The warm conclusion of Charles Dickens’ beloved A Christmas Carol has his hated capitalist, Ebenezer Scrooge, transformed into a man gratefully giving to help the destitute, feeding the poor, even financially helping the family of a stricken child. Thereby he became “as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”

There is no Christmas miracle for Art Pope, the target of a hateful campaign by self-appointed “moral” arbiters. He needs none. The Pope Foundation has announced its December grantees, and they included giving to help the destitute, feeding the poor, even financially helping the families of stricken children, along with supporting the arts, furthering education, promoting medical missions, helping homeless animals, and helping the jobless not just find work but learn the skills that keep them employable.

All in all, the Pope Foundation’s gifts total over $1 million to humanitarian and arts organizations in 2013.

Read the press release, though obviously the giving speaks for itself.

Perhaps that is why his critics carefully avoid that subject and focus on the one aspect of his giving that they hate, as if it erases all the other significant, virtually unsurpassed good Pope does throughout the community.

A malady the philanthropist ignores

There is another aspect about the reformed Scrooge that Pope has. At the conclusion of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge ignores his detractors. Why? Because he “know[s] that such as these would be blind anyway” (emphasis added).

Scrooge contents himself that their criticism comes via laughter because “he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms.”

Pope’s critics have chosen, to their shame, to display their malady in far less attractive forms.