Posted on 07/14/2015 8:16:57 AM PDT by Kaslin
On arrival in La Paz, Pope Francis was presented by Bolivian President Evo Morales with a wooden crucifix carved in the form of a hammer and sickle, the symbol of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Fidel.
Had Pope John Paul II been handed that crucifix, he might have cracked it over Evo's head. For John Paul II had seen up close what communism did -- to his country, his church and his people in 45 years of Bolshevik rule.
On his arrival in the Nicaragua of Daniel Ortega in 1983, Pope John Paul castigated a priest-collaborator who dared to serve that Sandinista Marxist regime as culture minister.
And, while in Managua, he warned Catholics they were being threatened by "unacceptable ideological commitments."
Today we have a pope for whom free-market capitalism is the "unacceptable ideological commitment."
As The New York Times reports, Pope Francis does "not just criticize the excesses of capitalism. He compares them to the 'dung of the devil.' He does not simply argue that 'greed for money' is a bad thing. He calls it a 'subtle dictatorship that condemns and enslaves.'"
In South America, Pope Francis "made a historic apology for the crimes of the Roman Catholic Church during the period of Spanish colonialism -- even as he called for a global movement against a 'new colonialism' rooted in an inequitable economic order."
"The Argentine pope seemed to be asking for a social revolution."
Now the church has a long tradition of criticizing capitalism, dating back to the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891.
In "American Church: The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America," author Russ Shaw deals with the causes and consequences of what some Catholics contend was a fatal embrace of a heretical "Americanism" in the 19th century.
This pope goes beyond that. His words about capitalism echo what Cold War Catholics said of communism, that it is a tree poisoned at the root that can yield only bad fruit, and, as the Gospel teaches, ought to be cut down and cast into the fire.
What is wrong with the pope's neo-socialist sermonizing?
While capitalism does indeed generate inequalities, freedom, too, produces inequality. For all men and all women are unequal in abilities, energy and opportunities. In a free society, some inevitably succeed, others fail.
For as the Biblical parable teaches, some are given 10 talents, others two, and God judges us on how well we use the talents we were given. The only way to achieve absolute equality is absolute tyranny, the remorseless redistribution of wealth by an all-powerful regime.
The pontiff says the capitalist "idolatry of money" creates "the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose." But it is egalitarianism that has proven to be the road to dictatorship, dictatorships run by egalitarians in the name of the "proletariat."
Free enterprise has brought more millions out of poverty, enabled more billions of people to live longer, freer, healthier and happier lives, and produced more widespread prosperity than any other economic system.
What is the superior system the pope believes we should adopt?
What has Argentina produced but an economically failed state, incompetent socialist rulers, and an occasional Peronista in sunglasses and shiny boots? Is Latin America a fine model?
The pope used the phrase "dung of the devil." Is that not a good description of Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" and "Das Kapital"? And is not satanic the precise word to describe the scores of millions of dead that 70 years of Marxist-socialist ideology produced?
The 100 million people of Eastern Europe, the 300 million of the late Soviet Union, the 1.2 billion people in China -- are they not better off the further they have moved away from Marxism, and the closer they have moved toward free-market capitalism?
As for the pope's apology for the sins of Spanish Catholicism in Latin America, why does he not speak up for the culture Catholicism helped to create, the eradication of paganism, and the termination of such practices as human sacrifice among the indigenous peoples?
But, then, we Americans are no strangers to "apology tours."
The pope is calling for a "social revolution." But what country, among the 190-plus in the U.N., comes closest to the utopia the pope has in mind? Or does his utopia exist only in the mind?
The pope is saintly man. But he has no special understanding of economic systems or of climate change. He is the Vicar of Christ, of the Savior sent by the Father to teach us what we must believe and how we must live to attain eternal life.
Christ did not come among us to end colonialism, or redistribute wealth, or start a social revolution against the empire of the Caesars.
As he told Pontius Pilate, "My Kingdom is not of this world."
Pope Francis is the infallible custodian of that truths Christ taught. Is that not sufficient, Your Holiness? Why not leave the socialist sermons to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren?
Can someone explain to me what Catholics would find heretical about “Americanism?”
