[Responsibility2nd]

Is this from the Vatican? Or the Democrat Party Platform?

[Sooth2222]

In the United States, poverty doesn't have much if anything to do with money.

[miserare]

Dear Pope Francis:

Whatever happened to free will?

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Please, remember that the Vatican employes poor translators in order to reduce unemployment. The pope didn’t mean any of this.

[hinckley buzzard]

"where the powerful feed upon the powerless" with no regard for ethics, the environment or even God.

This is a far more accurate depiction of any socialist regime you can name, than it is of any real life free market capitalist system.

Someone should gently remind the Holy Father that the sin is not in the system, but in ourselves. No system devised by man will even begin to eliminate sin from the world.

[dennisw]

These days anyone can be put put of their job by a robot....including the Pope

[hinckley buzzard]

"where the powerful feed upon the powerless" with no regard for ethics, the environment or even God.

This is a far more accurate depiction of any socialist regime you can name, than it is of any real life free market capitalist system.

Someone should gently remind the Holy Father that the sin is not in the system, but in ourselves. No system devised by man will even begin to eliminate sin from the world.

[FourtySeven]

I have become convinced there are two ways to receive Francis and what he’s trying to say: (at any time not just now)

1. In a defensive way- looking for ways he’s wrong and/or ways he “doesn’t talk about me”. Dismissing him as inept, or a socialist, or a kind man who is just “misguided”. This is easy to do, and perhaps the right thing to do if what he says is a source of scandal, for anyone.

or...

2. In a receptive way - not looking for ways he is wrong (or even right) but how what he says applies to ME, as an individual. A person. Not a member of a group (an American, a Republican, a conservative, a capitalist), but for me, about me, concerning ME.

In other words, a provactive way (in every etiological sense of the word “pro-vocative”).

Does what he says concern me? Does it matter to me? Do I find his words offensive? Are they helpful? And the question “why”, tacked into those questions, for good measure.

Speaking for myself, I choose option 2 (and the two paragraphs following it). Not only because option 1 has nothing to offer me but bitterness and contempt, but because Jesus is just as real as the Pope.

[Arthur McGowan]

The Pope seems to be saying:

Greed is a bad thing.

Unemployment is a bad thing.

Therefore, Greed causes Unemployment.