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To: paulycy
All I can say is that if the Pope has in mind some kind of economic world order based on principles similar to marxism/socialism/communism in terms of redistribution of weatlh, etc. then he is profoundly ignorant of how best to raise the poor out of their sad conditions.

Actually, the Pope condemns those who, like communists, think that the world can be saved through institutions and the doling out of wealth absent the Love of a transcendent God.

Read the encyclical before judging the man.
14 posted on 07/07/2009 11:29:56 AM PDT by Antoninus (Time to fight back--donate to Free Republic, then donate to www.sarahpac.com)
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To: Antoninus
Read the encyclical before judging the man.

I've read all that's been posted here and I seriously tried to be non-judgemental of him as a man. Perhaps I failed.

The policies he is espousing won't work. We would ultimately end up with a world population no better off than those in North Korea or the poorest parts of China and India who used to be socialist.

I respect him as a man of God and as a scholar. He has, however, not done his homework sufficiently in worldly things to see that there is a way that God's world works down here and he is mistaken about the economic and wealth-creating part.

Creation of wealth, in and of itself, is neither good nor evil. It is simply necessary just as collecting food and water is necessary. Wealth is potential energy. Without wealth you can't give any money away to those who don't have it. Controlling that wealth in a centralized government leads to a whole world of corruption and waste. That is clear from history. Nobody's goals are reached, especially the poor and powerless. Millions die.

Theocracies don't work. Socialism and other centralized economies don't work. A world of variations on the model of a Constitutional Republic with a (mostly) free market uniting them is the best solution that humans have so far come up with in this imperfect world.

16 posted on 07/07/2009 11:47:14 AM PDT by paulycy (Liberal DOUBLE-STANDARDS are HATE crimes.)
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