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Pope Francis to UN delegation: “legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the State”
WDTPRS ^ | May 9, 2014 | Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Posted on 05/09/2014 1:56:14 PM PDT by NYer

Today Pope Francis addressed a delegation of the UN – which I remind you is a principle agent for promoting abortion world-wide.

Below please find the full text of Pope Francis’ address to the United Nations Agencies, Funds and Programmes on Friday, led by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

There is some blah blah at first, but keep reading. My emphases and comments.

NOTE: A lot of this is simply warmed up John Paul II and Benedict XVI. There isn’t much new here, apart from the terrible wording about the State and redistribution. But we can, for the most part, say “Ho hum! Next?”

Mr Secretary General,Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am pleased to welcome you, Mr Secretary-General and the leading executive officers of the Agencies, Funds and Programmes of the United Nations and specialized Organizations, as you gather in Rome for the biannual meeting for strategic coordination of the United Nations System Chief Executives Board.It is significant that today’s meeting takes place shortly after the solemn canonization of my predecessors, Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. The new saints inspire us by their passionate concern for integral human development and for understanding between peoples. This concern was concretely expressed by the numeous visits of John Paul II to the Organizations headquartered in Rome and by his travels to New York, Geneva, Vienna, Nairobi and The Hague.

I thank you, Mr Secretary-General, for your cordial words of introduction. I thank all of you, who are primarily responsible for the international system, for the great efforts being made to ensure world peace, respect for human dignity, the protection of persons, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, and harmonious economic and social development.The results of the Millennium Development Goals, especially in terms of education and the decrease in extreme poverty, confirm the value of the work of coordination carried out by this Chief Executives Board. At the same time, it must be kept in mind that the world’s peoples deserve and expect even greater results. [Do they?]

An essential principle of management is the refusal to be satisfied with current results and to press forward, in the conviction that those gains are only consolidated by working to achieve even more. In the case of global political and economic organization, much more needs to be achieved, since an important part of humanity does not share in the benefits of progress and is in fact relegated to the status of second-class citizens. [Perhaps the true culprits in that are local governments.] Future Sustainable Development Goals must therefore be formulated and carried out with generosity and courage, so that they can have a real impact on the structural causes of poverty and hunger, attain more substantial results in protecting the environment, ensure dignified and productive labor for all, and provide appropriate protection for the family, [Wasn't it some UN thingie that suggested that the Holy See was responsible for torture by teaching against abortion?] which is an essential element in sustainable human and social development. Specifically, this involves challenging all forms of injustice and resisting the “economy of exclusion”, the “throwaway culture” and the “culture of death” which nowadays sadly risk becoming passively accepted.With this in mind, I would like to remind you, as representatives of the chief agencies of global cooperation, of an incident which took place two thousand years ago and is recounted in the Gospel of Saint Luke (19:1-10). It is the encounter between Jesus Christ and the rich tax collector Zacchaeus, as a result of which Zacchaeus made a radical decision of sharing and justice, because his conscience had been awakened by the gaze of Jesus. [Do I remember this correctly, or was Zacchaeus already giving half of the wealth he was creating to the poor, and he did it voluntarily, on his own? The government wasn't doing it for him. Right? And, apparently, he kept enough to continue to create wealth.] This same spirit should be at the beginning and end of all political and economic activity. The gaze, often silent, of that part of the human family which is cast off, left behind, ought to awaken the conscience of political and economic agents and lead them to generous and courageous decisions with immediate results, like the decision of Zacchaeus. Does this spirit of solidarity and sharing guide all our thoughts and actions?
Today, in concrete terms, an awareness of the dignity of each of our brothers and sisters whose life is sacred and inviolable from conception to natural death must lead us to share with complete freedom the goods which God’s providence has placed in our hands, material goods but also intellectual and spiritual ones, and to give back generously and lavishly whatever we may have earlier unjustly refused to others. ["Share with complete freedom". NOT "share by government or other agency confiscation and redistribution.] The account of Jesus and Zacchaeus teaches us that above and beyond economic and social systems and theories, there will always be a need to promote generous, effective and practical openness to the needs of others. Jesus does not ask Zacchaeus to change jobs nor does he condemn his financial activity; he simply inspires him to put everything, freely yet immediately and indisputably, at the service of others. [Again, do I remember correctly? Wasn't he already giving half his wealth to the poor before he stood face to face with the Lord?] Consequently, I do not hesitate to state, as did my predecessors (cf. JOHN PAUL II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 42-43; Centesimus Annus, 43; BENEDICT XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 6; 24-40), that equitable economic and social progress can only be attained by joining scientific and technical abilities with an unfailing commitment to solidarity accompanied by a generous and disinterested spirit of gratuitousness at every level. A contribution to this equitable development will also be made both by international activity aimed at the integral human development of all the world’s peoples and [Wait for it...] by the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the State, as well as indispensable cooperation between the private sector and civil society. [By the STATE? When has any "State" done this effectively? And what does "legitimate" mean? According to laws that are passed? And if the laws are bad laws? And who will administrate it?]

