Pope Francis' Wealth Redistribution Is Economically Fallible

IBD ^ | 05/10/2014

[SeekAndFind]

Pope Francis demands wealth redistribution. He forgets St. John Paul's recognition of the "positive role of business, the market, private property" as "the model which ought to be proposed" for the Third World.

Addressing U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other officials on Friday, the first supreme pontiff from Latin America called for "the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the state."

Excuse the irreverence, but his holiness may be forgetting the hundreds of millions of souls whose lives have been improved, lengthened, even saved by maximizing capitalism and minimizing government.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods.

[Don Corleone]

Not pronouncing a doctrine of faith or morals so basically he is speaking for himself. Its expected of a Jesuit. They are always in the forefront of trouble. Been a wart on the nose of the Church for 500 years. “Gods Army?”

[pogo101]

I’m sure the current pope means well, but he doesn’t have the “grew up around it” familiarity with full-blown socialism like his two predecessors had. Bergoglio, in contrast, thinks the problem is that we haven’t gotten socialist ENOUGH.

[Rashputin]

Bergoglio knows economics like the Obamaphone crowd know economics. He spent his life around people who don't know how to go out and work for something and who have been convinced that there's no way they could work for something.

In his defense, (only mildly because he doesn' have a real excuse to not know better now) the idea that some people won't ever be allowed to work for something even if they want to is probably true in large parts of South America.

[GreyFriar]

I liked this line I saw a couple of days ago on Ed Morrisey’s Hot Air Column:

“How do you know Pope Francis is being misquoted? His lips are moving.”

Please read Ed’s column and why it is best to ignore the MSM which is NOT Pope Francis’ friend; he suggests that people read the speech rather than the coverage::

http://hotair.com/archives/2014/05/09/pope-francis-zacchaeus-and-legitimate-redistribution/

[ClearBlueSky]

Is he willing to start with the Vatican? Lots of priceless valuables there, gold, gems. Are all Cardinals ready to live poorly and ‘redistribute’ the wealth? Bet not. I’m Catholic and this socialist garbage infuriates me. Let ANYONE who spews this start with THEMSELVES! Lead by example or shut up. Pope Francis included.

[G Larry]

Equality of opportunity, not of outcome.
Charity is NOT a government function, especially given it’s abuse as a vote buying gimmick to create and sustain dependency on the government and undermine personal responsibility.

[Dr. Thorne]

Jorge Bergoglio has never been poor. He has never had to scramble to make a living or feed a family. He may have seen poverty, but he has never had to feel the pain and despair of being unable to feed your own kids. It’s easy to be a Socialist from a distance. Socialism is a beautiful lie that never works, but it is appealing to people who are motivated by their emotions rather than reason. This guy is just not very bright.

[dfwgator]

Halt! Halt! ..... Gentlemen, ladies, bring out your valuables please. Come along sir, come along. Come along, madam, come along. Oh, is that all you've got ... well, he's got much more than you ... so you'd better have some of his ... ... sorry... pick them up in a moment... there's about oh, what, nine down there... so you must have about... oh, he's still got lots... oh you've got what? ... you've got more than he started with... so if I give you some of those ... well now, look ... have you got a bit of jewellry? If I give you that one and you have some of his coins ... is that another box? Were you trying to hide it? Well, that's nice! Right! Now. I've got a tiara ... you've got one... you've got one of the boxes... you've got one... anyone else got a tiara? Take your hat off! ... Oh, honestly, it's absolutely pointless trying to do this if you're going to cheat. It really is awful of you ..

[onedoug]

Violation of the Tenth Commandment, leads directly to breakdowns of the Ninth and Eighth.

This Pope will have a lot to answer for.

[ALPAPilot]

Okay, here is the entire speech

I thank all of you, who are primarily responsible for the international system, for the great efforts being made to ensure world peace, respect for human dignity, the protection of persons, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, and harmonious economic and social development.

The results of the Millennium Development Goals, especially in terms of education and the decrease in extreme poverty, confirm the value of the work of coordination carried out by this Chief Executives Board. At the same time, it must be kept in mind that the world’s peoples deserve and expect even greater results.

An essential principle of management is the refusal to be satisfied with current results and to press forward, in the conviction that those gains are only consolidated by working to achieve even more. In the case of global political and economic organization, much more needs to be achieved, since an important part of humanity does not share in the benefits of progress and is in fact relegated to the status of second-class citizens. Future Sustainable Development Goals must therefore be formulated and carried out with generosity and courage, so that they can have a real impact on the structural causes of poverty and hunger, attain more substantial results in protecting the environment, ensure dignified and productive LABOR for all, and provide appropriate protection for the family, which is an essential element in sustainable human and social development. Specifically, this involves challenging all forms of injustice and resisting the “economy of exclusion”, the “throwaway culture” and the “culture of death” which nowadays sadly risk becoming passively accepted.

