Francis: Property is theft and Socialism is the answer...[Catholic Caucus]

Robert P. Barnidge noted that, "Pope Francis has made his social and economic tendencies clear since the early days of his pontificate. In his 2013 apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis criticizes the notion that reducing the disproportionately-high income tax burden on high-income earners can stimulate investment and economic growth as a 'crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. For the Holy Father, inequality is the 'root of social ills,' though he fails to explain precisely why a society of unequal wealth but a relatively high standard of living would somehow be less reflective of Gospel values than a society that shares equally in poverty.

Going further still, Evangelii Gaudium calls for structural transformation that would 'restore to the poor what belongs to them.' If, as Pope Francis suggests, property is possessed not by its owners, then, truly, 'property is theft,' to quote 19th-century French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s famous phrase."

Contrast this embrace of Socialism with the thought of Pope Saint John Paul II:

“…the fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature. Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism. Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism. Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice, to the unique and exclusive responsibility which he exercises in the face of good or evil. Man is thus reduced to a series of social relationships, and the concept of the person as the autonomous subject of moral decisions disappears, the very subject whose decisions build the social order.”

The Popes have consistently condemned Socialism because it is intrinsically evil. See here.

But Francis promotes it.

If you're not concerned about Francis as a Catholic, you should be.

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