Posted on 12/12/2013 7:11:26 AM PST by what's up
Pope Francis said in the first peace message of his pontificate that huge salaries and bonuses are symptoms of an economy based on greed and inequality and called again for nations to narrow the wealth gap.
He attacked the "widening gap between those who have more and those who must be content with the crumbs", calling on governments to implement "effective policies" to guarantee people's fundamental rights, including access to capital, services, educational resources, healthcare and technology.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
LOL Anything more than *I* make.
The Catholic Church supports over 1000 universities around the world. Almost 6000 hospitals. 9000 orphanages. 13,000 homes for the elderly and disabled. And tens of thousands more institutions in nearly every country in the world.
I think that qualifies as "giving back."
Here, here. When this Pope starts liquidating the Billions and Billions of dollars that the Church has in real estate, cash, and treasure and starts giving it to the poor I’ll listen to him. Imagine the good all the monies paid out in priest abuse cases would mean to the poor in the world.
relative poverty??
Sure your poor are fat and lazy and have shiny shoes and XBoxes, but it’s still no fair that some one else has an airplane.
Therefor, you should all be dirt poor and starve together, it’s the Christian thing to do.
Yep.
If these are really his words he is an economic moron
Beats me why people say we have an unbridled capitalism. We have growing socialism, not unbridled capitalism.
Didn't you notice the Gov't takeover of one sixth of the economy? How about the hundreds of crippling EPA regulations which keep energy companies from dealing freely on the market. The massive Gov't subsidies for green energy which is a direct contradiction to free markets?
Meanwhile as the free markets are strangled by Obama more jobs are lost and people thrown into economic turmoil. The opposite of what you say is true. We need to UNBRIDLE capitalism, not BRIDLE it so the poor have the ability to work, gain a sense of self worth, and ease their own misery.
Wrong. He's pretty famously refused to move into the papal apartment and is instead living two pretty bare rooms in the guesthouse. He eats his meals in the guesthouse dining room with the other visiting priests.
With all due respect, your question to me is phrased as a statist would approach the problem of poverty.
“How do we define the poor? Who gets to receive help and who should be considered ‘rich’ enough to not require help?”
This is precisely how the Pope is NOT approaching that issue. The Pope is proposing that everyone everywhere be open and caring towards the plight of the poor. That is, simply be a human being as God intends.
He is not saying we need to insert atheistic mechanisms to “define” the poor in order to “help” them; he’s trusting we all have the sense to know a poor person when we see a poor person and to act accordingly, both as individuals first then as a society (fraternity).
Therefore he’s simply, ultimately saying, when you witness poverty personally, get off your duff and do something about it, either with your own wealth, or time, or energy; either invested personally (one on one) or more corporately (such as donating money, time or talent to a charity). If people from any religious background would just do that, we would take a giant leap towards peace.
And that’s what this is all about: Peace. Don’t loose that focus. It’s not honest to read/listen (to anyone) without doing so with the intention of first understanding what they are trying to say and why.
The wealthiest counties in the country surround Washington, DC. The Pope needs an education.
Some freepers confuse poor, sick and hungry with laziness, thievery and feeling entitled.
Alright, well here is where the rubber is meeting the road. I’m glad you brought this up because I think this is one of the main sources of resistance here.
What does it mean to “guarantee access”? Just consider that phrase for a bit.
Now (I’m assuming you took at least a few minutes to carefully consider it) let me ask: does the phrase “guarantee access” necessarily equal “guarantee possession”?
No, he discusses mentions Gov't intervention not just personal charity. If he was only talking about personal charity I would back him completely. But he promotes Gov't activism.
The irony is, the poor would be helped if Francis took the opposite approach, preached for Gov't to remove itself from markets, and promoted capitalism. He denigrates free markets but it is the current socialistic policies that keep the poor down. The other day he decried youth unemployment. Well, if he really was looking for answers on that score he would help to "unbridle" capitalism from it's shackles.
Liberals think there is this one economic pie that is a zero-sum game.
They just can’t grasp the concept of the pie getting bigger with human enterprise and investment.
Already considered before you mentioned it.
In fact, I consider it every time I hear a leftwing Dem politician use the very same phrase.
The Govt should not be in the business of "guaranteeing access" to things like capital or healthcare. One should work to gain access to these, not be given it by the Gov't. We already had a scenario in which Gov't pushed guaranteed access with the '08 crash and the subprimes. Socialist policies don't work.
I would asset that simply because the phrase “guarantee access” has been mis-used by ilinformed politicians doesn’t necessarily mean the Pope uses the phrase incorrectly.
I guess that’s all I can say on the matter if you aren’t willing to consider the possibility that mis-use of the term in the past doesn’t mean it can’t be used correctly in the present.
I see your point.
Taken with all the other statements the Pope made on economics in his statement, I have no alternative but to infer that the Pope uses the phrase in exactly the same way as the socialists.
Unless you’re so rich that you can basically withdraw from society, good luck with an unbridled laissez-faire capitalist system now. Almost everyone would end up as serfs in short order.
Although something similar may have worked in America in the past, those were the days when America was much more rural and farm families could live at least semi-autonomously. Remove all gov’t regulation now and it would be as bad as communism.
The “sanctity of private property”? So you believe that property is holy? That is pretty much incompatible with the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Jesus is with you.
The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.' Matthew 25
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