With this in mind, I would like to remind you, as representatives of the chief agencies of global cooperation, of an incident which took place two thousand years ago and is recounted in the Gospel of Saint Luke (19:1-10). It is the encounter between Jesus Christ and the rich tax collector Zacchaeus, as a result of which Zacchaeus made a radical decision of sharing and justice, because his conscience had been awakened by the gaze of Jesus. This same spirit should be at the beginning and end of all political and economic activity. The gaze, often silent, of that part of the human family which is cast off, left behind, ought to awaken the conscience of political and economic agents and lead them to generous and courageous decisions with immediate results, like the decision of Zacchaeus. Does this spirit of solidarity and sharing guide all our thoughts and actions, I ask myself?

Today, in concrete terms, an awareness of the dignity of each of our brothers and sisters whose life is sacred and inviolable from conception to natural death must lead us to share with complete freedom the goods which God’s providence has placed in our hands, material goods but also intellectual and spiritual ones, and to give back generously and lavishly whatever we may have earlier unjustly refused to others.

The account of Jesus and Zacchaeus teaches us that above and beyond economic and social systems and theories, there will always be a need to promote generous, effective and practical openness to the needs of others. Jesus does not ask Zacchaeus to change jobs nor does he condemn his financial activity; he simply inspires him to put everything, FREELY yet immediately and indisputably, at the service of others. Consequently, I do not hesitate to state, as did my predecessors (cf. JOHN PAUL II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 42-43; Centesimus Annus, 43; BENEDICT XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 6; 24-40), that equitable economic and social progress can only be attained by joining scientific and technical abilities with an unfailing commitment to solidarity accompanied by a generous and disinterested spirit of gratuitousness at every level. A contribution to this equitable development will also be made both by international activity aimed at the integral human development of all the world’s peoples and by the LEGITIMATE redistribution of economic BENEFITS by the State, as well as indispensable cooperation between the private sector and civil society.

Consequently, while encouraging you in your continuing efforts to coordinate the activity of the international agencies, which represents a service to all humanity, I urge you to work together in promoting a true, worldwide ethical mobilization which, beyond all differences of religious or political convictions, will spread and put into practice a shared ideal of fraternity and solidarity, especially with regard to the poorest and those most excluded.

So the leftists in the media come out and interpret this as "take wealth from the rich and giver to the poor." When the Pope uses the word "legitimate", why is that not interpreted as in accordance with the mosaic law? Specifically the prohibition of stealing and coveting? The Pope makes use of the word "freely." Why did the leftist media bury that idea.

Why isn't the interpretation that governments are suppose to reform the system that makes the political class wealthy at the expense of the common man?

Isn't Harry Reid the present day Zacchaeus? The one that should give his money away?

Can you really read this speech and come away thinking that what the Pope is advocating is that Harry Reid should take more money away from hard working private sector people so he can BENEFIT his friends at places like Solendra?

Now I'm not saying that the Pope is a dyed in the wool free marketeer. But the government does have a proper role: enforcing contracts, prohibiting fraud, etc.

[quadrant]

The man's an Argentine and a South American Jesuit to boot. Its unlikely his ideas on economics will make much sense.

[faucetman]

Blah, Blah, Blah, and world peace. What a meaningless clap trap of platitudes and wishful thinking. I think the pope actually thinks he just accomplished something, not.

It comes down to “OPM”. The pope wants to solve poverty with “Other People's Money”.

The MEGA RICH Catholic Church needs to divest itself of all the gold, all the real estate, all the art, all of it's possessions, and THEN hold your hand out.

Like the pope said:

“Today, in concrete terms, an awareness of the dignity of each of our brothers and sisters whose life is sacred and inviolable from conception to natural death must lead us to share with complete freedom the goods which God’s providence has placed in our hands, material goods but also intellectual and spiritual ones, and to give back generously and lavishly whatever we may have earlier unjustly refused to others.”

I agree. The Catholic Church can go first.

The Protestant Mega Churches can go second. The wealth of “the church” should be SPENT! Yes, on the poor. A leg up not a hand out. On the feeble minded, the depressed, the needy, the dependent, the old, the infirmed, the lost.

[Dqban22]

Pope Francis’ view on economy matters seems to be negatively influenced by the Argentinean Peronism and the liberation theology.

