Posted on 12/06/2013 4:43:34 AM PST by steelhead_trout
Since the release of Evangelii Gaudium there have been countless articles and commentary about the economic portions of Pope Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation. Some of the commentary has been downright bizarre, such as Rush Limbaugh denouncing the Pope as a Marxist, or Stuart Varney accusing Francis of being a neo-socialist.
Not far below the surface of many of these critiques one hears the following refrain: why can’t the Pope just go back to talking about abortion? Why can’t we return the good old days of Pope John Paul II or Benedict XVI and talk 24/7/365 about sex? Why doesn’t Francis have the decency to limit himself to talking about Jesus and gays, while avoiding the rudeness of discussing economics in mixed company, an issue about which he has no expertise or competence?
These commentators all but come and out say: we embrace Catholic teaching when it concerns itself with “faith and morals”—when it denounces abortion, opposes gay marriage, and urges personal charity. This is the Catholicism that has been acceptable in polite conversation. This is a stripped-down Catholicism that doesn’t challenge fundamental articles of economic faith.
And it turns out that this version of Catholicism is a useful tool. It is precisely this portion of Catholicism that is acceptable to those who control the right narrative because it doesn’t truly endanger what’s most important to those who steer the Republic: maintaining an economic system premised upon limitless extraction, fostering of endless desires, and creating a widening gap between winners and losers that is papered over by mantras about favoring equality of opportunity.
(Excerpt) Read more at theamericanconservative.com ...
Marxism is not what the likes of Obama are all about.
Something’s not right alright, but it’s not just about economics.
Well you know I completely agree with you.
Haven’t seen you post in awhile...good to see you again.
Ironic that people think that the people who control our economy, including financiers like Buffet, are in favor of a “free market.” They do their best to protect their interests by bribing the powers that be, whatever form of government that be. The recent openness to a “carbon tax,” is an example of their cynicism, as well as their promotion of the new morality.
Lots of people admired Mussolini, which made them open to Hitler who was an entirely different sort of cat. My parish priest knew Coughlin in the ‘50s. He kept his pledge to say nothing about politics, but he had his friends. I heard another priest in West Virginia who had also known Coughlin and who had nothing good to say about our involvement in Vietnam, that it was an imperial adventure.
The Catholic Church has, from its beginning, reflected the neutrality of wealth and the virtue of assisting the poor to improve themselves, all very clearly delineated in the chapters of Church history, beginning with the gospels. The one ideology of the Church is to encourage, to assist, to relieve, to motivate, to develop the people of the world for the better. As trends develop that warrant correction, the pope, in his position as leader of Christianity, must comment, and that for the good of all. No broken ideology dare raise its head, but capitalism is, like any financial system, in constant need of checks and balances.
And where will these checks and balances come from. An absolute monarch in the form of a Habsburg or a Bourbon, a conclave of cardinals, or any other statist mechanism. No, our founders believed in the free market. The less interference from any government or church the better. The idea that economic activity needs constant checks and balances is a recipe for tyranny. A tyranny that Americans recoil from. Free Men, Free Markets is as American as apple pie.
Modernists are not known for speaking clearly.
I left out “a” in front of leader. My fault.
**He ought to speak, as have previous Popes, so clearly that there is no room for doubt.**
We would all definitely like that. Benedict XVI was great at this.
Very true - many of them endorsed Corporatism instead as an alternative to Communism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadragesimo_Anno
He’s still a hero to many of them, especially palaeoconservative Catholics—just like Dennis Fahey.
Denis Fahey was a flake also, a terrible anti-semite.
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