Capitalism is morality neutral, it depends on the people under it. In the right hands, it beats any other system hands down.
Capitalism works because it is driven by incentive.
Communism doesn’t work because it is mired in disincentive.
If you believe that capitalism = greed, then you have a Christian argument against it.
I believe that greed exists independent of capitalism. In fact, what fuels the desire for socialism is greed + envy.
Capitalism is what allows me to trade my ability to make lawnmowers for your ability to make refrigerators. We both benefit.
Greed, avarice and the idolatry of money are certainly diabolical. Who would dispute that?
I think capitalism is by far the most moral economic system ever conceived of.
The Pope, with all due respect, has his head up....
Why is this wrong?
Frankie is a Jesuit. That says it all!
The Pope needs to read Adam Smiths’ “The Theory of Moral Sentiments.”
The Pope needs to read ANY basic book on economics IMHO.
It’s all Greek to him. The Pope has at least admitted he doesn’t know much about economics.
What the Pope does advocate would take us down the same path that bankrupted Greece.
With $18 trillion in debt, with $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs, one could argue we’re already there.
Do you believe Capitalism is a “subtle dictatorship that condemns and enslaves.”?
He didn't say that.
Yes, he did.
From the New York Times:
“ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay — His speeches can blend biblical fury with apocalyptic doom. Pope Francis does not just criticize the excesses of global capitalism. He compares them to the “dung of the devil.” He does not simply argue that systemic “greed for money” is a bad thing. He calls it a “subtle dictatorship” that “condemns and enslaves men and women.”
The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine
Monday , May 5, 2008
FoxNews/Hannity's America
[special Friday night edition--original airdate May 2, 2008]
(some key excerpts)
["(Jose) Diaz-Balart is the son of Rafael Diaz-Balart y Guitierrez (a former Cuban politician). He has three bothers, Rafael Diaz-Balart (a banker), Mario Diaz-Balart (a US Congressman) and Lincoln Diaz-Balart (also a US Congressman). His aunt, Mirta Diaz-Balart, was Fidel Castro's first wife."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Diaz-Balart]
JOSE DIAZ-BALART, TELEMUNDO NETWORK: "Liberation theology in Nicaragua in the mid-1980's was a pro-Sandinista, pro-Marxist, anti-U.S., anti-Catholic Church movement. That's it. No ifs, ands, or buts. His church apparently supported, in the mid-'80s in Nicaragua, groups that supported the Sandinista dictatorships and that were opposed to the Contras whose reason for being was calling for elections. That's all I know. I was there.
I saw the churches in Nicaragua that he spoke of, and the churches were churches that talked about the need for violent revolution and I remember clearly one of the major churches in Managua where the Jesus Christ on the altar was not Jesus Christ, he was a Sandinista soldier, and the priests talked about the corruption of the West, talked about the need for revolution everywhere, and talked about 'the evil empire' which was the United States of America."
REV. BOB SCHENCK, NATIONAL CLERGY COUNCIL: "it's based in Marxism. At the core of his [Wright's] theology is really an anti-Christian understanding of God, and as part of a long history of individuals who actually advocate using violence in overthrowing those they perceive to be oppressing them, even acts of murder have been defended by followers of liberation theology. That's very, very dangerous."
SCHENCK: "I was actually the only person escorted to Dr. Wright. He asked to see me, and I simply welcomed him to Washington, and then I said Dr. Wright, I want to bring you a warning: your embrace of Marxist liberation theology. It is contrary to the Gospel, and you need, sir, to abandon it. And at that he dropped the handshake and made it clear that he was not in the mood to dialogue on that point."
Source: The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html
In March of 2007, FOX News host Sean Hannity had engaged Obama’s pastor in a heated interview about his Church’s teachings. For many viewers, the ensuing shouting match was their first exposure to "Black Liberation Theology"...
Like the pro-communist Liberation Theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of "salvation" in the afterlife is superseded by "liberation" on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=30CD9E14-B0C9-4F8C-A0A6-A896F0F44F02
__________________________________
Catholics for Marx [Liberation Theology]
By Fr. Robert Sirico
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, June 03, 2004
In the days when the Superpowers were locked in a Cold War, Latin America seethed with revolution, and millions lived behind an iron curtain, a group of theologians concocted a novel idea within the history of Christianity. They proposed to combine the teachings of Jesus with the teachings of Marx as a way of justifying violent revolution to overthrow the economics of capitalism.
