Replies

And where does this end? Rather than promoting private charity with the accountability to better oneself, the government provides all, which ends up punishing the industrious and rewarding indolence, but eventually with ideological strings attached.

In speaking to a meeting at the Vatican on the theme "Investing in the Poor," which was organized, in part, by the University of Notre Dame, the pope said:

Representatives of the Roman Curia have joined you in these days of study aimed at assessing innovative forms of investment which can benefit local communities and the environment, as well as providing a reasonable return.

The logic underlying these innovative forms of intervention is one which "acknowledges the ultimate connection between profit and solidarity, the virtuous circle existing between profit and gift … Christians are called to rediscover, experience and proclaim to all this precious and primordial unity between profit and solidarity. How much the contemporary world needs to rediscover this beautiful truth!" (Preface to the book of Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Povera per i poveri. La missione della Chiesa ["Poor for the Poor." The Mission of the Church]). We are truly in need of this!

Here the pope quoted Gerhard Ludwig Müller, a pupil and friend of Gustavo Gutiérrez, the “father” of Latin-American liberation theology. [On] a visit to Peru in 1988, when the then Archbishop Müller met Fr Gustavo Gutiérrez OP, regarded as the father of the movement, convinced the him of its orthodoxy. “Liberation theology wants to make God’s liberating actions visible in the Church’s religious and social practice ... It would stop being genuine theology if it were to confuse the Christian message with Marxist or other social analysis,” he explained. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Ludwig_M%C3%BCller#Peter_Kramer_controversy

And from Benedict XVI

ENCYCLICAL LETTER CARITAS IN VERITATE 67. To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority,...

Furthermore, such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights. Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties,...

The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity*, for the management of globalization. They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres, as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations.” *http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI and other church leaders said it was the moral responsibility of nations to guarantee access to health care for all of their citizens, regardless of social and economic status or their ability to pay. Governments are obligated, therefore, to adopt the proper legislative, administrative and financial measures to provide such care along with other basic conditions that promote good health, such as food security, water and housing, the cardinal said. - http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1004736.htm