Posted on 01/02/2014 4:01:54 PM PST by markomalley
Isn’t it amazing how the very people who despise the Papacy as an institution hang on every word this pope says? The Catholic Church has had anti-Popes, craven Popes like Alexander VI, hedonists like Leo X and simplistic souls like John XXIII. There’s a reason so few Popes have been called “Great”: the rest were just place holders.
I can see how people can twist out of context "off the cuff" remarks and misunderstand the context of a speech compared to a written polemic. Sure I can see that and do so very often here on FR with people dead a few hundred years. So I understand.
Perhaps Pope Francis should hire a Roman Catholic like Bill O'Reilly who knows about "spins zones." Truly I am being serious here. Pope Francis is an international public figure and political leader as well (Vatican). He needs someone that can take his message and condense it down to paragraph form for mass media consumption. I am sure he is not used to such, but those who make a career serving popes at the Vatican sure know how to do this, and the big question your faitful should ask is "why are they gooning it up?"
Bill O'Reilly? Somehow I don't think that would help him much with conservatives. Just a thought.
If redistribution of wealth schemes are not based on covetousness, on what ground does The Pope preach his socialist fantasy to "correct" for unequal outcomes?
And yet conservatives are anti-elitist. So does this mean the poor are the elite and the rich are on the bottom?
I was a member of the John Birch Society for four years, and I can assure you that they were quite hostile to the "millionaire, totalitarian, socialist conspirators who rule us." In fact whole books were written and promoted that claimed Communism was actually merely a front for the old East Coast Yankee elites--the Morgans, the Rockefellers, the Cabots, the Whitneys, the Carnegies, the Fords, etc. Their rogues gallery was identical to that of the late nineteenth century left wing populists.
Gary Allen's None Dare Call It Conspiracy and Cleon Skousen's The Naked Capitalist especially stressed this. The latter book pretty much ignores Karl Marx and traces the "conspiracy" to the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694.
Ever notice how many conservatives claim the Fed is a "privately-owned" bank? No doubt some of them want to nationalize it.
This is unfortunately true. They say this comes from Calvinism, though I've never seen the connection with Calvinist theology.
The thing is, "the poor" aren't usually materialist intellectuals. As a matter of fact, they're often made fun of for their simple religiosity. So how can "the poor" be liberal icons?
I also doubt there are very many poor among the radicals in academia.
Pope Francis and Capitalism
By Walter E. Williams
12/18/2013
Pope Francis, in his apostolic exhortation, levied charges against free market capitalism, denying that “economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world” and concluding that “this opinion ... has never been confirmed by the facts.” He went on to label unfettered capitalism as “a new tyranny.” Let’s look at the pope’s tragic vision.
First, I acknowledge that capitalism fails miserably when compared with heaven or a utopia. Any earthly system is going to come up short in such a comparison. However, mankind must make choices among alternative economic systems that actually exist on earth. For the common man, capitalism is superior to any system yet devised to deal with his everyday needs and desires.
Capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. With the rise of capitalism, it became possible to amass great wealth by serving and pleasing your fellow man.
Capitalists seek to discover what people want and produce and market it as efficiently as possible as a means to profit. A couple of examples would be J.D. Rockefeller, whose successful marketing drove kerosene prices down from 58 cents a gallon in 1865 to 7 cents in 1900. Henry Ford became rich by producing cars for the common man.
Both Ford’s and Rockefeller’s personal benefits pale in comparison with that received by the common man by having cheaper kerosene and cheaper transportation. There are literally thousands of examples of how mankind’s life has been made better by those in the pursuit of profits.
Here’s my question to you: Are people who, by their actions, created unprecedented convenience, longer life expectancy and a more pleasant life for the ordinary person — and became wealthy in the process — deserving of all the scorn and ridicule heaped upon them by intellectuals, politicians and now the pope?
Let’s examine the role of profits but first put it in perspective in terms of magnitude. Between 1960 and 2012, after-tax corporate profit averaged a bit over 6 percent of the gross domestic product, while wages averaged 47 percent of the GDP. Far more important than simple statistics about the magnitude of profits is its role in guiding resources to their highest-valued uses and satisfying people.
Try polling people with a few questions. Ask them what services they are more satisfied with and what they are less satisfied with. On the “more satisfied” list would be profit-making enterprises, such as supermarkets, theaters, clothing stores and computer stores. They’d find less satisfaction with services provided by nonprofit government organizations, such as public schools, post offices and departments of motor vehicles.
Profits force entrepreneurs to find ways to please people in the most efficient ways or go out of business. Of course, they can mess up and stay in business if they can get government to bail them out or give them protection against competition. Nonprofits have an easier time of it.
Public schools, for example, continue to operate whether they do a good job or not and whether they please parents or not. That’s because politicians provide their compensation through coercive property taxes. I’m sure that we’d be less satisfied with supermarkets if they, too, had the power to take our money through taxes, as opposed to being forced to find ways to get us to voluntarily give them our earnings.
Arthur C. Brooks, president at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “Who Really Cares,” shows that Americans are the most generous people on the face of the earth. In fact, if you look for generosity around the world, you find virtually all of it in countries that are closer to the free market end of the economic spectrum than they are to the socialist or communist end. Seeing as Pope Francis sees charity as a key part of godliness, he ought to stop demonizing capitalism.
it gets them from DONORS, we the people of the Catholic church ARE the church....the church is not some Bank of Italy that spends billions of dollars.....we are individual Catholic people who give 1, 5, 10 dollars at a time to assist those who have less than we do....try it, you'll LOVE it
Leni
One thing I always caution people about these articles (be it from this Paolo Mastrolilli or Sandro Magister or Andrea Tornielli or whoever), that they are written by Italians and for Italians.
If you are familiar with Italian movies, you know how they can be melodramatic and over-acted by nature. The Italian press is no different, as a general rule.
One implication is that the author has an even more difficult time hiding his biases than Stateside or British journos. So, frankly, "eccentric" may actually be a polite rendition...again, I haven't checked with the Italian original to see.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.