[Ronaldus Magnus]

Radio giant Rush Limbaugh is scorching the leader of the Roman Catholic Church for criticizing unfettered capitalism, saying, “This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope.”

I am a big fan of Rush but he errs here in three ways:

1) Rush fallaciously assumes that Pope Francis's condemnation of one extreme on the economic continuum (unfettered capitalism) is an endorsement of the opposite extreme (pure Marxism). This conclusion isn't logically consistent.

2) The word capitalism, like most of the other "ism's", has multiple meanings. Making matters worse is that rather than being based on a person like Marxism, Mohammedism, or even Reaganism where the historic record provides a standard, the root of the word capitalism is simply the common noun capital. The use of the word capitalism could therefore mean anything from the mere use of production resources all the way over to the worship of material goods. Translation between Spanish to Italian to Latin to English only compounds this ambiguity. As such, Pope Francis and Rush could be talking about two completely different things and disagreeing about nothing.

3) Perhaps the most serious mistake Rush made is taking anything that the left-wing media says about the Catholic Church at face value. Time and time again, the initial Associated Press translation of any statement coming out of the Vatican is proven to be 180 degrees from the truth. This latest kerfuffle was most likely fabricated by the left to provide cover to the Obama State Department's vindictive closing the US embassy to the Vatican.

[GeronL]

leftwing media... like Breitbart??