It would be nice if the Pope would extol the virtues of Capitalism, by far the most dynamic economic system ever conceived of which has uplifted untold millions from proverty, disease, and oppression.
It would be nice, but it wouldn't be very Catholic.
"Since the origins of modern capitalism around 1780, more than two-thirds of the world’s population has moved out of poverty. In China and India alone, more than 500 million have been raised out of poverty just in the last forty years. In almost every nation the average age of mortality has risen dramatically, causing populations to expand accordingly. Health in almost every dimension has been improved, and literacy has been carried to remote places it never reached before.Whatever the motives of individuals, the system has improved the plight of the poor as none ever has before. The contemporary left systematically refuses to face these undeniable facts."
-- Robert Novak, from the thread Economic Heresies of the Left (Novak on Caritas in Veritate)
Catholic all my life, don’t care the Pope’s opinion about capitalism.
Anyplace that tries to do away with it gets a black market for their trouble, because the market is a force of nature.
Capitalism made the Middle Class possible. Before that it was Kings and Peasants.
Read “The Servile State” and you will understand Francis and at least his eco-political tendencies. He neither hates capitalism nor socialism but is not in love with either. He sees that any virtue found in current economies has been silenced by the vice that now operates within it.
The Pope won’t extol the virtues of capitalism because he has friends who are Marxists and they are nice people. I will not say what I really think here out of respect for what the Catholic church used to be.
The “ virtues of Capitalism”. Actually is capitalism inherently virtuous? I ask because the concept of capitalism relies on the availability of capital/funds to anyone who is worthy of a loan - in order to pursue some sort of economic purpose that will produce a profit.
In that sense, one could go to the gospel where Jesus tells the parable of the three servants who were each given 10, 5, and 1 talent respectively by their master. When the master returned, he called each in to get a report on how they used the money. You will recall that the first two invested their money and were able to repay the master with some left over; the last went and buried his single coin and have nothing to show as to any effort to improve his situation or that of the master. well, the master scolded the last one and called him ‘worthless.’
So, based on this parable capitalism seems to be OK with Jesus.
However, capitalism is neither inherently virtuous or sinful. Capitalism matured in the 19th century in North America where there existed freedom and a virtuous population who were guided by Judeo-Christian principles. In that time and place it could flourish and lift up the entire population. But, without a moral population, capitalism can become an abusive economic system as well - mostly when money becomes an object of idolatry.
I think the latter is the concern of many people. It bothers me as well.
Still, an all powerful central government which thinks it owns all the products of our labor, is also greedy, wasteful, and abusive, and as such is worse than anything capitalism can produce.
Which gets back to Pope Frances’s words this summer which seemed to alarm many - when he said Christians ought to be primarily concerned about evangelizing the good news about Jesus Christ to a population that has become callous and bored by anything that smacks of spirituality. He mentioned that we ought not to be always talking about abortion and homosexuality - it was misconstrued. He could have used other sins - robbery, lying, etc., but because he mentioned the sins of the flesh everyone got their noses out of joint. IMHO, PF does have a legitimate point - the loss of a common Judeo-Christian morality is what is the problem in this world in that it drives the breakdown of morality in the culture.