Posted on 11/26/2013 9:17:36 AM PST by IbJensen
I truly do not like this Pope.
Adam Smith showed that, in a free-market economy, there is a coincidence between self-interest and the common good. Hence, the purpose of government is to protect people in their rights. This was revolutionary. Prior to this teaching, the dominant theory of the Church was one of self-denial and “ecstatic poverty.” This was exemplified in the life of St. Francis of Assisi (the namesake of Pope Francis).
There was, with St. Thomas Aquinas, an alternate view, eventually succeeded by the Enlightenment, including Catholic writers such as Erasmus, a Catholic Humanist. But, even through the 19th Century, the Catholics remained suspicious of what it called liberalism (e.g., the English, Dutch and German Protestants) as well as the new heresy of Marxism. Catholic social thinking was described as the middle way, as though the truth is defined by two differing heresies.
With the current and prior two Popes, we have representatives of all three great traditions within Catholicism: St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis of Assisi. One, who took upon himself a vow of poverty; another who saw , with freedom, there could be a reconciliation of love of oneself with love of others, and the third suspicious of the corrupting influences of this world.
As to whether, as Cardinal Dolan of New York says, the current Pope is to be seen as part of these three great traditions, or if, as the secularist and Marxist press characterize the current Pope, he is rejecting self-interest, lies the fate of Catholicism, as the world will not choose poverty, but will choose between freedom and Marxism. If the Catholics reject self-interest, they will marginalize themselves, when Christians are called both to be “in” and “not of” the world.
That's what struck me right away, too. Show me unfettered Capitalism.
Giving money to the ‘poor’ is paying them for their indolent lack of initiative.
I'm not sure how I would classify the horrid working conditions were workers are locked into unsafe buildings, etc. or where plastic is put into baby food and dog food. I think that mentality might be what the Pope is talking about, but using incorrect language.
You put my words much more succinctly!
Putting plastic (melamine) into baby food and dog food (China).
The who have stuff that adheres to the what? While I consider myself at least minimally well-read on religion in general, I have to admit that my eyes are glazing over...
Ok...to Wikipedia!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedevacantism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tridentine_Mass
Huh.
Not being Catholic (or even Christian), I find such squabbling over doctrine to be interesting trivia at best; I just find the socialist tendencies of this new Pope troubling because of the influence his collectivist leanings will have on millions of people.
“As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems,” he wrote.”
Rejecting the absolute automony of markets- Could the market he refers to be the market for vices which people in the media and entertainment industry use to justify providing it?
“financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality”. What “structural causes of inequality” exist in the US? What does financial speculation have to do with inequality except that some people have more money to risk than others? Unless they got their money by illegal or immoral means what business is it of the Church?
I’m very much afraid that this pope is stupid.
As nations lean more towards socialism whereby they tax the crap out of the achievers in order to provide the unwashed masses with goodies, the Catholic Church begins to lose any clout with the masses. It is believed then that the Church is not needed any longer as the teat furnished by the state is taking care of them.
Francis, like his predecessors, fail to understand this, or they’ve given their souls over to the prince of darkness.
If he thinks his utterances along these lines are pleasing to God Almighty, I believe he is sadly mistaken and is listening to the wrong voices.
“I think most of the world’s problems regarding poverty are caused by government corruption”
Over regulation stifles economic freedom. People worry about income distribution. I have mixed feelings on that myself.
But I do know that the more complexity (rules and regulation and 1,000 page bills) that is created; it leads to less ability to create wealth and start from nothing
Read Divini Redemptoris. True now as it was true in 1937.
I suppose the EXAMPLE Jesus left of working for a living as a carpenter is just the wrong thing to do. Maybe it was just a hobby and he didn’t need to work for an income to buy things.
Jesus said:
Matt. 20: 15
“Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?”:
Socialism rewards sloth and penalizes hard work while capitalism rewards hard work and penalizes sloth. The Pope is more in tune with Karl Marx than he is with Jesus Christ.
And Quadragesimo Anno, by the same Pope, is as untrue now as it was when it was written.
Is Catholic social teaching defined by the middle ground of Marxism (rejected) (as per Divini Redemptoris) and liberalism (also rejected)? Then, what if Karl Marx or Adam Smith had not existed?
If the Catholic middle way results in advocacy of Benito Mussilini’s fascist economy as an exemplar of the middle way (as per Quadragesimo Anno), would this grave error dispute the middle way approach?
But, even the line of thinking expressed in Populorum Progressio is incorrect. Wanting to do good is invalid when talking of social phenomena because of the law of unintended consequences.
It was not a coincidence that Pope Benedict XVI skipped over Centesimus Annus to tie his encyclical Caritas in Veritate to Populorum Progressio. Rather, it was a mistake.
Some future Pope is going to have to apologize for the Church’s obstinance regarding what we know through social science, as Pope John Paul II (finally!) apologized regarding what we know through natural science.
Jesus: “Is it not lawful for me to do what I want with my own?” (Matthew 20:15)
Socialist: Greedy! Of course not. The State will redistribute your wealth to others who are more deserving.
I wonder what Karl Marx (the man who disparaged religion, calling it the “opiate of the masses”) would say if he knew the pope was selling Marxism...
Also sounds a bit like the Catholic church.
Indeed it would seem apparent that Pope Francis is nuts.
People don’t worship money they need resources to live so some of us work hard to earn them while others vote hard to steal them from the mouths of those who worked.
Leaders can’t garrentee anything we the people don’t choose to make, and we the people NEVER choose to make that which we can justify taking from someone else.
So Leaders are necessarily penny-less so long as they haven’t people who choose to work as the great majority of us would be indisposed to choose if we had anther choice.
God can make bread from nothing, we mere morals cannot and will not without some personal need. That need can either come from the self-sufficient responsibility of freedom, or it can come from the fear of tyranny.
Latin America lives in the fear of Tyranny because they follow Pope Francis’s ideology.
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