The Pope's Self-Defeating Anti-Capitalistic Rant He shouldn't bite the hand that feeds the church Shikha Dalmia | December 3, 2013
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inShare Email Send to Kindle Pope Francis doesn’t have to thank capitalism, a system that has done far more to alleviate poverty, his pet crusade, than the institution he leads. But he should at least stop demonizing it—not least because it enables the very activity that he cherishes most: charity.
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The Pope claims that the “opinion” that “economic growth, encouraged by the free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness” has “never been confirmed by the facts.” (He obviously hasn’t been listening to Bono, which isn't entirely a bad thing.)
Therefore, governments “charged with the vigilance of the common good” must take strong steps to “exercise any form of control,” including redistributive taxes, to stop the march toward a society where “those excluded are no longer its underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised—they are no longer even part of it.
No doubt such purple prose about “exclusion” will gain him adoring fans among the left—notwithstanding the irony that he is speaking for an institution that excludes half of humanity—women—from the ranks of priesthood. But is capitalism the cause of poverty and is redistribution the cure?
No and Nyet.
Poverty is the default condition of humanity. It is the given. What needs explaining is wealth. And the greatest engine of wealth creation is the market. By raising productivity and lowering the price of goods, markets certainly help the rich, but they help the poor more. Capitalism’s most impressive achievement, Joseph Schumpeter noted, was not providing more silk stockings for the Queen, “but in bringing them within reach of factory girls.”
Indeed, far from promoting Social Darwinism that thrives on “the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless,” as the Pope claimed, capitalism does the opposite: It fosters economic competition among producers so that consumers don't have to compete for scarce goods. In 1900, it took an average worker in the West about an hour to earn a half a gallon of milk. In 1930, half an hour. And today? Scarcely a few minutes.
If all the profits of the rich in America were handed over to workers, notes economic historian Deirdre McCloskey, the workers would only be 30 percent better off. “But in the last two centuries we’re 3,000 percent better off.”
But capitalism hasn’t only produced gains in the West. Between 1990 and 2010, the number of people in extreme poverty as a share of the total population in developing countries has been cut in half from 43 percent to 21 percent—a reduction of one billion people. Why? Because China and India jettisoned Big Government Socialism, the very thing the Pope advocates, and liberalized their economies.
It is no exaggeration to say that charity is a balm for poverty but capitalism is the cure—or in Bono’s evocative mixed metaphor capitalism’s “job creators and innovators are the key, and aid is just a bridge."
Indeed, without capitalism, even this balm would be in short supply or this bridge too short.
Capitalism puts more discretionary income in the pockets of people to devote to charitable pursuits. It is hardly a co-incidence that America donates over $300 billion annually toward charitable causes at home and abroad, the highest of any country on a per capita basis.
The church itself is a big beneficiary of this capitalist largesse with its U.S. wing alone contributing 60 percent to its overall global wealth. Some of this money comes from donations, but a big chunk comes, actually, from directly partaking in capitalism: The church is reportedly the largest landowner in Manhattan, the financial center of the global capitalism system, whose income puts undisclosed sums into its coffers.
So the new Pope needs to be careful not to bite the hand that feeds his institution and its work. Otherwise, neither he nor the poor in whose name he is speaking will have much to be thankful for.
WHERE ARE THOSE F'EN 3 WISE MEN?
church government corporate
what do they have in common???????
those who control the guilt control the masses those who control the land control the masses those who control the guns control the masses those who control the knowledge control the masses those who control the legislation control the masses those who control the food supply(donated or not) control the masses etc etc etc.....
OH..and war!
PUT A FORK IN US!!!!!
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Told ya.....the church is nothing short of being a whore! She sold herself decades ago. there is no separation of church and state......they are one in the same!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Pope Francis’s colorful past: God’s nightclub bouncer
By Cheryl K. Chumley
-
The Washington Times
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Pope Francis is generally known as the religious head of the Catholic Church, keeper of the Vatican key. But even he has a past. He was a bar bouncer.
The 76-year-old used to serve as a doorman who kept out the undesirables from a Buenos Aires bar, at a time when he was student, The Daily Mail reported.
That’s quite a different image from the one he’s shown the public in recent weeks — embracing and blessing the head of a horribly disfigured man, wrapping an arm about a bold child who jumped his stage to wander about his robes, mingling and walking with the poorest of the poor in villages he visits.
But he’s got a different side — and it’s a tango-loving side, too. The Gazetta Del Sud reported that prior to his don of priestly robes, the pontiff had a girlfriend he loved to tango with on the dance floor.
Other pre-pope past-times: He was a literature and psychology teacher, Catholic News reported.
The pope’s been making waves around the world with his stated dedication to helping the poor. In one show of commitment to turn from worldly ways and lead believers to do the same, the pope gave up the office’s traditional scarlet slippers and gold cross pendant, choosing instead to wear a plain iron cross and well-worn black shoes, leftovers from his Buenos Aires days.
Final part of the prophecies in Lignum Vitæ (1595), p. 311. The Prophecy of the Popes (Latin: Prophetia Sancti Malachiae Archiepiscopi, de Summis Pontificibus) is a series of 112 short, cryptic phrases in Latin which purport to predict the Roman Catholic popes (along with a few antipopes), beginning with Pope Celestine II. The alleged prophecies were first published by Benedictine monk Arnold Wion in 1595. Wion attributes the prophecies to Saint Malachy, a 12th‑century Archbishop of Armagh, Ireland.
Given the very accurate description of popes up to 1590 and lack of accuracy after that year, historians generally conclude that the alleged prophecies are a fabrication written shortly before they were published. The Roman Catholic Church also dismisses them as forgery.[1][2] The prophecies may have been created in an attempt to suggest that Cardinal Girolamo Simoncelli's bid for the papacy in the second conclave of 1590 was divinely ordained.
Many proponents of the prophecies claim that Pope Francis corresponds to "Peter the Roman" the pope described in the final prophecy, whose pontificate will allegedly bring the destruction of the city of Rome and usher in the beginning of the Apocalypse.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
These people don't understand that the pope is Catholic. Here's another thing that bothers me - capitalism isn't what we are seeing today. Some political types are all for the pope, when they think he is on their "side" in hindering women in obtaining contraception, which for some reason has become a Republican 'thing', but then when he dares to cross a political line and start criticizing secular, partisan doctrine, they get all bent out of shape. The pope is not a politician, not a world leader in the government sense, I don't have to follow the Popes' dictates because I am not Catholic, and the Republican party has no business being involved with the church when it suits them. This kind of stuff, these articles, are an attempt to neutralize the Pope, if he is a partisan politician then he can be on the wrong "side", these people can't stand it that there are forces in the world outside of government that have more influence than their designated messiahs, such as Obama is. Capitalism is a system of gains and LOSSES, what we have been seeing is a one-sided, immoral casino where the odds always favor the house, no matter how many times you pull that lever you might think you are winning, but it's an illusion.
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