I am Catholic so I can say this.  This Pope is naive.  At best he's an ivory tower academic, at worse a Marxist Socialist.  He would fit in well at any Ivy League university or on any mainstream media news program touting the Democrat/Progressive talking points.  His foray into global warming is treading on treacherous ground.  It's a political -- and fabricated -- issue, not a theological one.  The Church can only be damaged by it.  Much as I detest Pope Francis’s lamentable comments on global warming and world wide pollution – pollution that has been mitigated significantly over the decades by the very Capitalism so disdained by him -- his comments, about what it takes to be a genuine Christian, is even more unpalatable.

Pope Francis made the statement a few days ago that giving surplus money to the poor is not enough.  In order to be a genuine Christian, he said, you have to give not only your surplus but even that which you need to live.

If Christians don't dig deep and generously open up their wallets, they do not have “genuine faith.”

And,

Christian giving goes beyond plain charity, which is good, but isn't the “Christian poverty” believers are called to embrace.  Christian poverty is: I give to the poor what is mine, not the excess, but also what is necessary for one's own well-being.

Let's lay this one out.  We, who are not clerics, work and accumulate money because we are responsible for ourselves and our families and for their survival, education, and welfare.  We, who are not clerics, work and accumulate money so that we won't be poor ... and therefore dependent on charity either from the Church or from others.  We, who are not clerics, accumulate and save money so that we can retire without being a burden to our children, our neighbors, our community, or the government.  We, who are not clerics, do these all things and also donate to the Church in order to care for the poor and provide for the worldly needs of the clerics.  That is what used to be called, responsible behavior, and in any reasonable universe, responsibility would be a good thing, a virtue even.

So, let's look at the worldly needs of the Pope and any other Catholic cleric.  The Pope, or any other cleric, has no children, no spouse, and no family to take care of -- except, of course, an all encompassing but totally symbolic world family of Catholics for which the Pope, or any other cleric, has no financial obligation.  In fact, the Pope, or any other cleric, has none of the everyday living burdens that so occupy the rest of us.  The Pope doesn't have to accumulate money because he doesn't worry about losing his job, or his home, or about paying a mortgage, or the rent, or auto insurance, or maintenance on his house, or repair work on his auto.  He doesn't have to accumulate money because has no fears about where his next meal comes from, or whether he can buy his wife and children the healthcare they need, or how on earth he'll ever be able to put his children through college.  The Pope will never have the concern that, if he contracts some dread disease, he'll be unable to pay the doctors for treatments.  The Pope, or any other cleric, does not need to save for retirement, the Church provides it.  The Church, with donations from us, will in fact provide for every worldly want of the Pope and any other cleric -- no need for them to save or accumulate money.  Yet this Pope, who is entirely free from worrying about any of these concerns, tells us that we, who are required by the real world worry about them, are obligated, in order to be genuinely Christian, to give away any money accumulated for such needs.  I find that message totally ridiculous, unacceptable, and hypocritical. 

Consider this.  There is no way that the Pope can give to the poor what the Pope needs to live -- to give, in his words, “what is necessary for one’s own well-being."  How is that possible?  The Pope, and any other cleric, has every necessity for his well-being satisfied by one of the the richest organizations in the world.  So, by the Pope’s own pronouncement, is he a genuine Christian?