Posted on 07/19/2015 3:11:41 PM PDT by smokingfrog
On arrival in La Paz, Pope Francis was presented by Bolivian President Evo Morales with a wooden crucifix carved in the form of a hammer and sickle, the symbol of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Fidel.
Had Pope John Paul II been handed that crucifix, he might have cracked it over Evo’s head. For John Paul II had seen up close what communism did — to his country, his church and his people in 45 years of Bolshevik rule.
On his arrival in the Nicaragua of Daniel Ortega in 1983, Pope John Paul castigated a priest-collaborator who dared to serve that Sandinista Marxist regime as culture minister.
And, while in Managua, he warned Catholics they were being threatened by “unacceptable ideological commitments.”
Today we have a pope for whom free-market capitalism is the “unacceptable ideological commitment.”
As The New York Times reports, Pope Francis does “not just criticize the excesses of capitalism. He compares them to the ‘dung of the devil.’ He does not simply argue that ‘greed for money’ is a bad thing. He calls it a ‘subtle dictatorship that condemns and enslaves.’”
In South America, Pope Francis “made a historic apology for the crimes of the Roman Catholic Church during the period of Spanish colonialism — even as he called for a global movement against a ‘new colonialism’ rooted in an inequitable economic order.”
‘’The Argentine pope seemed to be asking for a social revolution.”
Now the church has a long tradition of criticizing capitalism, dating back to the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891.
In “American Church: The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America,” author Russ Shaw deals with the causes and consequences of what some Catholics contend was a fatal embrace of a heretical “Americanism” in the 19th century.
(Excerpt) Read more at tbo.com ...
Did anyone read Adam Smith? He is talking about the necessity to act with morality within capitalism.
But to paraphrase Churchill...Capitalism may be diabolic, but it is still less diabolic than all the alternatives.
The problem is that the word Capitalism has been tarred by association with cronyist economies.
Americans think “free enterprise”, a lot of other countries think “wealthy oligarchy that uses its influence to exploit others”.
IMO this is what causes a lot of the animosity and confusion surrounding such statements.
The pope doesn’t know much about catholic doctrine.
Well as the pope said ...
Well stated distinction which I’ll be sure to make when speaking with those less keen on Capitalism..
“The problem is that the word Capitalism has been tarred by association with cronyist economies.
Americans think “free enterprise”, a lot of other countries think “wealthy oligarchy that uses its influence to exploit others”.
IMO this is what causes a lot of the animosity and confusion surrounding such statements.”
A lot of the time I find Pat just annoying. He is spot on with this one
I don’t even like the word “capitalism” - I believe the term was invented by Marx to describe his manufactured fantasy-religion.
How about just the “rule of law” and “protection of property rights?”
Capitalism - Oingo Boingo
There’s nothing wrong with capitalism
There’s nothing wrong with free enterprise
Don’t try to make me feel guilty
I’m so tired of hearing you cry
There’s nothing wrong with making some profit
If you ask, I’ll say it’s just fine
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live nice
So tired of hearing you whine
About the revolution, bringing down the rich
When was the last time you dug a ditch, baby
If it ain’t one thing, then it’s the other
Any cause that crosses your path
Your heart bleeds for anyone’s brother
I’ve got to tell you, you’re a pain in the ass
You criticize with plenty of vigor
You rationalize everything that you do
With catchy phrases and heavy quotations
And everybody is crazy but you
You’re just a middle class, socialist brat
From a suburban family and you never really had to work
And now you tell me that we’ve got to get back
To the struggling masses, whoever they are
You talk, talk, talk about suffering and pain
Your mouth is bigger than your entire brain
What the hell do you know about suffering and pain?
There’s nothing wrong with capitalism
There’s nothing wrong with free enterprise
Don’t try to make me feel guilty
I’m so tired of hearing you cry
There’s nothing wrong with making some profit
If you ask I’ll say it’s just fine
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live nice
So tired of hearing you whine
You’re just a middle class, socialist brat
From a suburban family and you never really had to work
And now you tell me that we’ve got to get back
To the struggling masses, whoever they are
You talk, talk, talk about suffering and pain
Your mouth is bigger than your entire brain
There’s nothing wrong with capitalism
There’s nothing wrong with capitalism
Thanks to you both, I'll try to use Cronyism to replace Crony Capitalism when I try to make the point that they are both Fascism.
Capitalism requires a reasonable amount of free enterprise and free competition to be properly labeled "Capitalism".
Even Socialism would be great, if all human beings were perfectly virtuous.
Without Virtue, every single system is diabolical. Freedom can’t exist without Virtue in people (Socrates/Aristotle).
(That is why Virtue in children was targeted by the Cultural Marxists (Sex-Ed) in the 1930s, to collapse our culture).
Since the Founders knew we were not Angels (but Rousseau and the French believed we were “Good”), they created the most perfect government and limitations on power, as possible....with Free Market Capitalism and private property rights and individual Natural Rights enshrined.
But, our schools need to go back to Classical Education which embeds Virtue in the young. John Dewey was a Socialist Humanist and intentionally destroyed our education system in the 30s to destroy Virtue and moral formation in children——to collapse culture.
As today-—I interview high school and college students and they are the dumbest, most ignorant people-—with no clue to understanding philosophy or theology on an abstract profound level. They have Nike Minds—”feel good, do it”—which is all from operant conditioning and filling them with lies and misinformation in grade school and blurring Truth/God/Reason.
Yup. You are right, of course!
Let’s see how well the Vatican’s coffers fare without capital.
The Pope is essentially against indvidualism. He supports collectivism and world government derived and supported by crony capitalism which has nothing to do with real capitalistic free markets.
I thought so too.
My guess is you’re retired
When Marx coined the term “capitalism”, he didn’t intend it as a compliment.
Free marketers took up the term in the 20th century and used the term first as an ironic badge of honor, then as a neutral descriptive term.
The left still uses it in its original Marxian sense: a system in which the owners of capital exploit the working class, who according to Marxist-Leninist theory, in fact generates all economic value.
For this reason, when defending free market principles, we should be wary of using the term “capitalism”. It bolsters the claim of our left opponents that capitalism is just another ideology or “ism”. They can then claim the post ideological mantle (e.g., “I’m not for ideology; I want to do what works. And I’m against excessive income inequality”).
Communist is a form of “capitalism” with the State being the sole Capitalist.
+1
The problem is some of the "capitalist" as they call them have grown so large and powerful they're able to control and influence large sums of wealth, be it multinational corporations or corrupt international and domestic bank kingpins. All this wealth, power and control has allowed them to "game" and control the system.
This is one of the reasons why so many who still have jobs find themselves poor and in decline, with many of which are unable to even afford the basics, such as a home, even on two incomes. They work harder for less and less.
And there is no debate here. Simply look at middle America and the millions struggling and losing. All this while those few controlling the money become even wealthier and wealthier. So corrupt they now send out spokespeople to warn even their Social Security pittance which had been confiscated from them, will have to be cut or eliminated.
This is not going away as the vast distance between those few super mega wealthy at the top and the rest of middle America deepens.
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