Consequently, while encouraging you in your continuing efforts to coordinate the activity of the international agencies, which represents a service to all humanity, I urge you to work together in promoting a true, worldwide ethical mobilization which, beyond all differences of religious or political convictions, will spread and put into practice a shared ideal of fraternity and solidarity, especially with regard to the poorest and those most excluded. Invoking divine guidance on the work of your Board, I also implore God’s special blessing for you, Mr Secretary-General, for the Presidents, Directors and Secretaries General present among us, and for all the personnel of the United Nations and the other international Agencies and Bodies, and their respective families.

Combox moderation queue is ON.

I wonder how many people are still listening to him seriously on this issue.

Also, I would like to know if anyone around him is telling him that there are alternative ways of dealing with poverty apart from merely redistributing the wealth that other people create? Is Pope Francis talking to anyone about ideas that actually work?

I suspect other people might have the same reaction that I have when hearing/reading this stuff. It comes across as naive, out of step with history. Has any nation successfully dealt with poverty through redistribution? I don’t think so. Moreover, who would supervise this process of global redistribution? Angels? EU bureaucrats? The UN? Card. Rodriguez Maradiaga? Card. Kasper?

Finally, and I don’t mean this to be snarky, though I realize it could come off that way, given Argentina’s track record, should anyone from Argentina tell anyone else anything about how to deal with economic issues? A map of Argentina is in the illustrated dictionary by the entry “self-imposed economic decline”. Bad economies don’t create wealth. You can take every dime from ever person who has them and give them to the poor, and, at the end of the day you will have greater devastation. And the State solutions do no better.

How about talking about something other than what has been shown time and again to be disaster?


TOPICS: Catholic; Current Events; Religion & Culture; Religion & Politics
KEYWORDS: catholic; francis; incomeequality; incomeinequality; liberationtheology; marxism; pope; popefrancis; redistribution; socialism; vatican
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To: Bidimus1

that should read in NO way not.. (in NOW way) sorry for error


21 posted on 05/09/2014 2:48:15 PM PDT by Bidimus1
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To: NYer; All
Leftists like Kennedy and Pelosi and Biden taught us that we can ignore the Pope if we disagree with him.

On economic issues my Pope is a Marxist, and I disagree and will ignore him.

22 posted on 05/09/2014 2:49:01 PM PDT by Kansas58
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To: GreyFriar
Ed makes a very good point that the Pope is talking about Zacchaeus who decides to spend HIS own money. And that It is NOT a call for the government to tax and spend our money.

Thank you for the post and ping! The msm and low information voters are unfamiliar with Zacchaeus, much less anything else in scripture, and can only interpret (spin) his words according to their secularist understanding of life.

You can see, by the comments posted to this thread, just how pervasive this ignorance has become.

23 posted on 05/09/2014 2:50:04 PM PDT by NYer ("You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears." James 4:14)
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To: Gay State Conservative
IMO,Jesus made it very clear,more than once,that charitable works are expected of His followers.So it seems to me that,when it comes to matters related to money and the "poor",Christ was basically a socialist.[...]

LOLWHUT?

Charity has *nothing* to do with socialism, FRiend. If anything, socialist/communist redistribution takes away the responsibility of charity from the individual, and grants it to the state in the form of redistribution. It would be good for you to study the matter in order to discern the difference...

24 posted on 05/09/2014 2:54:17 PM PDT by roamer_1 (Globalism is just socialism in a business suit.)
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To: roamer_1
Charity has *nothing* to do with socialism..

Yes,I understand that.Perhaps,in my post,I should have included the *real* definition,and the Marxist definition, of both those words in order to set the stage for my basic point.

25 posted on 05/09/2014 3:07:23 PM PDT by Gay State Conservative (Stalin Blamed The Kulaks,Obama Blames The Tea Party)
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To: NYer

The only legitimate redistribution of wealth by the State is through fair taxation towards services that benefit all the residents. All may not benefit equally but all share some of the benefits. An example would be roads and parks.

But taking wealth from one person to create income for another is not a legitimate act of the State. Not because it is a bad idea for governments to have policies to eradicate poverty but because it never works. The amount of government power and interference is people’s lives that would be required to make it work is unacceptable to any freedom loving people.


26 posted on 05/09/2014 3:07:32 PM PDT by lastchance ("Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis" St. Augustine)
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To: forgotten man

Economics does indeed have a moral dimension. We call it charity which is not the same as redistribution.


