Posted on 05/29/2017 5:28:47 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Speaking to workers and business people in Italys port city of Genoa Saturday, Pope Francis surprised his hearers by praising entrepreneurship and touting the importance of healthy businesses for the economy.
There cant be a good economy without good businessmen, without their capacity to create and to produce, he said, shattering his reputation as an enemy of the free market economy.
The Pope recognized that the essential value of work and employment is only possible when companies are sound and successful.
Without denouncing unemployment benefits, Francis insisted that state intervention wasnt a real solution. A monthly check from the state that allows you to keep the family afloat doesnt solve the problem. It has to be resolved with work for everyone, he said.
The Pope went on to underscore differences between healthy entrepreneurship and financial speculation.
A sickness of the economy is the progressive transformation of business people into speculators, Francis said. A speculator is a figure similar to what Jesus called hired-hands as opposed to good shepherds.
Like a hired hand, Francis mused, a speculator doesnt love his company or his workers, since they are merely a means for making profits. He has no problem firing people, closing a factory or relocating the company, because he doesnt care about his workers but uses them simply as a means for increasing his profits.
[big snip]
[Working] men and women generate solidarity by their actions, and they create organizations which offer a helping hand to those most in need, he said.
Business is a noble vocation, the Pope continued, directed to producing wealth and improving the world. It can be a fruitful source of prosperity for the area in which it operates, especially if it sees the creation of jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
And he only met with President Trump briefly.
Business is a noble vocation. — Pope Francis
“””...especially if it sees the creation of jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good.””
The real pope comes out. None of what he said is in support of capitalism. It’s a thinly disguised attempt to pacify capitalists into thinking he’s not really for redistribution.
Have the marxists won the war of words? Capitalism seems to be the go to word to describe free enterprise.
Free people engage in free enterprise.
Under socialism people are not free and free enterprise is curtailed and/or destroyed.
That’s why I stopped going to my church and am working my way toward another one—the well-meaning but virtue-signalling pastor can’t help but constantly elevate the snowflakes wanting to “do good” instead of enter the evil world of private-sector business.
At the heart of that view is a world of wrongs.
:)
Sounds much like the old Soviet mantras of “full employment” and “social parasitism”. No mention of creative destruction and competition, and seeking profit is bad.
Good point.
Pope Trump
Every working airplane I have seen had a wing on both its left and right side.
It’s possible to get so engrossed in things “conservative” that one forgets what is going to fill the vacuum on the other side. It is going to be something; would we rather it be godly or ungodly is the only question of import.
I increasingly believe that Francis is schizophrenic. Like George “Baby Face” Nelson in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
No idea what the fuller context is, but the question needs to be asked: why does it have to be either-or.
Ideally, people carrying out their private affairs would yet not make them so private that they left God’s will behind. And government nannydom should not be required. It should be of devotional guidance. Which is one of the things a pope ought to be doing, if he is the pastor of the biggest single Christian denomination on the earth.
The meaning of your post went totally over my head.
I’m not Catholic, but I respect Catholicism. So Francis is not my pope, which is good because he often seems like he is as much a Socialist/Communist as he is a Man of G-d.
Right. Though the pope up to now has expressed only disdain for private markets, which in his own way my ex-pastor did too.
The impulse to the left is not of pure evil, believe it or not. It is a side of reality that God personally wishes. How it is carried out will vary, depending on whether it is done in a godly or a secular way. Secular ways produce things like godless communism. Godly ways produce things like... well, the early church is a stark example, and in more modern times some denominations like Mennonite still attempt to carry it out by mutual consent to Christian ideals.
It goes over your head because in your love of “conservatism” you’ve forgotten a whole ‘nother side of human existence.
Could the hypothesis be floated that something bigger than either the Roman Catholic pope or worldly communism or capitalism is at work here. Something God sized, perhaps. And this in a congregation that isn’t perfect, but is a willing recipient of a promise of the Lord, a promise that depends on His determination and not on the determination of men.
Some people agonize so about their ideas of perfection on earth that they don’t allow room for God to perfect as they try and, at first, fail.
Spare me.
And the Mennonite connection has come on my radar, because of a new contract that I am working. The technical lead is a son of a Mennonite farmer, and had his own peculiar tribulations before he went out into the world. And in many if not most such denominations (Amish is a more radical form) the option is allowed by free will. Will one elect to be part of the, er, commune or will one be “English.” Both of which are considered valid ways to live out being Christian.
But it also confounds some of our easy ideas of left and right. My former Mennonite friend told me of getting grief from other kids about being a “dirty commie” when they didn’t know squat about larger issues. This was during the times of the Cold War with the USSR, which was (hardly needful to say it) ungodly and wouldn’t have wanted Mennonites practicing even a leftward form of Christianity.
The bible certainly underscores free will in Christian sharing, and points out that God loves a cheerful giver. Nobody needs to give until they are ready to, and that for the sake of the love of God actually seen, not just rumored.
Perhaps God has planned that this pope will evolve. Donald Trump does not seem to be the kind of evil capitalist that the pope may have conjured up in his head. Francis has confessed he does not read a lot of books. Maybe that is why God has opened the book of Donald Trump’s life to Francis.
Oh? The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all who hold (suppress) the truth in unrighteousness.
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