Capitalism Catholic Church

THE POPE PROVES PAPACY FALLIBLE IN LEFTIST RANT AGAINST CAPITALISM…….

 

Shame on the Pope.

I’ve dealt in prior postings (here also) on the sanctimonious ramblings of religious leaders railing against the very system (capitalism) that has lifted tens of billions of people out of bone crushing poverty over the past 150 years or so. The very people who haven’t created any wealth, feel that they’re the ones who should ‘pontificate’ on how the private economy is to behave, as if the participants in the free market (meaning you and I) are somehow less moral, less just and less virtuous than those in the clergy and in elected office.

The pope’s message should be rejected out-of-hand as a product of socialist psychobabble, for being not grounded in the rational and real world, void of any practical working knowledge of how capitalism really works. It’s a shame really, but not unexpected, for many religious figures use their supposed disdain for the material world to underline and elevate their lofty ideals of the after life. But it’s all self defeating really, for they themselves need capitalism to create the very wealth that drive the engines of their institutions, without it, they’ll be just like the rest of ”the masses” with hat in hand begging for a handout with crime becoming an everyday feature in most people’s lives.

NOTE: He should have voiced a strong objection to a ruling political/economic oligarchy that seeks to strip the voice and economic clout of the people, by transforming  society back to an earlier age that existed prior to the industrial revolution, another aristocracy where a ruling elite manages society for us.

FLASHBACK: BREITBART NEWS ON FRANCIS’S ‘LIBERATION THEOLOGY’ BEFORE BECOMING POPE

by MICHAEL PATRICK LEAHY 28 Nov 2013, 7:31 PM

On Tuesday, Pope Francis I issued a 50,000-word statement, officially referred to as an “apostolic exhortation” titled Evangelii Gaudium, attacking capitalism and embracing Latin American “liberation theology.”

In February, a month before he was selected as pope, Breitbart News wrote this about then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina:

[T]he chances of the leading Latin American contenders–Cardinal Leonardo Sandri of Argentina, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, Cardinal Odilo Scherer of Brazil, and Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina [Note: A month later he was selected Pope Francis I]–are diminished by the prevalence of the left wing “liberation theology” among many Roman Catholic clergy members in Latin America. Cardinals outside of Latin America may be leery that the election of a Latin American pope may lead to the exporting of that theology–considered heretical by many–to the rest of the world.

Eight months after Pope Francis I was elevated to the papacy, he has, in effect, placed the worldwide apparatus of the Roman Catholic Church on record in favor of statism and in opposition to free markets. The pope’s statement on Tuesday showed a remarkable ignorance of free market capitalism. Indeed, his judgmental rejection of the economic system that has delivered billions of people throughout the world from poverty is chilling.

“Today,” the pope wrote in his statement, “everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized.”

“[S]ome people,” the statement added, “continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.” [emphasis added]

Francis I is the first pope who is a member of the Jesuit order. His statement that the benefits of free-market systems have “never been confirmed by the facts” is the sort of extreme assertion Jesuits are known to make when presenting an argument. As R.R. Reno, editor of First Things, the blog of the Institution on Religion and Public Life, wrote in September:

When Pope Francis was elected a friend asked me what to expect. “Strap on your seatbelt,” I replied. The comment didn’t reflect any special knowledge of Jorge Bergoglio. But I know Jesuits. They tend to be extremists of one sort or another.

Pope Francis I is clearly unfamiliar with the works of Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises, among others, each of whom have provided voluminous evidence supporting the benefits to all of free markets.

This development is troubling for all Americans, and especially so for the many millions of Roman Catholics in America who strongly reject the “liberation theology” the pope has now endorsed.

One major effort in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States—The Catholic Campaign for Human Development—has been promoting projects that align with “liberation theology” for over four decades.

More here.

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