27 posted on 05/09/2014 3:08:49 PM PDT by lastchance ("Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis" St. Augustine)
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To: NYer

This Pope is simply stating the position of the Church since its founding.

To those whose political views have replaced/supplanted their faith then a bit of prayer may come in handy.

To those who have neither lost their faith nor their political view..a bit of prayer may come in handy.

For everyone else who cares..


28 posted on 05/09/2014 3:27:33 PM PDT by montanajoe
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To: steve86
Pope Francis' words seems incoherent to me. On the one hand he speaks of "share(ing) with complete freedom," "gratuitous" giving and so forth --- this is the language of voluntarism and charity --- and then he dumps it all upside-down and talks about the State engaging in "legitimate" income redistribution. Wha...?

And not a word about the liberty-destroying evils of the dirigente State--- let alone a global superstate.

Bafflegab. And of course, it usually amounts to seizing the wages from wage-earners in rich countries, to give it to rich people in poor countries. It's not even good for "the poor." :o/

29 posted on 05/09/2014 3:48:43 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o ("The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops." - St. John Chrysostom, Bishop)
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To: GreyFriar

I agree with your post # 18. Very good point. Redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor leaves everyone poor — except the government honchos.


30 posted on 05/09/2014 3:48:49 PM PDT by zot
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To: Understand the stimulus

“LEGITIMATE REDISTRIBUTION’ OF WEALTH BY THE STATE” IS AN OXIMORON.

Argentinean “pope Francis has frequently lashed out at the injustices of capitalism and the global economic system that excludes so much of humanity.”

Isn’t it a fact that the countries that exclude the capitalistic system are so poor for just that reason? Even Communist China, by embracing capitalism, is becoming an economic super power and has begun eliminating the famines and abject poverty endemic to it for centuries. The same is being seen in India, South Korea and Taiwan. 60 years ago, the last two of the aforementioned countries were poorer and had less natural resources than most of the Latin American countries, but they embraced capitalism and became a prosperous part of the first world community.

What is it that His Holiness is advocating in order to eliminate poverty in the World? Jesus Christ said that the poor will always be with us, but, Jesus was not alluding only to economic poverty, He was also referring to moral and spiritual poverty as well.

Since the beginning of his election, Pope Francis has been involved in a continuous barrage of misrepresentations and attacks against the free enterprise system, which together with political and religious freedom, are the main tenets of modern capitalism. In spite of its defects and shortcomings, no system in human history has reduced poverty more in the world and helped to raise the standards of living for Humanity as a whole, than the free enterprise capitalistic system. Thus far, I have yet to hear Pope Francis condemn the socialist regimes that continue to keep their people subjugated and in a state of misery, as is the case in Cuba and Venezuela, and these are just two of the many other well known apprentices of tyrannical socialist regimes in Latin America.

Is Pope Francis’ Peronist vision of a third way between Socialism and Capitalism the way to eliminate poverty in the world? Peronism, a populist hybrid between Socialism and Fascism reduced Argentina, a very rich country with a numerous well educated middle class, to the present waste basket state it is today.

Isn’t the so called “redistribution of wealth” one of the main tenets of the Marxist doctrine and a slogan used ad nauseam by demagogues throughout history?

As soon as he took power, Pope Francis has been trying to rescue the Marxist liberation theology from the dust bin of history where it was relegated by Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI, a movement that supported the Marxist guerrillas in Latin America and was used by the Cuban regime to expand communism in this hemisphere.

In Quod Apostolici Muneris, the great Leo XIII condemned socialism as a Satanic counterfeit of the Gospel.

As Pope Pius XI affirmed in his Encyclical letter “Divini Redemptoris on Atheistic Communism”:

58. “See to it, Venerable Brethren, that the Faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived! Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever. Those who permit themselves to be deceived into lending their aid towards the triumph of Communism in their own country, will be the first to fall victims of their error. And the greater the antiquity and grandeur of the Christian civilization in the regions where Communism successfully penetrates, so much more devastating will be the hatred displayed by the godless.”

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19031937_divini-redemptoris_en.html

By orders of Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger, a prefect of the CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH, issued the following INSTRUCTION ON CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE “THEOLOGY OF LIBERATION” in which it was condemning the inclusion of the “class struggle” and other parts of the ideology and Marxist praxis under the Christian cover of a so called liberation theology.

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19840806_theology-liberation_en.html

According to Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Pope Francis has close ties with liberation theology, the same discaterio that once condemned the movement. In the 1980s the CDF, under then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, attacked liberation theology as borrowing “from various currents of Marxist thought“.