The Gospels were re-rendered not as doctrine impacting on the human soul but rather as windows into the historical dialectic of class struggle. These "liberation theologians" saw every biblical criticism of the rich as a mandate to expropriate the expropriating owners of capital, and every expression of compassion for the poor as a call for an uprising by the proletarian class of peasants and workers.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=460782B7-35CC-4C9E-A2C5-93832067C7CD
Jay Richards | February 2, 2010
The presence of Marxism in liberation theology is well-known, at least to seminarians who are critical readers. Practically every seminarian reads Gustavo Gutierrez’s Theology of Liberation at some point, but most laypeople find it hard to believe that there could have been (and continues to be) a widespread attempt to hybridize Christian theology and Marxism.
Marxist regimes obviously benefitted from the spread of liberation theology in the churches. Still, I was not aware of any connections between liberation theology and communist clandestine organizations until now.
A new article by Robert D. Chapman in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence begins to connect some dots. In “The Church in Revolution,” Chapman, “a retired operations officer in the Clandestine Services Division of the Central Intelligence Agency,” argues that the KGB infiltrated the Russian Orthodox Church through Metropolitan Nikodim, the Russian Orthodoxy’s second-ranking prelate. Nikodim was a proponent of liberation theology. Nikodim was active in the otherwise-Protestant World Council of Churches. And the WCC, of course, became an actively left-wing organization during the last half of the 20th century.
Chapman also details the growth of liberation theology in Latin America—and the Vatican’s struggles with it—and the growth of black liberation theology in the United States. Prominent proponents of the latter include James Cone and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
The arguments of liberation theologians should be challenged on their merits. The source of an argument, after all, doesn’t establish its truth or falsity. Still, it’s interesting to learn that liberation theology may have been, at least in part, a project of the KGB.
Unfortunately, this isn’t just history. Chapman concludes ominously:
"the Theology of Liberation doctrine is one of the most enduring and powerful to emerge from the KGB’s headquarters. The doctrine asks the poor and downtrodden to revolt and form a Communist government, not in the name of Marx or Lenin, but in continuing the work of Jesus Christ, a revolutionary who opposed economic and social discrimination.
A friend of mine, a head of Catholic social services in my area and formerly a priest, is a liberation theologian. He has made a number of humanitarian trips to Central America and told me, ‘‘liberation theology is alive and well.’’ The same can be said of its sibling in the United States [ie, Black Liberation Theology]."
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2010/02/liberation-theology-and-the-kgb/
Private property and the profit motive provide both the means and the motive to produce wealth in the form of material real goods that are required for survival and philosophical happiness.In a rational society where life is the standard of value, these are objective values and are therefore objectively morally good.
This pope goes beyond that. His words about capitalism echo what Cold War Catholics said of communism, that it is a tree poisoned at the root that can yield only bad fruit, and, as the Gospel teaches, ought to be cut down and cast into the fire. What is wrong with the pope's neo-socialist sermonizing?
While capitalism does indeed generate inequalities, freedom, too, produces inequality. For all men and all women are unequal in abilities, energy and opportunities. In a free society, some inevitably succeed, others fail. For as the Biblical parable teaches, some are given 10 talents, others two, and God judges us on how well we use the talents we were given. The only way to achieve absolute equality is absolute tyranny, the remorseless redistribution of wealth by an all-powerful regime.
The pontiff says the capitalist "idolatry of money" creates "the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose." But it is egalitarianism that has proven to be the road to dictatorship, dictatorships run by egalitarians in the name of the "proletariat." Free enterprise has brought more millions out of poverty, enabled more billions of people to live longer, freer, healthier and happier lives, and produced more widespread prosperity than any other economic system.
What is the superior system the pope believes we should adopt? What has Argentina produced but an economically failed state, incompetent socialist rulers, and an occasional Peronista in sunglasses and shiny boots? Is Latin America a fine model?
PFL
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