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 ...
As a Catholic, I generally like this Pope, but I would love to have a one on one conversation with him. I would like to ask him a question: “Our daughter has always attended private Catholic schools, to which we have paid tuition. She is about to attend a private Catholic high school next year, where her tuition will more than double (~$8500). Should we pull her out of Catholic school, and give that money to the poor—for whom in the big picture, the amount would not lift them out of poverty, nor would it change their lives much?”
Large numbers of Christians are being slaughtered every day in muslim countries throughout the world.
Obama is forcing America Catholics to endorse and support birth control, abortion and homosexual sex.
Christianity is under serious attack by governments in almost every western country.
Yet this Pope thinks the most immediate problem neeeding his attention is wealth redistribution?
Ill ask Bishop Unca Scrooge!....
I’m only here to read the comments of those brave / stupid enough to stick their necks out and defend the pope.
:)
Social Justice: Were telling you to do what we say Jesus said and having the government make sure you do it.
The pope fails to make any genuine distinction between Western poverty (bad enough) and the poverty of the Third World (unimaginably terrible). But is it really true that absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation are the driving reasons for poverty and inequality? People in places such as Congo, Burundi and Mozambique live under corrupt authoritarian regimes where crippling poverty has a thousand fathers none of them named capitalism. The people of Togo do not suffer in destitution because of some derivative scheme on Wall Street or the fallout from a tech IPO.
The global elite is becoming even further removed from everyone else. The solution, though, isn't easy. Global manipulation and bloated national governments are going to have to collapse first.
Physician, heal thyself. Let Pope Francis call upon members of his faith to practice charity as he recommends. Salvation, the real concern of faith leaders, is accomplished person by person, not nation by nation. So let him call upon the highly-compensated members of the Catholic Church to stand up, donate their “excess” and show the world how they can be a shining light in a world of darkness. Let him begin with politicians, celebrities, professional athletes, trust fund babies, charity leaders, etc. and see how they react.
And they shared their wealth amongst themselves, the believers,
not with every stranger that had their hand out demanding it.
Another point,
Why focusing on the ‘mega-salaries’?
He himself does not EARN an annual salary, because he OMNs everything the Church has.
This should be an interesting thread.
Correct. Thru Gov't dictate, Obama's Gov't is FORCING every employer in America who offers health insurance to pay for the abortion pill.
You'd think the Pope would find it expedient to speak out on this horror...yet the Pope instead is making "share the wealth" speeches which play right into Obama's hand and allow him even more power.
The solution is not to empower corrupt, elite-saturated government further,
as the gist of his statement implies.
This from a man who lives in one of the luxurious palaces in the world. I doubt he does his own cooking, shopping for bargains, etc., like those of us he accuses of being "greedy" do. He hasn't been pope long and I'm already kind of tired of him.
Why isn’t the Pope telling American bishops to do their job?
Why should he care about “mega-salaries” at all. Not his department.This is getting tiresome.
The world needs more Scripture, not more wealth distribution.
Jesuits are trouble, especially those from Latin America.
By all means, let’s make 30 million similar socialists citizens—they deserve amnesty. /s
Define 'excessive'.
It does provide many temptations and it is what you do with that wealth that may lead you astray.
“calling on governments to implement”
He will land us all in chains.
When the Pope sells off some of that papal bling, we can talk.
Stealing wealth from others, through fraud or force, is not profit, but theft (an initiation of force). Whether that theft is called a mugging, welfare, or voluntary taxation [a contradiction in terms], it is still theft and is always evil. Theft, like loss, is destruction; trade, like profit, is creation. To pursue profit is to pursue creation. It is an act of virtue and not a vice.
Your profit is the symbol and reward for the value of your creation, as judged by the minds of others who have freely-given given their wealth to you in exchange for it. Do not let the leftist intellectuals who infect our universities persuade you from thinking otherwise. In truth, it is those altruists who condemn the profit motive, who are guilty of evil.
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