Few know that Müller is also a pupil of Gustavo Gutierrez, the “father” of Latin-American liberation theology. When Müller, the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, affirms that “Pope Francis has close ties with liberation theology” it exposes the reason for the exaltation of Leonardo Boff and the most radical leaders of the Marxist Liberation theology with the election of Pope Francisco.

Pope Francis’ right hand, the powerful Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, who was put by the Pope in charge of the reform of the Church, makes his sympathies clear when he quotes as an authority on the morality of international investment the Swiss radical Jean Ziegler – a longtime defender of Fidel Castro, who has called the United States an “imperialist dictatorship”.

Pope Francis’ opening to liberation theology is in stark contrast with the persecution to a very orthodox order, the “Franciscans of the Inmaculata”, for its adherence to the Tridentine mass and the traditional tenets and liturgy that were the orthodox standard of the Catholic Church for hundreds of years.


31 posted on 05/09/2014 3:49:01 PM PDT by Dqban22
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To: forgotten man
Neither an outright dole nor pseudo-earned income from a make-work “job” satisfies. And a “job” can only be make-work unless it is supervised by someone who has a stake in both the cost of the pay, and the productivity of the work.

And that is difficult for the government to achieve in the best of circumstances - and impossible when “giving Joe a job” is the actual mission.

32 posted on 05/09/2014 3:49:23 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion ("Liberalism” is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)
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To: GreyFriar

Thanks for posting. I was warring in my brain: ‘I don’t believe the MSM version’ vs ‘That stupid pope.’ haha.


33 posted on 05/09/2014 4:28:13 PM PDT by bboop (does not suffer fools gladly)
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To: Understand the stimulus

Didn’t you read the comment? “When is Pope Francis being misquoted? When his lips are moving.” Don’t mistake the MSM’s soundbytes for the Pope’s message.


34 posted on 05/09/2014 4:35:42 PM PDT by bboop (does not suffer fools gladly)
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To: bboop

The most misquoted pope in history.


35 posted on 05/09/2014 4:56:26 PM PDT by BlatherNaut
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To: Mrs. Don-o
Pope Francis' words seems incoherent to me.

His words and behaviors make plenty of sense if one "reads Francis through Pascendi Dominici Gregis."

36 posted on 05/09/2014 5:00:33 PM PDT by BlatherNaut
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To: NYer

Even men who rise to the rank of Pope would do well to steer clear of ascribing anything intelligible to the incoherent systems of ideas that today parade around the collectivist banners of socialism and redistribution. Nothing can come of it when you mix that which comes about due to human action with that which comes about by human design. Planned economies are only possible through coercion and dictatorship and through cronyism.


37 posted on 05/09/2014 5:10:25 PM PDT by februus
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To: NYer

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3154052/posts?page=41#41

For everyone who is criticizing the Pope’s words — check out the meaning of subsidiarity.


38 posted on 05/09/2014 5:44:33 PM PDT by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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To: NYer
the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the State,

Anyone making statements like this need to seek the face
of YHvH and turn back from purposfully violating YHvH's
commandment:
“You shall not steal. "

1 Timothy 5.20 – those that persist in sin,
rebuke publicly so others
stand in fear and not fall away

shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
39 posted on 05/09/2014 6:01:20 PM PDT by Uri’el-2012 (Psalm 119:174 I long for Your salvation, YHvH, Your teaching is my delight.)
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To: alstewartfan

He’s saying nothing that the last two Popes didn’t say. Now for what he really said about “income redistribution”.

http://www.catholicleague.org/pope-ties-life-issues-justice/

“The media are already gushing over the pope’s call for a redistribution of wealth, but they are downplaying his remarks on abortion and euthanasia. And what he said about the economic responsibilities of wealthy nations is, quite frankly, old stuff. Indeed, he cites his two predecessors as saying the same thing. To be specific, the pope did not call for economic equality: He twice called for economic equity. Equity means fairness; it does not mean sameness.

More important, the pope linked the rights of the unborn, and those who are ill, to the cause for justice. “Today, in concrete terms,” he said, “an awareness of the dignity of each of our brothers and sisters whose life is sacred and inviolable from conception to natural death must lead us to share with complete freedom the goods which God’s providence has placed in our hands, material goods but also intellectual and spiritual ones, and to give back generously and lavishly whatever we may have earlier unjustly refused to others.”

The pope also denounced our “throwaway culture” and the “culture of death.” He has used those terms before (the latter was coined by Saint John Paul II), so there is no ambiguity: He is clearly speaking about the disposal of unborn babies and the plight of the terminally ill.

Kudos to the pope for speaking to these issues with such force. We hope that the U.N. executives heed his advice”


40 posted on 05/09/2014 6:36:03 PM PDT by NKP_Vet ("It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died;we should thank God that such men lived" ~ Patton)
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