According to Cardinal Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, the prefect of the Congregation for de Doctrine of the Faith, and who is also a pupil of Gustavo Gutierrez, the “father” of Latin-American liberation theology, affirms that “Pope Francis has close ties with liberation theology”

It is a fact that in the Liberation Theology the Gospels are profoundly corrupted by Marxist ideology, including the promotion of class struggle and the creation of the so called “iglesia popular” (parallel and opposed to the Church), an instrument used by Marxist theologians to support the Marxist guerrillas and regimes in Latin America.

“LEGITIMATE REDISTRIBUTION’ OF WEALTH BY THE STATE” IS AN OXIMORON.

“Pope Francis has frequently lashed out at the injustices of capitalism and the global economic system that excludes so much of humanity.”

Isn’t it a fact that the countries that exclude the capitalistic system are so poor for just that reason? Even Communist China, by embracing capitalism, is becoming an economic super power and has begun eliminating the famines and abject poverty endemic to it for centuries. The same is being seen in India, South Korea and Taiwan. 60 years ago, the last two of the aforementioned countries were poorer and had less natural resources than most of the Latin American countries, but they embraced capitalism and became a prosperous part of the first world community.

What is it that His Holiness is advocating in order to eliminate poverty in the World? Jesus Christ said that the poor will always be with us, but, Jesus was not alluding only to economic poverty, He was also referring to moral and spiritual poverty as well.

Since the beginning of his election, Pope Francis has been involved in a continuous barrage of misrepresentations and attacks against the free enterprise system, which together with political and religious freedom, are the main tenets of modern capitalism. In spite of its defects and shortcomings, no system in human history has reduced poverty more in the world and helped to raise the standards of living for Humanity as a whole, than the free enterprise capitalistic system. Thus far, I have yet to hear Pope Francis condemn the socialist regimes that continue to keep their people subjugated and in a state of misery, as is the case in Cuba and Venezuela, and these are just two of the many other well known apprentices of tyrannical socialist regimes in Latin America.

Is Pope Francis’ Peronist vision of a third way between Socialism and Capitalism the way to eliminate poverty in the world? Peronism, a populist hybrid between Socialism and Fascism reduced Argentina, a very rich country with a numerous well educated middle class, to the present waste basket state it is today.

Isn’t the so called “redistribution of wealth” one of the main tenets of the Marxist doctrine and a slogan used ad nauseam by demagogues throughout history?
As soon as he took power, Pope Francis has been trying to rescue the Marxist liberation theology from the dust bin of history where it was relegated by Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI, a movement that supported the Marxist guerrillas in Latin America and was used by the Cuban regime to expand communism in this hemisphere.
As Pope Pius XI affirmed in his Encyclical letter “Divini Redemptoris on Atheistic Communism”:
58. “See to it, Venerable Brethren, that the Faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived! Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever. Those who permit themselves to be deceived into lending their aid towards the triumph of Communism in their own country, will be the first to fall victims of their error. And the greater the antiquity and grandeur of the Christian civilization in the regions where Communism successfully penetrates, so much more devastating will be the hatred displayed by the godless.”

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19031937_divini-redemptoris_en.html

In the 1980’s, by orders of Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger, the prefect of the CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH, issued the following INSTRUCTION ON CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE “THEOLOGY OF LIBERATION” in which it was condemning the inclusion of the “class struggle” and other tenets of the ideology and Marxist praxis under the Christian cover of a so called liberation theology.

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19840806_theology-liberation_en.html

[mjp]

Pope Francis demands wealth redistribution.

In a free society with a rational culture, the needs of some do not justify the initiation of force to violate the God-given natural rights of others. Also, the feelings of some do not justify the violation of the rights of others.

[windsorknot]

Disappointing if true. Forced wealth redistribution at the point of a gun is not charity.

[virgil]

I thought the Church advocated an economic system called Distributism, whatever that is.

[Mr Rogers]

“When the Pope uses the word “legitimate”, why is that not interpreted as in accordance with the mosaic law?”

Because in the same sentence, he wants GOVERNMENTS to do the redistributing:

“by the LEGITIMATE redistribution of economic BENEFITS by the State”

Do you know of a Godly government, devoted to Christ? Me neither.

[ALPAPilot]

“When the Pope uses the word “legitimate”, why is that not interpreted as in accordance with the mosaic law?” Because in the same sentence, he wants GOVERNMENTS to do the redistributing: “by the LEGITIMATE redistribution of economic BENEFITS by the State” Do you know of a Godly government, devoted to Christ? Me neither.

Perhaps the Pope is implying that the current redistribution system is illegitimate. Especially since in many cases that redistribution is not done "freely."

My point is that the AP took two words from the speech - redistribution and legitimate, and then added their own word - wealth. If we are going to criticize the Pope, I think we should criticize what he actually said instead of the stuff the AP makes up for him.