in Wonderland-quality foolishness…
“The libertarian ideology of the Koch brothers is precisely the ‘poisoned spring’ about which Pope Pius XI spoke, the ‘erroneous autonomy’ about which Pope Paul VI spoke, and the hyper-individualistic, materialistic consumer culture against which Pope Francis could scarcely be more clear in his denunciations.”
Relentless as they are, the Kochs are trying a new route to gain sway with the group. The Charles G. Koch Foundation has promised the Catholic University of America $3 million in grant money. There’s no doubt that Charles Koch hopes to influence the U.S. bishops that oversee the college as they have at other schools like George Mason University and Florida State.