Pope Glenn the First has spoken. The decree has been declared. The judgment rendered.

According to the new pontiff, President Obama practices a version of religion that is “a perversion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as most Christians know it.” (“After Washington rally, Glenn Beck assails Obama’s religion,” Washington Post, 8/30/10).

Pope Glenn then explained why this is the case in an interview with “Fox News Sunday.” The president, he said, “is a guy who understands the world through liberation theology, which is oppressor-and-victim,” and then added, “You see, it’s all about victims and victimhood; oppressors and the oppressed; reparations, not repentance; collectivism, not individual salvation.”

It was strange timing for the recently chosen Holy Father to render his definitive assessment, since he spoke between two Sundays when the Gospel readings from the Ecumenical Lectionary were from the first 24 verses of the 14th chapter of Luke’s Gospel.

This is an extended passage about having a correct self-understanding of one’s importance and what follows from it.

Jesus counsels his hearers that when they are invited to a gathering they should never seat themselves in a place of honor, since someone more important might come and force the host to move them, embarrassingly, to a lower place. Instead, Jesus says, seat yourselves at the lowest place and there just might be a chance the host will reward you for your humility and place you in a higher place.

Furthermore, Jesus tells anyone who hosts a gathering, you shouldn’t invite friends and relatives and rich neighbors, since nothing is to be gained if they simply return the favor and invite you to their party. Instead, “invite those who are poor and maimed and lame and blind,” since they can’t repay you and, therefore, in the end you will be found righteous.

Jesus then continues his teachings about who should be invited to gatherings. If you invite those with power and money and social standing, Jesus tells his listeners, they might well find an excuse not to come. That’s exactly what happened in the parable Jesus told. So having been rebuffed, the angry host instructed his servant to “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in those who are poor and maimed and blind and lame.” When that was accomplished and there was still room, the host told the servant to “Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.”

Any simple and straightforward reading of these Gospel lessons makes it abundantly clear that those to be invited would be, to use Pope Glenn’s terms, the victims and the oppressed, who are to receive collectively the reparations due them.

That’s what the Gospel clearly says.

Maybe the new pontiff should have read it before he pontificated.

Now, it could well be true that what Jesus said is a perversion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as most Christians know it.

But that’s their problem and the Pope’s, not the President’s.